mySupermarket is shutting down

[JRUIN]

am I unreasonable to feel gutted about it. As a single mum on a tight budget I've been using this for years to make sure I get my weekly shop as cheap as possible. I find it really easy and quick to navigate and am so used to doing my shopping via it that doing it direct from the supermarket will feel alien to me. Anyone know of any other similar apps available?

Hi DadManners

You were right - MSE didn't like the fact we added a link to the post.

If anyone would like to try out a similar and we think better service to MySupermarket you can sign up for early access at www.supersmartlist.com.

We also promise our app won't ask for strange permissions!

If anyone has any questions or requests for functionality, please ask.

@supersmartlist Does supersmartlist sort by price per unit? And does it tell you when something is a good deal (eg 30% less than last year’s average price)? If so, I’m prepared to try it, if the security settings look ok.

I second that - price per unit is crucial, value for money assessment is also important, and I would also add bespoke offer alerts (for products added as favourites) via email, push notification or just a webpage to view personal alerts (Mysupermarket had 'My Price Alerts' and email notifications - very useful indeed).

Hi @TheLongDarkBreakfastTime and @DadManners,

Smartlist matches items that are similar size, quality (e.g. Free Range) and if the supermarkets sell the same brand then that as well.
We display "price per unit" so you can easily compare, but these figures are taken from the supermarket site.

There are two problems with price per unit:

1. We have found some supermarkets have very inaccurate price per unit as their discounts are only applied at checkout and they show price per unit on the product detail page that does not have the discount.. This is very frustrating as using the data to sort would mean everyone would miss out on offers from some supermarkets.
2. Supermarkets do not standardise on units. e.g. one pot of cream will be xxp / 100g, the next one will be £0.xx / kg and the next one will be xxP per 100ml. Please take a look at the sites for yourself - it's bonkers!

We are working with some supermarkets to standardise where discounts are applied and the units used for measurement.

We have found that by using "Smart" matching we can be even more useful when comparing a large shopping basket in several supermarkets at once.

@supersmartlist - thanks for the reply. The non-standard pricing approach is indeed bonkers, and I'm not sure whether it's a deliberate ploy to make it harder to assess value for money or whether it's just sloppy practice, but either way the supermarkets need taking to task on it, so it's great to hear you're taking that initiative.

The smart matching idea sounds great. I think own brand stuff is often underrated.

Please do also consider the idea of offer alerts on favourite items - I'm sure that can actually work in the supermarkets' favour too, as there have been numerous occasions where I've done a shop or decided where to do my main shop on the basis that they happen to have a good offer on one of my favourite items.

@DadManners - we have price alerts for favourite items and we also show the highest and lowest price over the last year, so you can judge how good the discount really is.
We have not added price alerts for increasing prices as we did not think people would want it as much. Do you agree?
We are also alerting on any price reduction and do not use a threshold as we thought that would just add complexity that was not particualrly useful. What do you think?

I went to do an online shop this weekend and was really shocked and sad! In the end I tried Morrison's and gave up. I really liked the ease of just sticking any old cheddar in my basket knowing my supermarket would tell me what to swap to

@supersmartlist - that's good news that you're already on the case with price alerts and yes I would agree that price drops are the priority... hadn't really thought of alerts for increases, but probably no need, especially as high & low price data will be available on demand.

As for thresholds, personally I wouldn't be too bothered about that aspect (and Mysupermarket didn't offer that either - just notified of whatever deal there was). Providing I know that an offer is available, it's easy enough then to review it and decide whether it meets my own 'VFM' criteria or not.

@DadManners - great! Thanks for the extra detail - it is always good to hear what people don't need as well as what they really want as we don't want to make the app too complex and only have a small screen to fit everything in without making it look cluttered.

@supersmartlist I thought that mysupermarket showed the price per unit for the deal (which was clever) and then in brackets the price per unit if you didn’t do 3 for 2 (or whatever). That’s why I always sorted by price per unit, because it defaulted to the price per unit including the deal, and so I could tell whether it was actually a good deal or not.

On the different measurements, I agree. I’m forever having to covert from g to kg and ml to l in my head. I’m sure they do it to confuse...

Ah yes, good bit of clarification there from TheLongDark.., thanks.

Hi @TheLongDarkBreakfastTime

We can deal with straight discounts easily e.g. £5 reduced to £3.

However, it gets much more difficult with offers such as buy 3 for £10 (where the individual prices are £4) or Buy One Get One Free (BOGOF). Supermarkets have promotions engines built into their eCommerce platforms that they enter promotions rules into. These deal with these types of promotions when a customer checks out.

We have two options when using supermarkets data:

1. We tell the customer they need to buy 3 and assume they do. In this case we display £3.33 instead of £4 in the example above.
2. We show £4 and mention that there may be a discount available.

Luckily most supermarkets are moving away from promotions such as 3 for £10 or BOGOF as they encourage people to eat too much of the wrong things.

How did MySupermarket deal with this - can you remember?

In your opinion would you prefer option 1 or 2?

@supersmartlist Both! The price with the discount first, then the price per unit without the discount in brackets. That’s how mysupermarket did it, and it worked well. They also had a warning saying to check offers once you’ve checked out on the supermarket’s own site, as sometimes the dates mean they don’t apply to your delivery slot.

@supersmartlist Any idea when your app will be available to use?