A while ago, actually in August 2009 I blogged about attending the Tesco.com T-jam event in London. In my blog post I mention that I was going to start work on a project called My Shopping Assistant that would allow me to play with the Tesco.com API and also produce a product that would help people when doing their grocery shopping online.

I started work on a website but work on that slowed and I ended up putting a holding page on that domain for the past few years. I did some work on a Facebook app which allowed people to shop within Facebook. The idea was if you were browsing Facebook and you suddenly remembered you needed some milk you could quickly go to the app page and add the item directly to your Tesco basket. It worked and it got quite a few users. I even got mentioned in The Grocer magazine. Unfortunately changes to the Facebook API and lack of time meant the app stopped working so I had to turn it off.

For years Fiona and myself have been doing our grocery shopping online using Tesco.com. Every week Fiona will ask me what meals I want for the week ahead. She has to really battle to get my input and I hate the entire process. We ultimately come up with a list of meals that we want to have and pick what days we will have them on. We then have to work out what items we need for those meals, search for each individual item and then add it to the basket.

For a long time I have had the idea of creating a website that will allow you to create meals. You then add the items you would normally have to that meal including the quantity you require. When you have a list of meals you would simply click the meal and the app would add all the items in that meal to your Tesco.com basket for you. Simple.

Over the past couple of weeks I have managed to put some time aside to work on the idea. A couple of days ago I put the Alpha version of the website online. You can find it by going to www.myshoppingassistant.co.uk

With My Shopping Assistant you create packages, which can contain a number of items. You choose which items to add to a package so you pick the brand, size, colour or flavour you prefer. I decided to go with packages because you can create a package for; things for pets, cleaning items, meals, bbq food etc…

When you’re ready to do an online shop you no longer have to go through the tedious and laborious task of searching and adding individual items. You simple select the package you want to add, confirm you want all the items in that package and then add them directly to your Tesco.com basket.

If you shop online at Tesco.com then I would love it if you would try out my website. You don’t have to register as you just sign in with your Tesco.com account. Go to My Shopping Assistant and give it a go. Please let me have your feedback and thoughts.

Remember at the time of writing this blog post the website is still in development. What is online does work but its slow and there will be bugs and things that are not there yet. As and when I find more time I will keep working on it and with your feedback I think we can make it into a really helpful service.

Have fun!