Over the last year, there is a significant increase in consumers embracing shopping from digital grocery stores. With the recent spread of COVID-19 and unannounced prolonged lockdowns, consumers are shifting towards online grocery shopping to shop for most commodities.
Before explaining the factors leading to the success of online grocery platforms, let us first explore:
Why is shopping from an online grocery store beneficial?
Although the majority of the people in Pakistan physically shop in a grocery store, the advantages of using a reliable and fast online grocery service, like erocery, are vast tilting the shift to its favour.
It's super convenient
Shopping online is super convenient. No need to physically go to different stores to search for your favorite products, simply search the products by tapping a few buttons on your smartphone, all from the comfort of your home.
Saves transportation cost
With the recent surge in the prices of petrol and diesel, it is actually expensive to burn petrol through long traffic jams to reach grocery stores. Rather, it's cheaper to order your groceries online. Some reputed companies like erocery even offer free delivery charges for orders above Rs. 1000.
Price comparisons
Browse through thousands of products/items/commodities and compare the prices simply from sitting comfortably on your couch. Discover other variants and exciting deals of the products which may not be available at your nearest store.
What strategies are needed for the success of online grocery stores?
Website Appearance and Functionality
First impression matters! For an online grocery brand, the website is your first impression. If the website is ugly with poor designs and low aesthetics, customers will never stay on the page. The customer may land on your website from different ads or social media but once they are on the website, the objective should be to increase the time he/she spends on the website and to successfully make a conversion.
Website is an important part of the customer experience which is why it becomes imperative that its functionality and appearance is kept to the highest standards. Studies have shown that people tend to shop more on websites which have a good design and are aesthetically pleasing to look.
Focus on Mobile Apps:
The world is fast shifting to mobile apps. With advanced smartphones and readily accessible 3G/4G internet connections, mobile apps have caused an increase in online shopping revenues.
Mobile Apps provide the best navigation and customer experience. They provide a systematic and faster way for customers to browse and shop for the products. Apps can help streamline the ordering process and are proven to better facilitate customers.
Customer Support
Even after making perfectly optimised websites and mobile apps, chances are customers may still need help and might want assistance. Customer support can be the key defining element of an online grocery experience.
The person browsing the website may not be in the purchase stage of the customer journey—but rather still in the awareness and consideration stage. Offering customer assistance can help make a successful conversion. Customer support can be a game changer for online grocery stores. By assisting customers with making online purchase decisions to resolve issues — it helps create a seamless customer experience.
How these strategies can be implemented
Optimized websites
Websites of online grocery stores must be optimised and perfected. Attention should be given to the SEO and web loading speed of the website. If the website is taking a lot of time to load, customers will close the page and move on towards the next website.
It becomes important to reduce the loading time of the website and implement smart layout. By using compressed images websites can load faster. Moreover, by leveraging browser cache and improving server response time, websites can load faster. These metrics are also helpful in increasing the domain authority of the website as well.
The website design plays an important role in navigating customers to their desired products. Making sure that the design is simple and intuitive to use can help the customers to browse better and shop effectively.
Social Media Marketing
Leveraging social media, online grocery stores can build brand awareness, draw online followers, and produce online sales. Online stores can also use social media to spread the word about latest deals, offers and promotional codes. This causes an increased footfall on the website and helps generate sales.
Through running PPC and social media campaigns, stores can reach a wider audience and help product-specific customers to find their products easily. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat etc provide you with a direct way to engage and communicate with the audience.
Live chat and Assistance:
Having a live chat bot or a customer support assistant can assure customers that they will receive answers to any questions or concerns they might have. A good online grocery store can help resolve queries and even upsell products. An order confirmation text or a call can put the customers at ease and can help to smooth over a customer’s bad ecommerce experiences.
