Ocado chief executive Tim Steiner has said shoppers will expect an increasingly bespoke experience on retailer’s websites including targeted searches.
Steiner told delegates at The Cloud Retail Week Conference that personalised searches would be the next major multichannel trend.
He said some shoppers prefer using navigation tools, others lists of saved favourite products and also searching for products.
Ocado will use targeted site navigation, saved favourites and searches honed to individual consumers using live data in future.
He said: “Over time these three groups will be brought into different stores. Customers do not want to wait and they want to find what they want fast. We need to make these things much more clever.”
Ocado already personalises its shopping trip through reworking the layout of its online aisle when customers enter new categories.
Steiner gave delegates an insight into the business. Ocado enjoys a surge in customers shopping through smartphones each January following the mobile devices being given as Christmas presents.
Mobile is a key element of the online grocer’s business. More than 20% of Ocado’s transactions are on via iPhone apps and 12% of customers transact exclusively through mobile phones.
Steiner said Ocado’s non-food business will be larger than its entire current range by the end of 2013 with 30,000 lines. It has 21,000 lines in total including 5,000 non-food lines at the moment.
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