Newly launched Grocery Price Comparison Site....feedback appreciated!

AssociatedLR2D2 @ grosave.co.nz on 20/05/2024 - 16:19
Last edited 07/04/2025 - 18:26 by 1 other user

Hi we would love feedback in regards to a new launched Grocery price comparison app: Grosave.

The site is: grosave.co.nz(grosave.co.nz)
Can also be found on google playstore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nz.co.grosave.…

We would love to hear the following feedback!

  1. Whether you would consistently use this app to shop for groceries
  2. How much you are likely to save per week using our app
  3. Any personal annoyances/frustrations
    4.If you have been using Grocer, what do you prefer that our app lacks?

Future features we are going to implement:
1. Ability to select stores

Many thanks for your time!
It really helps us develop something that as many people as possible can enjoy :)

General Discussion

Related Stores

grosave.co.nz
grosave.co.nz

Comments

  • Redcafej on 25/07/2024 - 11:56

    Search algorithm is quite messy. A simple search term like "Cooking Oil" will yield results like cooking chocolate or cream or cooking wine. It's a long way to go.

    • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 26/07/2024 - 11:20

      Search has been one of our biggest challenges so far. Our team is actively exploring different solutions to make it better. It's a complex issue, but we're committed to improving the search experience for our customers. We appreciate your patience as we work through this.

      • Redcafej on 26/07/2024 - 12:21

        Great efforts so far though, just a long way to go. Might I suggest categories, like on the countdown website. Should be easier to manage that way

        • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 26/07/2024 - 15:51

          Thank you for your kind suggestion. @Redcafej! Yes, specifying the category definitely helps with searching. We have provided a "Filter by Category" option (check the second icon in the search bar to specify or remove categories). We are also working on improving the relevance of the categories.

  • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 07/04/2025 - 17:56
    Merged from Grocery Price Comparison App Grosave…we encourage you to Shop Around

    Those of you may remember our post asking for feedback roughly a year ago for our app Grosave, an app that helps you compare groceries and buy more for less.

    We would like to thank all of you once again for taking the time to give us feedback and check out our site. We are happy to say that your voices have been heard and not a single comment has been ignored. The Grosave you see today is a direct result of your feedback and help.

    Here is what we have achieved in the past year:

    We have added the following NZ-first Features:
    1.Price History
    2.Biggest Price Difference
    3. Price Alerts

    We have made a ton of other changes:
    -show database updated date and time
    -save items as favourites
    -prices have two decimal places
    -sorting of search results by price per unit
    -can now search items directly from within your list
    -increased radius of store selector to be a 20km radius
    -added list view for store selector so can compare as many stores you want all over NZ
    -improved search: search milk gives you milk not something else
    -store your details in the cloud so you can access it on any device
    -compact view for phones
    -no more temu type descriptions
    -page where products are at their lowest at that store (biggest price difference appears on homepage when signing in)
    -display product sizes
    -many many UI improvements (50+)
    -can now add directly to shopping list from search
    -many many performance improvements
    -many many UX improvements (50+)
    -categories for items
    -barcode scanning
    -products now display correct image
    -many many bugs fixes (100+)

    The question now is, what's next?

    What else would you like with the site to make it a site that all NZers will love?

    How can we improve apon our current features?

    P.s. Chemist Warehouse is Coming Soon :)

  • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 07/04/2025 - 17:57

    Letting everyone know that all your feedback has been heard and now incorporated more than a year in :).

    • Dunno on 07/04/2025 - 18:10

      The biggest deals part is fantastic, how often are prices updated

      • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 07/04/2025 - 18:17
        +1

        prices are updated in the morning every day!

      • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 07/04/2025 - 18:19
        +1

        It is still in alpha so we are going to be fixing some pricing errors, if you see any please report it to us! Thank you :)

        • Stoic on 07/04/2025 - 19:21

          Awesome feature.

          Some of the fresh choice pricing in Chch is annoying. Like for Fendalton red chillies are listed as $2.50/kg but the title says each, in Edgeware the chicken kebabs says $7.99/kg but the title says 5 pieces, Parklands has beef and cheese burgers at $2.50/kg but I bet it'll be each.

          • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 07/04/2025 - 21:57

            @Stoic: Yes we've noticed that too and are working on improving those ones. How did you find the price history?

    • Slogan on 09/04/2025 - 15:19

      It looks like the Metro stores in the Woolworths chain aren't returning any data. Please check Pakenham St W, Lower Albert St, and Victoria St W branches in Auckland.

      • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 16/04/2025 - 13:26

        Okay will investigate and get back to you.

        You are right, these are not returning anything…good spotting!

      • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 16/04/2025 - 13:33

        I just checked with the dev team, and it seems like those stores don't have an online offering so we can't get any data from them…they shouldn't be appearing on our site…we will try remove them.

        Sorry for the inconvenience we will add them in as soon as they set up an online site!

        • Slogan on 16/04/2025 - 14:19
          +1

          If you remove them entirely you'll get questions about why they're not there.
          I suggest that you continue to display them on the map, but make them unselectable with a visual tag saying 'no data.'
          Also it would be wise to run a check for all the stores listed in your database to see if there are any others that should be tagged 'no data.'

          • Alan6984 on 16/04/2025 - 15:39

            @Slogan: I agree - don't make a rod for your own back!

  • Wakrak on 07/04/2025 - 18:54

    Great site OP. Currently playing around with it on a desktop browser. Is it possible to have a deselect all button in the store selection section under settings?

    • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 07/04/2025 - 21:58

      Would this be to deselect all the stores you've selected?
      If you go to list view and then tap the "Your Stores" tab, tapping on the stores there will deselect them pretty quickly.

      • Wakrak on 08/04/2025 - 18:31

        Just more for trying to find deals nationwide. Can be a bit of a slow process selecting and deselecting 50 stores over and over. But might be a bit of a niche request anyway.

        • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 11/04/2025 - 15:02

          Okay I see, if I understood this correctly, your trying to find the best deals in each city? When you login, our homepage already has this functionality, you can view the deals in any city or store of your choosing in New Zealand.

          Is this helpful to you? Or were you wanting to compare prices between say Christchurch and Auckland?

          To deselect all the stores instantly, a hack is to decrease the radius in map view to 0 or to move the radius around slightly by clicking elsewhere. that will get rid of everything instantly.

  • Alan6984 on 07/04/2025 - 22:36

    This is looking really interesting now - great work!

    I haven't played around a lot at this point, so no specific feedback, but I most definitely will be :-)

    • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 08/04/2025 - 12:17

      Sweet Thank you :)
      Please let us know of any feedback you have!

  • liz181 on 08/04/2025 - 17:43

    Add chemist warehouse bargin chemist local fruit & vege shops that have online shop mitre10 bunnings

    • xsolider on 08/04/2025 - 20:05

      Then add noel leeming harvey norman? This is a grocery app.

      • ace310 on 09/04/2025 - 16:11

        I would agree on Chemist warehouse as it has majority of products which duo poly carries including pharmacy & cosmetic items.

        • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 11/04/2025 - 14:53

          Thank you for your message :) We will do our best to add in Chemist Warehouse as soon as possible. Improving search is currently number 1 priority and then we will do our best to add chemist warehouse in.

  • liz181 on 08/04/2025 - 20:27

    Those places have cleaning & laundry products thats why

    • akrotohur on 08/04/2025 - 20:54

      Bunnings too have cleaning products, pet products, some Mitre10 stores now sell groceries like bread and milk :D

  • Stoic on 10/04/2025 - 09:41

    I purchased 5kg of Dark chocolate mint squares from New World as I saw the discount on Grosave.

    $3.39/kg + $5 click and collect fee. $26.99 - $36.80/kg elsewhere.

    I was in a rush so didn't go instore to check what the advertised price instore was.

    No idea what I'm going to do with them all.

    They actually called me to confirm that was what I actually wanted to order (it was the only thing I ordered) as it seemed odd. I was expecting them to tell me it was a pricing error and that my order was cancelled.

    • justaddwater on 10/04/2025 - 09:44

      cheapies party at your place this weekend?

  • doubledippps on 10/04/2025 - 10:52

    I like the 'Today's Biggest Deals' section and also able to check the price history, but I constantly can't find the products through search, and the website is pretty laggy. I tried looking for Market Kitchen Milk, Purex 2-ply Mega 12s, and Regal Home Toilet Paper, but even after scrolling through pages, they didn’t show up. Most of the time I need to keep tweaking with the keywords.

    • Alan6984 on 10/04/2025 - 10:59

      I like the 'Today's Biggest Deals' section, but I constantly can't find the products through search, and the website is pretty laggy. I tried looking for Market Kitchen Milk, Purex 2-ply Mega 12s, and Regal Home Toilet Paper, but even after scrolling through pages, they didn’t show up.

      Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you are trying to do, but perhaps none of those products are currently a 'biggest deal', so they won't show on that page?

      More likely, the other possibility is that the programmers seem to have chosen to only populate a small list of items on that page, and you have to manually scroll down for it to populate more.

