Carrefour’s Grocery Ecommerce

Introduction

Once upon a time, there were thousands of people walking in Carrefour stores 24/7 buying supplies for their homes. A large variety of people, all with their differences between them, but I will tell you about the ones who need to go right after work for supplies after work.

Every day, many of them have a tight schedule, so they choose a store that provides more convenience, not like the others would not do it, but this group needs it. Saving time shopping in a nearby supermarket, sometimes is better for them than the ones that offer a better price. Time is valuable when you do not have much of it, who has never considered an issue waiting in long lines to be attended to?

One day, I was working on the projects I have on Carrefour with the Marketing and the Product Team together when the request came to my hands. My challenge was to create a digital platform to help this group of customers who need more convenience by offering them a delivery service at their homes. So I needed to discover more about that.

Discovery

Because of that, I have learned from the stakeholders that because Brazil is a large country, by far the largest in South America, Carrefour must have various Distribution Centers to attend all the territory. So the shipping costs more depending on how far you are from a Distribution Center and how fast you want your order to be delivered at your door. In some places, you can not guarantee any shipping methods. If someone lives close to the Amazon River, we will need a boat service for it.

Currently, the metropolitan area of São Paulo, where I am from, has 21 million inhabitants. If you want to compare, NYC has 19 Million, for example. Pointing this, I have to say people in SP have a stressful routine. They are always in a rush, facing long traffics, long lines at supermarkets, adding up a very high cost of living. Although, the city has enormous importance for Carrefour, representing 100 of more than 400 stores in Brazil. If the company provides a great online experience buying groceries and also the regular assortment at the same time would grow the business and help thousands of people who live there.

By that time, Carrefour had been on the way to launch its eCommerce, so adding up groceries created a big challenge for us. Two purchasing flows with different business rules.

Also, what happens if you can not cover the food delivery nationwide. This challenge forced the company to opt only for the metropolitan area of São Paulo for MVP. So now you have under the same URL two different eCommerce, one National and another Regional.

Because of that, we have interviewed users who had purchased groceries online from direct competitors to know their experiences. All of them shared a rushed and stressful routine. So shopping for groceries online was a good option for their lifestyle to save time. All interviewers complained about the timetable competitors provided. In their opinions, it was vague, so the companies need to adjust it, to be able to order perishable goods during weekdays. In buildings, the delivery comes during the day and leaves the goods in the front office. However, meats can not wait hours out from the refrigerator, so people need to order for the weekends, waiting at their homes.

In general, the competitors by that time, like Grupo Pão de Açúcar, Mambo, and others, couldn’t show the delightful experience expect by their clients.

Because of that, based on the research we have done, we had some hypotheses to be validated by the survey. We collected answers that helped us to demystify all the wrong ones, like assuming most of the older generations wouldn’t be more interested in purchasing groceries online using their cellphones. The survey showed us the opposite.

Design

Until finally, based on our research, we built two Personas that guided us in writing our User Experience Strategy.

Designing an Information Architecture that provides both services to our customers, was a big challenge for us. However, we could achieve the result by working collaboratively.

And, ever since then Carrefour launched its MVP delivering only for the Grande São Paulo area. However, recently Carrefour can cover more cities across the country, due to the company growth.

Recently, I decided to work on the UI and review some flows and I am creating a Figma prototype.