After being rather disappointed with the service we’ve been getting from the Sainsbury’s online store lately, we decided to give a couple of their competitors a shot. First up, Asda.

Asda

The folks at Asda seem to have decided that the tried and tested concept of logging into a website with a username and password is far too dull, and so have instead opted to go for the no-chance-of-remembering-this eight digit “customer ID”, and a super secure four digit “PIN number”.

So, in we go to the online store. Products are organised by an “aisle” methaphor, listed down the left hand side.

Not sure what the colour coding means here. Does it mean that Bakery & Cakes, etc are all in stock, but they’re all out of Baking, Deserts & Spreads, etc? Who knows.

Right, first on the shopping list, chicken pies.

A search for “chicken pies” and I’m informed that “Your search for chicken pies returned more than 50 products”.

Wow, that’s a lot of different types of chicken pie. I like pie. Let’s have a look at those results.

Hmm, Indian and Chinese cuisine aren’t exactly famous for their chicken pies. I obviously wasn’t looking for chicken pies when I typed “chicken pies” into the search box, so I’ve been given what looks like the search results for chicken OR pies. I really can’t be bothered to look through all those just to find some pie shaped goodness.

Finally I noticed the title of the page - “ASDA @t home”. As we all know, @ is shorthand for “at”, so the site is called “ASDA at t home”. That’s the final straw, I’m out of here!