      I can only guess that it is a shortcut / simple way to program it, but it definitely reduces the functionality of the site significantly compared to populating, say, 100 rows initially, with a control that allows you to change that to 250, 500, 1000, 2000 rows etc which would be technically superior but possibly much more complicated to program.

      Personally, I would be happy to wait a few minutes to get everything show up (although you could limit it to, say, 9999 rows I guess) as that maximises the value to me.

      • doubledippps on 10/04/2025 - 11:04

        Ah sorry, I probably didn’t explain it well — I wasn’t trying to find those products on the ‘Biggest Deals’ page. I was using the search function to look them up directly, so I could add them to a list or set up an alert. But even with exact names or different keyword combos, they just wouldn’t show up. For example, I searched using the exact name "Purex 2-ply Mega 12s", but the result didn’t include that item at all. Same with milk or Market Kitchen Milk — I tried scrolling through pages of results, but a Market Kitchen milk never shows up at all. And when I search Regal Home, it only gives me results for Regal salmon.

        • xsolider on 10/04/2025 - 11:26

          I've been using their product for a while. The search function still needs improvements which seems to be the only downside. It defeats Grocer in all other ways. What you can do is use the filter to narrow down the search outcomes. Otherwise use the scanner to save your regular purchases when you're in store next time.

        • Alan6984 on 10/04/2025 - 11:49

          Ah sorry, I probably didn’t explain it well — I wasn’t trying to find those products on the ‘Biggest Deals’ page. I was using the search function to look them up directly, so I could add them to a list or set up an alert. But even with exact names or different keyword combos, they just wouldn’t show up. For example, I searched using the exact name "Purex 2-ply Mega 12s", but the result didn’t include that item at all. Same with milk or Market Kitchen Milk — I tried scrolling through pages of results, but a Market Kitchen milk never shows up at all. And when I search Regal Home, it only gives me results for Regal salmon.

          If I put 'Market Milk' in the search, it returns no milks, but if I put in 'Milk Market' I get a load of results.

          No idea why, but search functions on many sites seem to be the same, and have been for thirty odd years. There must be a good reason….

          Northern Light was the first actual search engine that I recall fixing it so that the word order didn't (seem to) matter, then I think Google made it so that the order mattered but only in terms of the prioritisation of the results. I don't know what Google (or any other engine) does today though.

          Can't recall how Gopher worked prior to the web :-)

    • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 16/04/2025 - 13:39
      +1

      We have improved the performance of the website, so it should not be as laggy as before. Please let us know if this is the case!
      Improving search is our biggest goal and we will keep improving it!

  • Stoic on 16/04/2025 - 12:27
    +5

    I'm glad this alternative to grocer.nz now exists.

    I see grocer.nz has now limited their max selected stores to 6, unless you subscribe to their pro plan for $5 a month.

    • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 16/04/2025 - 13:38
      +3

      Thank you for your comment, all our features that you see right now will remain free including stores selected and multiple shopping lists among others.

      On another note, the unit data fix to the biggest deals section should happen any day now, so you won't get random prices for items such as chillies or kebabs.

    • akrotohur on 25/04/2025 - 14:31
      +4

      Yeah, I hate grocer now, glad there's an alternative app, and discovering the new app features, etc.

      • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 28/04/2025 - 14:54

        Thank you for using Grosave :)

  • doubledippps on 08/05/2025 - 10:22

    Thank you — the website/app is brilliant!
    I was just wondering, is there a feature that lets me easily search for a product and see the cheapest price across all stores nationwide? I’m mainly using it for price matching against The Warehouse. At the moment, it seems a bit tricky because when I search for a product, it only shows me prices from “my stores.”

  • liz181 on 17/05/2025 - 10:00

    Loving the app! It would be cool to sort by latest added or lowest price

    • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 03/06/2025 - 13:09

      Hi are you meaning from the search page?
      Currently, if you start typing on the search page a filter option does appear and you can search by lowest price from there (it isn't entirely accurate yet but we are working on it)
      We will add sorting by latest added to the pipeline.

  • Wakrak on 23/05/2025 - 11:47

    A button that returns you to the top of the page if scrolling through best deals of the day, or if the green location dropdown followed while scrolling.

    • xsolider on 23/05/2025 - 11:55

      On iOS, you can always touch the top of your phone screen and it will return to the top of the page, that's a built-in feature. Not sure about Android.

      • Wakrak on 23/05/2025 - 12:03

        Nice, thanks for the tip. I only use Grosave on my PC but perhaps I should consider using it on other devices.

        • xsolider on 23/05/2025 - 12:07

          The barcode scanner is always a handy feature when you're shopping in-store with your phone.

