Superquinn, Tesco and Dunnes Stores

— Published February 5th, 2003  |  by David Moore   |  2 Comments

Dunnes Stores, Superquinn and Tesco Ireland are familiar sights on high streets and in shopping centres across the country, but how well do their online presences deliver retail therapy?

Superquinn and Tesco offer a similar level of service, both crucially allowing consumers to shop online and have their food delivered. This is supported by a range of up-to-date information, special offers and FAQs.

Both retailers' sites have a few quirks, however. Superquinn's presence is split between the more corporate and static site [http://www.superquinn.ie] and their dynamic shopping site [http://www.superquinn4food.ie], with little linking between the sites beyond their homepages. With some material repeated on both sites, this division seems arbitrary and unhelpful.

The Tesco site [http://www.tesco.ie] offers a range of information but a visitor must register before they can progress too far - an off-putting feature. You can search for products, but not search the content of the site, and the large number of internal advertising graphics on the homepage slows the download.

Tesco edges out Superquinn in the scoring with a greater depth of content and a clearer and more consistent design. However both are streets ahead of the Dunnes site [http://www.dunnes.ie].

Dunnes offers little more than a token site. Large parts are currently marked as being under construction, there's no online purchasing capability, a search button is shown in places but is inactive, and a host of schoolboy errors in linking and navigation make the site almost impossible to use.

Behind the 85K homepage image are many pages where the sublevel navigation includes broken links (try the Customer Questionnaire link from this page: [http://www.dunnes.ie/value_club/index.htm]), and when you do find your way to a page, too often it offers only brief poorly written, marketing-focused information.

In the careers section (admittedly the most useful part of the site), the user is given the following advice: 'Click' on your area of interest. 'Why' did no-one edit this text?

The What's New section confusingly links to material on gift vouchers, which will not open in many browsers because the identity of the SSL certificate issuer cannot be verified.

Dunnes' tagline is Better Value. They should look to providing it online as well as in their bricks and mortar shops if they want to match Superquinn and Tesco.

The Scores

Criteria	(Full marks)	Dunnes	Superquinn	Tesco
Customer Value	(120)	39	84	89
Functionality	(30)	2	21	18
Site Design	(60)	16	34	39
Total	(210)	57	139	146

Related Links:

• Tesco Ireland - [http://www.tesco.ie]
• Dunnes Stores - [http://www.dunnes.ie]