Doing the weekly grocery shop is rarely a stress-free experience; steering wonky trolleys and jockeying with other shoppers for pole position at the checkout can be a real headache. It needn't be this way, though, now that many supermarkets offer online grocery shopping as an alternative to visiting your local store in person.
Ocado, which sells goods from the Waitrose chain, told us that more than 300,000 users registered for its service in its first three years of trading and turnover has tripled in the past year. It expects online orders to double again in the next 12 months, so clearly many shoppers have already come round to the idea of stocking up online.
We decided to find out the merits of each service. Armed with a credit card and a shopping list of 20 items, we took to the online aisles of Asda, Ocado, Sainsbury's and Tesco.
While Iceland also offered an online shopping service at the time of writing this feature, the company is pulling its internet, telephone and cable TV shopping services with
effect from 22 April, so this online supermarket was not included in our test.
We had to register with each of the websites on test here before we could start shopping. This was simply a case of entering contact details, a delivery address and, in some cases, a store loyalty card number for accumulating points online.
Before you do anything, though, use the postcode search tool on each site to check that they deliver in your area. Tesco claims 96 per cent delivery coverage in the UK, so it's unlikely that you won't find at least one online supermarket that delivers to your door.
We have considered ease of use and navigation on each site, customer support and help options, the amount of information provided about the items on offer and, of course, the accuracy and punctuality of each delivery. In all cases we opted to accept substitute products where a requested item was out of stock.
This last section lists items you have purchased on previous visits and features a Quick Start shopping tool, which lets you enter details found on a receipt from an in-store shopping trip if you want to buy the same products again. You can also create themed shopping lists of regularly-bought items here.
The store is divided into sensibly labelled aisles displayed as a clickable menu running down the left hand side of pages throughout the site. Most products in the online store have accompanying photos, although the product information was disappointing in the main, with little more than an enlarged photo for guidance.
On-screen plus and minus buttons allow you to select the quantity of items you wish to purchase, with an Add button to add these to your virtual trolley. Both per-kilo and per-unit prices are shown for weighed goods such as vegetables, which is handy.
The contents of the trolley are displayed on the right-hand side of the screen along with a running price total. Click on the Go to checkout button when you're done and choose a two-hour delivery slot if you haven't already done so. Slots can be booked up to three weeks ahead between the hours of 10am-10pm seven days a week, depending on availability in your area, and carry a £4 charge.
There's no dedicated online help section on the site, but you can click on links for help where offered as you go along. We found the help on offer to be clear, with step-by-step instructions and labelled images of the site pages you will encounter.
Our delivery arrived on time but the driver didn't give us any information about our shopping and didn't offer to carry it inside. We were slightly disappointed by the quality of some of the fresh produce, which looked as if it had seen better days, and the frozen goods had started to defrost more than we'd have liked. However, the rest of the fresh food was of a good standard overall.
Pages were quick to load and most products had comprehensive accompanying information supplied, including product descriptions, ingredients, nutritional information and storage and preparation instructions. All items were displayed with per-unit, per-pack and per-100ml or 100g prices. Where products were out of stock, a View Alternative link offered suggested replacements.
All the fresh produce on the Ocado site is offered pre-packaged so you can't select fruit and vegetables by weight or unit quantity and can only choose between pre-weighed meat portions.
Delivery slots of one hour can be booked up to three weeks in advance. The delivery charge on all slots is £5, with a minimum £25 spend on all orders and free delivery for orders over £75. Look out for the Green Van symbol when you book a delivery slot, which indicates times when a delivery has already been booked by another user in your area. Booking your delivery at this time will save on fuel and lets you do your bit for the environment.
The Ocado service currently covers only around 38 per cent of the UK, serving post codes in London, the South East, the Midlands, Liverpool and Manchester. It is not available on Sundays, but delivers between 7am and 10pm every other day.
Our delivery from Ocado arrived 40 minutes after the start of the delivery slot and the driver offered to bring our shopping into the kitchen, then talked us through the checking process with instructions of what to do if we were dissatisfied with the products we had received.
The company had obviously informed the driver that we were a first-time customer, which was a nice touch. Ocado made no substitutions to our order and all items were present. We liked the fact that our shopping arrived in colour-coded bags: red for meat, purple for cupboard goods and green for frozen food.
It may sound gimmicky but it's handy if you don't have time to sort your shopping when it arrives, as you can put red meat bags straight into the fridge and green frozen food bags into the freezer and worry about the rest later.
