An average 1,500 daily unique visitors popped in at Malta’s “first, truly” online supermarket in its initial three days after it went live last Monday, listing more than 10,000 groceries, Tony Cassar, managing director of Cyber Space Solutions, the project’s designer, told The Sunday Times.
Backed by the Shopwise Development Group, one of Malta’s largest supermarket clusters, maltasupermarket.com plans to swell its listings to at least 15,000 items within the next eight months. With thousands of hits in its first week, the portal is gearing up to launch new features and services shortly.
Mr Cassar said increased seasonal activity in the physical partner supermarkets – Tower Supermarket, GS Superstore and Shopwise Discount Store – will not affect the portal’s operation as it was run completely independently with its own dedicated resources.
Maltasupermarket.com was originally Cyber Space Solutions’ brainchild. After offering e-commerce services to a host of important and diverse local brands, the web services provider was keen to fill a major void in its portfolio.
“We believed in the project so much we were even ready to partner a local operator and offer the online supermarket jointly,” Mr Cassar recalled. “Almost a year ago we approached Philip Borg, a director of Tower Supermarket in Sliema, but the project was eventually taken over completely by the Shopwise Group. Cyberspace Solutions was engaged to design, develop, implement, and market the online supermarket.”
Mr Cassar explained independent, detailed market research into customer profiling, purchasing trends, lifestyle, and internet usage revealed retailers’ investment in e-commerce had contributed to increasing Maltese purchases over the interne, but online grocery shopping accounted for a very small percentage.
The stakeholders concluded that the demand existed but consumers seemed disappointed with online availability in the groceries segment. On the back of the findings, maltasupermarket.com developed into a dedicated online business model, managed and operated separately.
The portal – designed in collaboration with the owners, who contributed their combined extensive experience in the business – has its own staff, delivery system, and marketing department.
“We are not simply putting some stock items from an existing set-up on the internet and calling it an online supermarket,” Mr Cassar pointed out.
“Maltasupermarket.com has its own business plan, budgets and performance targets. This will allow the portal to remain focused on its core business – selling online. We have carefully analysed the shortcomings in existing systems and tried to overcome them to offer a solution which meets customer’s expectations.”
Mr Cassar said the project involved “huge” investment by the owners, particularly as the venture’s success depended on a robust IT infrastructure and advanced automated administrative checks.
Online synchronisation with physical stock levels ensured accurate listing availability.
The portal had ease of use and navigation as its top priorities at design stage: unlike most sites, users do not need to register first to be able to view products. Mr Cassar conceded the first visit to maltasupermarket.com might take a little longer as users compared products or viewed items not normally on their shopping list.
Subsequent orders should take less than two minutes to place as customers were able to view and reorder their shopping according to previous visits to the site and by using the ‘wish list’ feature. Users ‘check out’ by registering a new account or using a login, and pay by debit or credit card.
Mr Cassar explained the site’s Endevour payment gateway ensured the supermarket never stored card details on its own servers.
Orders made before 4 p.m. are delivered on the same day by a fleet of temperature-controlled vans. Orders made later or during the night will be delivered the next day.
Customers may also indicate different delivery addresses for separate orders and specify preferred dates and times. Delivery times are extended to 9 p.m. from Monday to Saturday.
There will be a charge of €5 for deliveries, which Mr Cassar preferred to describe as a “preparation charge” as it covered the cost of staff making up the order, delivery boxes, and the physical delivery. Under a launch offer, orders over €50 will be delivered for free with a complementary bottle of wine.
Maltasupermarket.com will begin to deliver to Gozo when a solution to the cost is identified.
“The cost associated with Gozo deliveries is too high” Mr Cassar explained. “Deliveries will be possible if the demand from Gozo residents for the service is high enough or if the government somehow subsidises delivery costs to make e-commerce more accessible to Gozitans given the disadvantage they face. EU assistance should be tapped into to ensure this disadvantage is overcome.”
Mr Cassar stressed online grocery shopping would not only help consumers free up valuable time but give them access to value and lower prices.
“Offers like last minute deals, special product initiatives, and promotional items can be made available more frequently to the end customer,” he added.
“Rather than focusing on loyalty points or complex schemes, maltasupermarket.com is focusing on offering customers discounted pricing on most items. Maltasupermarket.com also lists thousands of ‘super value’ products by Carrefour.
Maltasupermarket.com is the first online supermarket to offer weighted items, including deli counter foods, fresh fruit and vegetables, and meat.”