Superstore’s eCommerce Grocery Best Practices

Key Takeaways

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Digital Impact — Superstore Leads Competitors in Middle-of-Funnel Site Metrics: When it comes to middle-of-funnel site metrics, Superstore is the clear leader with an 8 minute avg site visit (vs. 2m competitor avg), 10 avg pages per visit (vs. 3 competitor avg), and 19% bounce rate (vs. competitor 45% avg).  

Site & eCommerce Strategy — Simple Homepage Design With Fewer & Stronger CTAs: Superstore’s website homepage stands out from Canadian core grocery competitors in its extremely simplistic design and use of whitespace. Other core competitors use a busier and more colourful tile-based design approach. Superstore’s homepage is also differentiated from competitors in that it contains fewer CTAs (9 vs. average 13 for competitors), but the CTAs that are on the homepage are designed more simply and tend to use button-style links. Competitors tend to use image-based links.‍

Site & eCommerce Strategy — Product Page & Cart Best Practices: Superstore adheres to more product page best practices (70% vs. competitors’ 43% avg) and cart best practices (86% vs. competitors’ 48% avg) than competitors. Canadian grocery brands have made many adaptations to their eCommerce experiences in the past twelve months. So much so that a statistically significant analysis of cart & checkout conversion rates is not possible. That said, MoFu site metrics are a strong leading indicator of site conversion rate and Superstore’s major lead in these metrics is strong evidence that adherence to the best practices discussed in this case study are likely a factor in this success.

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Superstore’s website homepage stands out from Canadian core grocery competitors in its extremely simplistic design and use of whitespace. Other core competitors use a busier and more colourful tile-based design approach.

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Superstore’s homepage is also differentiated from competitors in that it contains fewer CTAs (9 vs. average 13 for competitors), but the CTAs that are on the homepage are designed more simply and tend to use button-style links. Competitors tend to use image-based links.

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Superstore puts strong emphasis on ship-to-home (STH) eCommerce. They’re the only competitor to feature STH at the top of the homepage.

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Superstore allocates much more page real estate to Online Shopping, Pickup, and Delivery by A) heavily emphasizing PC Express with two dedicated full-width page sections and B) including add-to-cart CTAs in the PC Holiday classics section. Competitors’ homepages are more balanced, with a heavier focus on brand-building, hiring, and recipes.

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Only 9% of Superstore’s inbound traffic lands on the homepage versus competing brands where more traffic tends to land on the homepage. This may indicate that Superstore is being more targeted and personalized in the the landing pages chosen for their traffic acquisition efforts across various digital channels.

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There are very notable differences in the way that grocery competitors design their product detail pages. Superstore’s PDPs are the longest, most detailed, and conform to the most PDP best practices, which are detailed further on the next page.

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While some commonalities exist, grocery competitors take very different approaches to their eCommerce cart design. An analysis of best practices is detailed on the next page.

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Canadian grocery brands have made many adaptations to their eCommerce experiences in the past twelve months. So much so that a statistically significant analysis of cart & checkout conversion rates is not possible. That said, when it comes to middle-of-funnel site metrics, Superstore is the clear leader. Adherence to the best practices discussed in this case study are likely a factor.