The COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on us all. It has literarily upended our lives and it’s almost certain that we live never lead our lives the same way we did back in 2019, that sweet innocent year of freedom. However, not all change is bad. Thanks to the multiple lockdowns, more and more businesses seem to be interested in setting up an online business. This used to be the preserve of startups but with declining sales, traditional businesses are seeing the wisdom of setting up shop online. Dairibord, one of those traditional behemoths, has announced that they also now have their own online store (Dairidelights).
Dairibord Delights
Instead of integrating the shop into their main site, they have the shop on its own domain https://dairidelights.com/. I am not sure that was wise from an SEO point of view, it would have been easier to just add the shop to the main site and probably would lead to more sales especially during the early days.
In theory you need to follow these steps in order to place an order:
- Select the closest depo to you
- Add some items to the cart
- Checkout and pay
- Dairbord would then deliver the items to my doorstep. Delivery is free within the 20km radius.
Things never went as planned sadly. First of all, it doesn’t let you can choose any other shops except Rekayi Tangwena. So maybe it’s still early days but the only reason why I found out about the shop is because of the above video advert which says this shop is nationwide or at least for free near Dairibord depots.
The second problem was the rather limited product selection. Dairibord is famous for its milk products including Steri-milk which is part of most people’s breakfast tables. Well, you cannot buy fresh milk in their online store. Maybe that will again change as the store becomes mature but right now the product selection is rather limited.
The limited product selection turns into an even bigger issue once you run into the next problem. The minimum order value is $2 500 ZWL It would not be a big deal if there is lots of varied stuff to buy but there is no ice cream, no mayonnaise, no fresh milk, no cheese; just Lacto, cream soda, peanut butter and tomato sauce. You will need to buy sackloads of Lacto just so you can check out and in a country where we are living a frugal life that just doesn’t make sense.
The store has potential but right now it needs work. There were other issues too:
- I couldn’t add items to the cart when using a mobile phone. I was using the Chrome browser
- When I tried to list all the products in the shop instead of paging through, Dairidelights just crashed on me
- Thanks to the product limit and checkout limits the only way you can attempt to check out is if you stock up on either Lacto or drinking chocolate. Other products like the drink come with limits. You need sack loads of Lacto believe me.
- Prices don’t include VAT which is added later during checkout. Imagine going through shelves in a supermarket only to later learn the price will go up by 14.5%. That’s not a nice feeling at all and for me, that was the final straw.
The shop is a step in the right direction but to sound like a broken record, it needs a little bit more work.
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