New Zealand’s first online ordering system for wholesale produce, T&G Global’s First Pick, has had a major overhaul with the company making enhancements to the platform to make it more intuitive and easy to use.
Developed in-house by T&G (formerly Turners and Growers) in 2016, the system enables T&G customers to order fresh fruit and vegetables in real-time from a desktop, tablet or smartphone 24/7.
The new iteration of FirstPick now makes online ordering even easier by being more personalised to customers, operating seamlessly across multiple devices and speeding up the time it takes to make a purchase.
“Uptake as a result of the upgrades has been very encouraging”, says Jeremy Miller, Head of Digital Products, Technology & Operations, T&G. “We’ve seen a 60 percent increase in customers accessing FirstPick to purchase produce, with close to one in five customers now accessing it regularly, and that number is still climbing.”
While online ordering is commonplace in just about every retail or wholesale category, customers ordering fresh produce are still largely relying on phone, email, fax or visiting one of T&G’s 12 market floors.
While these options are still available to customers, T&G’s Executive General Manager, New Zealand, Andrew Keaney, is delighted with the reinvigorated customer uptake for FirstPick and excited to see the impact the new enhancements are having.
“The changing business landscape means we’re constantly providing customers who have less time with an ever evolving online ordering system. With FirstPick’s new enhancements giving more relevant information, easier navigation and faster transactions, customers are now spending more time in their stores and less time ordering.”
The enhanced user experience was designed by reviewing user’s behaviour on the site. Through analysing their purchase behaviour, T&G’s design team was able to identify and eliminate customer pain points while also offering more personalisation for users.
“One such pain point was stock levels,” continues Jeremy. “Now, when customers find what they’re looking for, FirstPick’s new availability statuses tells them how much stock is available – taking the guess work out of how much they can order.”
And once a customer places an order it’s sent to their nearest T&G market floor for fulfilment by a product specialist – maintaining the all important personal touch. FirstPick also gives customers greater visibility and the ability to communicate with T&G reps instantly if anything is short and needs changing.
FirstPick has a number of user-friendly features including:
- A new user experience helping customers navigate, find and order what they’re looking for
- Enhanced availability status giving customers an indication of available stock
- Enhanced ordering process, speeding up the purchase process
- A built-in calendar allowing users to place an order in advance
- Visibility of user history to review past orders
- ‘Favourites’ functionality and powerful search tools
- Up to date pricing and real time invoices
- Status updates on their order once completed via text and email
The web-app is fully secure and customer information is only visible to the user and T&G.
It is accessible to New Zealand customers only but T&G has already had interest from overseas markets.
T&G Global has produce markets in Whangarei, Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Gisborne, Hastings, Palmerston North, New Plymouth, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch and Dunedin. T&G is New Zealand’s largest grower, marketer and exporter of fresh fruit and vegetables with a revenue of $813m in 2015.