  • liz181 on 27/05/2025 - 09:12

    Id like add to list from the main screen currently you have to search item to add to list

    • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 27/05/2025 - 19:29

      Hi Liz!
      This feature has been requested by many users and has almost been completed and will soon be tested and released :)
      Any other feature requests please let us know!

      • liz181 on 27/05/2025 - 19:43

        great! love the app use it everyday

  • mpc on 31/05/2025 - 12:55

    Love the website, very useful to easily compare across stores.
    One thing I've noticed is for The Warehouse stores they don't show anything if you select them under today's biggest deals. Though products from The Warehouse do show up in the stores listed when you search for an item.

    • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 03/06/2025 - 13:07

      Hi there, thank you for your comment.
      Could you please let us know what city you live in and what warehouses you have selected? For Christchurch all the warehouse stores do show items under biggest deals but currently we are experiencing a few problems with other areas.
      We will try fix the issue for you asap!

      • mpc on 03/06/2025 - 17:29

        Lyall Bay, Lower Hutt and Petone don't show anything for me on the Landing page. Am in Wellington.

  • Alan6984 on 03/06/2025 - 14:41

    Hi GroSave,

    This is what I am currently doing (not sure if it is just me of course!) which is a bit laborious - perhaps there is already a better way, or if not, maybe it could be considered for an update.

    NB: I have added all the local stores that I go past every week already.

    Go to 'Home Page'
    Select 'Auckland' (as I am here)
    Select 'All my stores' (if not already selected)
    Spot a product with a really good price I am interested in - Hurrah!
    Click on the product to open up the list of stores that have it

    Get disappointed, as there is only one store with the really good price, but it is not one of mine, and it two hours away :-P

    Is there a way to only show products where the best price is at one of my stores?

    Even better, can I group the products by store (best price only), so that I can see that there are five products with their best price at one of my given stores, but only one each at all the others, so I make sure to stop in at that one store when I am going past?

    Thanks,

    Alan.

    • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 10/06/2025 - 14:17

      Hi Alan! Good to hear from you :)

      That makes sense with the best deals, the "All my stores" button should only include deals from all the stores you have selected, not show all the stores in the city. We have added this to the backlog. Please remind us if it has been a while and you havn't heard back.
      Nb: If you want to be notified of updates more frequently, please join our Grosave Discord.

      -Grosave Team

  • nzmax on 03/06/2025 - 15:11

    My issue with some sites is that they are free initially, and they get a lot of public help to improve it, but over time they become a paid subscription service.

    • Alan6984 on 03/06/2025 - 15:35

      My issue with some sites is that they are free initially, and they get a lot of public help to improve it, but over time they become a paid subscription service.

      I'm completely fine with that - I don't feel that I am entitled to someone else's time and effort for free ongoing forever.

      If they cease to run the site, sell it, move to a different model or whatever, I feel that is entirely their right.

      Similarly, I am not obligated to help improve the site, or provide suggestions, but I am happy to do so in many cases, regardless of whether the site might move to a paid model in the future.

      • nzmax on 03/06/2025 - 16:02
        +1

        It really comes down to the business model of an app or website and how they end up being paid. Whether it becomes ad supported, or supported by supermarkets or products so that specials appear in the app. Then people could also pay to be ad free etc.

        However I think the NZ government should be buying this sort of site off the developers or employing them. There is a lack of competition in the sector and kiwis are overpaying. This sort of app can potentially save NZers money as a result of bad government decisions.

        • Alan6984 on 03/06/2025 - 16:47

          It really comes down to the business model of an app or website and how they end up being paid.

          Ultimately, there's no reason why they ever have to get paid. They might get something back (directly or indirectly), but in many cases, there is no payoff beyond the warm and fuzzies of having done something good for other people. Essentially its the same with all volunteers, regardless of whether it is done by standing behind a counter in a charity shop or sitting behind a keyboard. Each of us does what we can / want to. Many people do absolutely nothing, but that's up to them too - we're all free to choose.

    • Dunno on 03/06/2025 - 15:51

      and the desktop version suffers to cater to having a mobile facing website only.

      • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 10/06/2025 - 14:08

        That is true! In the future we will work on improving the mobile facing experience as more and more of our users are using Grosave on Mobile!

    • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 10/06/2025 - 14:14
      +1

      Yes we agree.
      With Grosave, everything you see currently will remain free forever.
      In regards to the future, users have requested computationally heavy features such as payment integration.
      Although we really want to build all these feature requests and provide more value, the reality is that these things can cost us a sizeable amount to build and host the servers. We would have to find some way to recoup the loss whether from finding funding or some other avenue. Rest assured, there will always be a free version of the site and I know the team hates intrusive ads so these will never be a part of the experience.
      Hope that helps.

