Comment by elicash | Hacker News Reader

Comment by elicash | Hacker News Reader

I still think the design of these apps can be dramatically improved.

I just fired up Instacart now for my local grocery store and searched for eggs. Featured was a dozen eggs for $4.59 (why featured?), and I'm not sure why that's featured when it's a terrible price.

I see my normal eggs at $1.99, but then I can get the "store choice" (not sure what that means... it's not that the grocery store owns the brand) 18 count for $2.89. So unlike at the store where it tells you price per egg, I have to do my own math.

Okay, math done, let me check American cheese next.

There are three "featured" cheeses plus one "store choice." Again, I don't know what those mean. Then I see the deli sliced, but the deli slice is per pound not in ounces like the pre-packaged cheese. Okay, that's the same as in-store, too, so I'll give it a pass.

Then I see a giant list of other brands, but they're grouped in a seemingly random way. It's not grouped by brand, or by count. Is it popularity? Why is there no way to sort by cost per ounce? I can sort, it appears by total cost, except it's not actually sorting by that, either, bc it still has those weirdly labeled featured four items up top.

Could go on, but will stop there.

> Featured was a dozen eggs for $4.59 (why featured?), and I'm not sure why that's featured when it's a terrible price.

That's exactly why it's featured. This is no different than being in an actual grocery store. All the high markup items get the premium shelf space too. And stores often have the same meaningless signage on their shelves as well: "Look!", "Wow!", "Special Offer!", heck even some just literally say "Promotion!".

They want you to look at that product, and you did, so it worked exactly as they intended.

> This is no different than being in an actual grocery store.

On a phone, you've only got a couple inches to view at a time. It's TOTALLY different. If all you do as a designer is take things in store and literally transcribe them to a phone, it won't work. It's a terrible way to design.

And I still don't understand difference between featured and store pick btw.

Is there supposed to be a difference in meaning?

Or was the difference in the text just intended to make your brain pause to consider whether there was actually a difference in meaning?

Every moment you think about it is one more moment that the marketers have your attention.

"Design" is very subjective. Whether it is "good" or not all depends on the goals of whatever it was designed for.

Take a physical IKEA store for instance. If you want to make it quick and easy to shop, it's a horrible design. If you want to keep someone in the store for a long time, it is very good.

Per the article, a ton of people find online grocery shopping confusing and this is driving away a TON of potential business.

This is bad design.

> On a phone, you've only got a couple inches to view at a time.

Even more reason to ensure the more expensive items are viewed first.

> And I still don't understand difference between featured and store pick btw.

Cynic it me would say: there might be no difference, and this may be just intended to confuse people who would otherwise just ignore "store pick".

> Even more reason to ensure the more expensive items are viewed first.

Not if you want your customers to have a not-miserable enough experience that they will actually buy from you, and continue buying from you in the future.

Marketers rarely care about you having a not-miserable experience. In fact, the key insight behind many of the common dark patterns is that you can inflict a lot of annoyance on your customers before they start to bounce, and meanwhile at each step a fraction of those customers will fall prey to the sales technique and spend more money than they should.

(Consider: if your choice is between ordering on-line and going to the store in the middle of a pandemic, and you're leaning towards ordering on-line, will you really give up and go to the store just because someone sorted a bunch of overpriced products to the top of the list in your app?)

Maybe people do not bounce just because of the bad sorting, but it adds up. The article is all about people bouncing from online shopping, and we're replying to someone who chose bad sorting to point out.

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