This allows you to enter items on an on-screen shopping list pad and the site will search the aisles for all the items entered in one go. It can save you time if used wisely: entering 'McVitie's HobNobs' will return more specific results than searching for 'biscuits', for example.
The site features on-screen instructions that guide you through the shopping process, and aisles displayed down the left-hand side of the screen are well labelled. Fresh produce is shown by unit and weight.
In stark contrast to the Asda website, there is a huge amount of information given on the majority of products. Click on an item and an enlarged photo is displayed along with a product description, and more detailed information including ingredients, manufacturer, country of origin, preparation instructions where appropriate and allergy advice. Some products even carry nutritional information.
The site has a dedicated help section themed by topic, including delivery, security and log-in sections, and a list of frequently asked questions. If you're looking for inspiration, Sainsbury's also provides recipe ideas, courtesy of its relationship with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.
Sainsbury's delivers between 10am and 10pm on weekdays, 10am-8pm on Saturdays and 10am-4pm on Sundays with a £5 delivery charge. Returning customers are offered free delivery midweek from Tuesday to Thursday. Our delivery turned up on time and, again, the driver's notes indicated that he was dealing with a first-time customer.
He talked us through our receipt, pointing out one substituted product, which he waited for us to check and accept before leaving (see below for a full explanation of your right to return goods.
He was one of only two delivery people to offer to bring the shopping up to our flat. The fresh fruit and vegetables supplied were of a high quality and the frozen food was still well frozen. Overall, this was an impressive service from start to finish.
Like Sainsbury's, you can opt to view Favourites and select items from that list rather than browsing through the aisles. Tesco also has an Express Shopper tool that will search for items on your list for you in one go.
The Tesco site gets full marks for ease of use and first-time shoppers will benefit from the online shopping guides that take you through various processes such as using the shopping basket and navigating the toolbar. If you have a Tesco Club Card, the items you regularly buy will appear on your Favourites list.
This was the only site to offer users price comparisons with other stores. Type 'butter' into the Price Checker feature, for example, and the site will return a list of prices for butter stocked in Morrisons, Asda and Sainsbury's with Tesco prices listed alongside.
Delivery slots can be booked up to three weeks in advance either before or after you start shopping, so you can be sure of getting the slot you want before filling up the trolley. Delivery charges vary according to the day you want your groceries delivered costing between £4 and £6. Tesco delivers between 9am and 11pm during the week, from 9am-7pm on Saturdays and 11am-4pm on Sundays.
Our shopping from Tesco arrived 25 minutes after the start of the selected delivery slot and the delivery man recognised that we were using the service for the first time and offered advice. He didn't offer to bring our shopping up to the flat, though, as the Ocado and Sainsbury's drivers did.
We had no substitutions and received a receipt detailing every item on the shopping list, which made checking them off simple. No items were missing or damaged, the frozen goods were still well frozen and the fresh fruit and vegetables were of a high quality.
Ocado and Sainsbury's provided exceptional service, albeit at a slightly higher price. Delivery staff were helpful and polite, offered useful information about our order and carried it right into the kitchen.
While both provided a lot of product information and an easy-to-use website, Sainsbury's offering fresh produce by weight tipped the scales, and the offer of free midweek delivery for returning customers and no extra charges for customers within the London congestion zone gave it the edge over Ocado so it is the recipient of our first Try It award.
The second award goes to Tesco. The service was easy to use from start to finish and the online shopping tutorials are a great feature for the first-time customer. Claimed coverage of 96 per cent means most households in the UK will be served and the quality, accuracy and value for money of the goods supplied was excellent.
There are few reasons not to try shopping online. Your credit and debit card payments are secure and it provides a level of convenience you do not get in-store. So next time the cupboard's bare, why not fire up your internet connection instead of making the trip to your local supermarket?
This timeframe is not defined by law but common sense applies here, particularly in the case of perishable goods such as fresh fruit, dairy and vegetables. There's no point complaining about a dodgy lettuce six days after it was delivered when it has started to rot in your fridge.
We recommend checking through your delivery before the driver leaves the premises and handing any goods you feel are unsatisfactory back straightaway. While it may be unrealistic to check every item in an order before accepting it, you should check items such as eggs, fruit and fresh vegetables and meat, which are more likely to be damaged. We also advise you to keep your receipt.