  • LupinS on 10/06/2025 - 15:24

    You need to have places sorted by area. Many stores aren't locally known by their actual names, scrolling through hundreds of stores isn't fun, and there are stores with names like "central city" - which city!?

    • xsolider on 10/06/2025 - 15:47

      Use the radar on the map instead of the store list. I only use the store list if I want to add a store from another city for price match purposes.

    • Alan6984 on 10/06/2025 - 15:47

      Part of the problem might be that the names are what Woolworths, PNS, NW etc actually call their stores?

      Might have changed, but there used to be a NW store called:

      Foodie Mart

      That was it - the full internal name.

      If memory serves, I think it is (or was) in Landing Drive, Mangere, Auckland.

  • Wakrak on 19/06/2025 - 20:17

    Website is currently showing me the same item multiple times.

    • Wakrak on 20/06/2025 - 15:53

      Looks to be fixed now

  • Alan6984 on 19/06/2025 - 20:48

    Hi GroSave,

    The 'Compare Shopping List' function is great.

    What would improve it, would be the ability to add several products together as a 'group item' so that you could say you are interested in them, but whichever one is cheapest, rather than having all of them showing separately in the list.

    Example:

    I could add, say:

    Anchor Butter 500g
    Pams Pure Butter 500g
    Rolling Meadow Butter 500g

    all to a single 'item group' called, say, 'Butter 500g' (probably you'd make that a label the user chooses)

    The shopping list would then just show the single item 'Butter 500g' rather than all three of the above separately, and whichever of the three was cheapest, would be the price shown.

    Thanks,

    Alan.

    • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 10/07/2025 - 12:49
      +2

      Thank you for your feedback, will forward this to the dev team.

      This is quite an interesting idea, we will definitely look into this more!!

      • Alan6984 on 10/07/2025 - 14:06

        Cool - Thanks for considering it.

  • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 31/07/2025 - 18:24
    Merged from How do NZers Shop for Groceries?

    Hi everyone, with grocery prices going up, Grosave is running a short anonymous survey to understand how Kiwis are really being affected.

    By sharing your experiences, you'll be helping us build a tool that fights for fairer prices for everyone. The survey takes just 4 minutes.

    Thank you :)

    https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfrVEZxGA2fjLC0g5pj…

    • Moderatorscrimshaw on 01/08/2025 - 18:27

      You have been blocked from creating further forum posts, (not following directions). Please keep all updates / feedback request to your original forum post / topic. Thanks

      • liz181 on 02/08/2025 - 08:41
        +1

        Why? Are they blocked seems a bit mean!

        • CheapAzChips on 02/08/2025 - 09:35

          Yeah, I agree, a little heavy handed for a fairly minor misstep.

          • akrotohur on 02/08/2025 - 09:54

            @CheapAzChips: Might be a sign for them to setup their own forums, all groceries or retailers related discussions can move to their own site. :D

          • Stoic on 02/08/2025 - 11:14
            +1

            @CheapAzChips: Seems fair enough to me. They've been warned before. Its not like they're blocked from the site or posting in forum posts. They just cant create new forum posts.

            If they have non grosave stuff to post about they can probably make a personal account.

        • Moderatorscrimshaw on 03/08/2025 - 19:38

          They've been blocked for ignoring our requests several times, and not even bother to respond to my PM's.

          They can always ask to be unblocked, I'm happy to do so long as they observe guidelines e.g Not creating duplicate forum topics, Not creating ghost or duplicate accounts, or pretending to be a customer (sockpuppeting).

          The usual rule for service providers asking us if they can have a forum post to introduce their price comparison tool / website / app is that they are allowed one forum post and no more — if they want to collect feedback from users they can simply post again in their existing post which bumps the forum topic up for visiblity.

          We are already being quite lenient allowing store reps to announce & promote services for free, so there has to be certain limitations.

          Same rule also applies to Ozbargain.

          • AssociatedGrosave Support @ grosave.co.nz on 08/08/2025 - 22:41
            +1

            @scrimshaw: @scrimshaw

            Thanks for clarifying, that’s totally fair. We have a few different people helping run the account, and unfortunately the person who posted the survey this time didn’t get the memo about sticking to the existing forum thread. That’s our fault, and we completely understand the ban.

            We’ve now communicated to the whole team that we must only post updates in the original thread, and not create duplicate topics or anything that goes against the guidelines.

            Thanks for the leniency you’ve shown us in the past, and we appreciate the chance to be part of the community. Have a great day!

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