Tesco Grocery App Hits 400,000 Downloads

Tesco’s grocery shopping app for the iPhone and Nokia phones, developed in conjunction with Ribot, has achieved 400,000 downloads since its launch, with new downloads apparently running at the rate of around 50,000 a week.

The figures were revealed this morning by Tesco’s head of R&D, Nick Lansley at a seminar for retailers staged by mobile transaction network, mBlox, which is still ongoing. Lansley told delegates that downloads stood at 350,000 last week and had just passed the 400,000 mark.
He could not break out the split between Nokia and iPhone as Nokia has asked Tesco not to release download figures, but said the iPhone figure was higher, though not much higher. Lansley also revealed that 4 per cent of Tesco.com’s orders are “touched” by the app. By this, he means that 4 per cent of orders placed online have had at least one item added to the basket via the app, which enables customers to add in the odd item when they have a few spare minutes during the week, then come back to their order via the app or the Tesco.com website later.

Lansley said Tesco had gone for an app rather than a mobile site strategy in order to enable people to add to their shopping basket at any time, even if they were out of cellular or wi-fi connectivity.

Lansley also revealed that across all its various apps, Tesco has seen 1.5m downloads. He said the company planned to consolidate its apps into just three: one transactional, one for banking products and services, and one for information about Tesco. “The magic of an app is that if you see something you want, you can capture that idea at that moment,” he said. He also said that Tesco was open to the idea of running third party ads within its apps, especially for special offers from grocery manufacturers.