Waitrose customers desert new website

Waitrose has seen an exodus of online shoppers after a disastrous launch for its new £10m website.

Waitrose.com went live with much fanfare a fortnight ago but has been beset with a number of problems such as slow speed. The upmarket grocer faces a barrage of criticism from customers, some of whom say they have switched to Sainsbury's or Tesco. Waitrose's troubles will also be a boost to rival online grocer Ocado.

Before the launch, Waitrose, owned by the John Lewis partnership, claimed the new site would be easier to navigate and make ordering easier and quicker. However, a spokeswoman admitted on Wednesday: "We've had some teething problems and are working 24/7 to rectify these problems. We're using our forum to let our customers know what changes have been made."

On the online forum, angry shoppers called on Waitrose to bring the old website back, with CheshireCat saying: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Sea_the_stars wrote: "After 2 hours, I don't know what I have ordered and what I haven't. I copied and pasted my list into Tesco's shopping list and completed the order in less than 15 mins and 10% cheaper than Waitrose including their delivery charge, So it's goodbye from me!"
Another disillusioned shopper, Priya, wrote: "Waitrose seems to have completely overlooked the most basic requirement for a user interface – ease of use. The old website had a simple design and no performance issues that I can remember. Using the new site for the first time yesterday was incredibly painful – extremely slow response time, and the endless scrolling that was necessary due to the very poor design meant it took me over 40 minutes to create a short order – previously done in under 10 minutes."
In its latest update on the website, the grocer apologised for the problems to customers and said it was working on the overall speed of the site "as a matter of urgency". Recent changes mean that customers can now add more than 12 items from their lists to their trolley and Waitrose promised to provide a new button to allow customers to add all items in their list. It has also improved the logons, and offer codes will now not be lost when an order is edited.
However, the changes have done little to appease angry customers. "Bad to worse this morning, it seems... Oh dear. How are the mighty fallen!" Sarah by the Brook wrote on Wednesday. (from Guardian)