After publishing my article about The most useful apps in Jordan, I wanted to cover Basket.jo – an App for online grocery shopping in Amman. You order your groceries online and Basket.jo delivers to your doorstep – and that at in-store-prices. I tried out Basket.jo for you a few times and would love to share my experience about online grocery shopping in Amman. I am an android user and can only talk about it from that perspective.
Design, Usability, and Registration of the Basket.Jo App
Foremost, the design of the app, its logo, and branding are very appealing and I find it easy to navigate through the app. Thus, the usability of the app is great. You can register/login either with your phone number or Facebook. I found it all easy and straight forward. Once you received your confirmation code sent as SMS, you enter it and can start shopping. Within the app, you can add to your profile information and then update your address. First you choose the city (currently only Amman available) then an area (the commonly used names are provided in a drop-down list). I think at the moment it does not matter much where in Amman you are located as the choices I made didn’t seem to have any effect.
The next step is to choose one of the available stores to buy from. At the moment Basket.Jo offers you to shop at the two biggest supermarkets in town. These include Centro, various Carrefour Branches, and Cozmo 7th circle as well as Habiba Um-uthaina, Sameh Mall Mecca Street, Select Food Shoppe, T-Bone, and Cheese, Yasr Mall Al-Bayader.
Searching and Selecting products in Basket.Jo App
I processed some searchers and orders for Carrefour City Mall. You can either use the search field and type anything or go to “browse” which is more similar to walking in the store where you look around in the fruits and vegetable section for example. It is a useful feature since you probably think of some bananas, apples, and kiwis you want to buy at the same time.
Somehow, I cannot really figure out how search results are being presented as it seems it is not alphabetical but more according to relevance. You can click on any of the products and see a picture and a short description. Or you can directly add to your shopping basket. You can easily add an item more than once. The pictures are sometimes not enough (as Arabic only for example) or they are not the most recent. That makes it sometimes a bit tricky to figure out, if what you are looking for is correct, as the description is also very short. This seems to be however the only drawback of the app, although I think it is a major aspect that Basket.Jo should address.
Browsing and the Shopping Cart of Basket.Jo App
Despite that it is easy to browse the app. When searching you also get suggestions and it loads fairly quickly keeping in mind it is crawling a database of thousands of entries. At any stage you can always go to the home, the search, browse items, or check “your items”, which are items you previously bought through basket.jo. That way you can easily buy the same things again, search for new or browse the different categories.
The shopping cart icon in the upper right corner indicates the number of products you have in your basket using a small red number. When you click on the basket, you can see what is inside. You can then either remove items, add items, or give further instructions for the shopper, which I think is a nice feature. Also, I should mention that if you cannot find the item you want, you can add a special request. I wanted for example fresh Turkish Coffee from the Bun AlAmeed counter within Carrefour. But I wasn’t able to find it in the app, instead, I added that special item to the basket. You can set a maximum price for that item and the shopper will confirm with you before proceeding.
Delivery and Payment
Upon your selection, you will click on the shopping basket and proceed with your order. You can change the address and add a second one, e.g. an office address. The selection of the location is done well and uses the google maps engine and it finds the right location. You then choose the delivery time. Depending on the time of the day, where you shop, and where your delivery goes, you can select a certain time frame of usually 1 hour. Sometimes you have to wait 1-2 hours or more. You can also order for the next days coming. Basket.Jo regularly delivers between 11 AM to 11:59 PM. During Ramadan delivery times are shorter than usual.
As of now Basket.Jo only accepts cash on delivery. Once the shopper arrived he handed over the receipt and I paid my order. The fees range between 2-4 JD and depend on the store you buy from as well as your location. You are of course welcome to give your shopper a tip if you were satisfied.
Summary of the Basket.Jo App
Overall, I think it is a great app. Basket.Jo helps you get your online grocery shopping in Amman done conveniently. There are still a few points that need attention. However, considering that you can find thousands of products in the app, I think the advantages way out the disadvantages by far. The timing was always precise and the shoppers who brought the order were friendly. If you ordered something special, or something is not there, the shopper will contact you to clarify what to do. Recently Basket.Jo also implemented a feature where you get push notification through the app. You can then decide to accept or refuse the changes.
In most cases I communicated in English and my limited Arabic. Make sure to follow Basket.Jo Instagram account where you can find the most recent offers and promo codes. Shop on and read below for more info. Also make sure to watch Rachel’s video on her shopping experience with basket.jo.
Finally, big thanks to Basket.Jo for being a generous partner and making this post possible. Make sure to read on if you are looking for The Most Useful Apps in Jordan. For ordering food from restaurants online see my article Talabat – an App for Food Delivery in Amman. If you are interested in other aspects of life in Jordan see my The Ultimate Guide to Moving to Jordan.
Basket.jo Website
Basket.jo on Facebook
Basket.jo on Instagram
Basket.jo on YouTube
Basket.jo on Play Store
Basket.jo on AppStore
