smartGrocery   Part 1 – How mobile friendly are our grocery chains?

This is the first in a series of articles where we attempt to provide a view into the effort made by various grocery chains to capitalize on the mobile shopping channel.

With the pervasive availability of Internet connectivity and adoption of smartphones in the US, one would assume that the top grocery chains would have made an effort to capitalize on this new channel to engage with customers.

Who we looked at?

We looked at seven prominent grocery chains in the United States, based on a cross-section of regional popularity and market share .

What we looked for?

We looked at a number of criteria to assess their state and readiness for mobile. We will progressively review these in the upcoming articles. In this article, we will focus on two aspects.

1. Is the website optimized for mobile browsers?

Most of the 7 businesses have websites well suited to the mobile screen interface. While some of them actually direct the user to a mobile specific server, some do not. But overall, the user screen is well rendered, though not optimized, in many of them. 

2. Is a mobile app available ?

As you can see from the results, it is great to see that everyone we looked at has already taken the initial step towards “delivering a website that is mobile friendly” and “making mobile apps available” for customers. Some of them redirect the user to a mobile specific website, while others don’t. These 7 businesses appear to be in different stages of adoption and readiness for the mobile shopper. In the next article, we will compare and contrast how they drive end user awareness of the mobile app.