The boom of online grocery shopping is prevailing over the past few years globally. Although online grocery shopping is common in most countries, still this pandemic made it a popular evolving marketplace.

According to Neilsen reports, more than 37% of shoppers in Asia shopped for food regularly online. Deutsche Bank says, online grocery shopping is expected to expand at a CAGR of 28.2%, which is significant when compared to 2.5% CAGR for total grocery sales.

Many Supermarkets are preparing for the shift to online, as the consumer demand is growing each day. Due to this necessity and consumer interest, many grocers have moved towards online shopping stores massively. 

Even a few high-performing brick-and-mortar grocery stores found themselves suddenly out of the race. As they didn’t invest in the online stores and are facing harsh consequences of their reality.

Online shopping has been gaining importance among all ages and demographics, this popularity will never fade in the upcoming years. This illustrates that there is no better time to invest in improving your online grocery orders. 

Grocery E-commerce 

Although grocery stores tend to stock up their inventory, whereas the requirements keep changing and there will be specific needs at unspecified times. The concept of selling Grocery products varies based on various factors like bulk quantities, per piece price, and even on their storage condition. 

However, retailers need to deal with perishable goods and it’s challenging to look after product returns or replacements. Each and every step has its own set of risks and challenges that grocers need to deal. 

Let’s discuss the tips and tricks that can help online Grocery businesses to improve their orders. 

1. Focus on Ease of Use and Accessibility 

Simplicity and usability must be your top goal while running a Grocery e-commerce platform. Ensure to keep these strategies in mind while developing your online grocery store and upscale your revenue.

• Make it easy for customers to register, find the required products, add items to their cart, review or edit the order and make payments.
• Enable filtering options to every sub-groups to speed up product searches. Your customers will not have time to scroll a long list of items to find the specific products they are looking for.
• Make sure you include all relevant product information including high-quality pictures, and brand names, price, ingredients with nutritional value, allergens, and pack size.
• Include expiry dates for every product. For example, if a shopper knows that yogurt lasts up to three weeks, they will buy extra packets instead of getting one. 
• Give customers the chance to reorder from their past shopping history quickly and activate shopping lists where customers can add their favorite products. In more simple terms, Allow your potential customers to see their buying history and share it with family or friends.
• Ensure fast loading pages in your online grocery store. If your site takes more than three seconds to load, buyers are more likely to abandon their cart without completing the purchase.

2. Mention the Important Information 

Imagine your online shopper has spent almost an hour adding products to their cart and finds his/her Pincode is not eligible for delivery at the final step. In online grocery businesses, retailers must provide all the important information at the beginning itself. 

Ensure to provide information to your customers regarding shipping prices and times, delivery restrictions, geographical areas included in the service, and other special instructions. 

Before customers proceed to checkout options, make sure that every step is labeled clearly and shoppers know what’s coming up beforehand. 

Consider adding information that clarifies customer’s queries, such as “You can modify your cart in the next step” or “By clicking here, you can process your payment or you can’t modify your cart afterward”. For example, consider adding order progress like this,

Once your customer places the order successfully, include an “order completed” page with all the key information such as items purchased, delivery, payment information, time of order, and how the customer can track the shipment. 

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3. Integrate Different Platforms

Today, more customers do shopping from mobiles than computers. According to The Drum reports, last year 63% of traffic and 53% of sales in Commerce sites happened via smartphones. 

The mobile shopping trend will only keep growing, Make sure that your online website performs well on mobile devices. Here are some questions to ask yourself while developing a grocery website/app:

• Is my e-commerce grocery site responsive?
• Do you think the navigation buttons easy to tap? The text fields are large and easy to type?
• Are images clear? Can people zoom in to see extra details easily? Is it easy to move through various images?
• Is all information mentioned on small screens visible? and the lines appear clear even at the end up off-screen
• Can customers easily browse items and categories?
• Is the payment process simple for all the customers?

Many customers start a transaction using one device and continue it on another one. While they resume this transaction, they tend to lose all the items added to the cart, and you’ll lose that transaction. 

By enabling saving options for the customers, they can easily perform transactions across different devices at their convenience.

RELATED READS: Quick and Easy Tips to Move Retail store to eCommerce with ZUAN to Succeed after Lockdown!

4. Provide Seamless Navigation 

On your e-commerce site, you can easily display multiple product categories than in your brick-and-mortar stores. If you decide to integrate different categories in your online store, make sure to organize each section clearly for customers to find what they need.

• Offer categories that can be accessed from your top menu.
• Enable filter options to customers for sorting items by price, brand, group, review scores, etc.
• Make sure information is easy to understand. You can use bullet points and organize information like ingredients, then package size, then weight, then expiry date consistently. 
• Make sure the “buy” button is clearly visible. Provide checkmark or confirmation options to clarify users when items are added to the basket.
• Include a search function with predictive suggestions and auto-correction options. Because, your customers may call products by different names, for example, cookies and biscuits. 

5. Offer Flexible Delivery Options 

Offer multiple delivery options and time slots to your customers. The best practice is to offer flexible delivery methods and allow customers to choose the one that fits best in their schedule. As simple as you are, customers will more likely shop for groceries with you. 

According to a report,  offering a 30-minute interval window ensures that your delivery will be within the selected timeframe.

However, Food retailers are experimenting with different delivery methods to improve their orders worldwide. Your preferable method will depend on your customer’s demands, as well as on the geographical locations. 

Your customers may prefer to get their products delivered at home, for this you can take advantage of third-party delivery stations with refrigerated lockers. 

Some customers wish to order online and pick up in-store, in such cases you can support picking up products at the curbside. 

The more delivery options you can offer, the more likely you are to satisfy your customer demands. Along with that, ensure to have the infrastructure for managing timely delivery and distribution of your grocery products. 

Consider partnering up with distribution agents, even popular companies like Instacart, have successfully adopted these methods.

6. Guarantee Good Quality Of Products 

According to a recent study, customers are more concerned about the quality of fresh items and worry about the risk of delivery in online food shopping. To help customers overcome these concerns,

• Provide delivery options that preserve your product best in quality. For instance, Refrigerated lockers, one-hour delivery, and click and collect within a specific pick-up window are some of the options that help to retain freshness.  
• Offer detailed information about your fresh products. This means including description along with freshness labels that helps products to last even after it’s delivery.
• Solicit feedback, and customer reviews can play a vital role in improving your order on the website.
• Allow customers to return the products and get their money back when grocery items didn’t meet their expectations at the time of delivery.

7. Manage Order Process Seamlessly

When you are selling grocery products online, customers will judge your products more than just the quality. For instance, If your website loads slowly if the delivery service is never on time if a product description is not up to the mark. 

If the refrigerated locker breaks down, customers will not shop with you any longer. Convenience is a core element in online grocery businesses, and great experience will build an everlasting strong relationship with your customers.

It helps to analyze and future-proof your entire chain, right from the production, to the technology that you use, the accuracy of your product information, and physical delivery. 

All you need to do is to ensure that every step of the order process is smooth, efficient, and up to industry standards. 

8. Improve User Experience

When grocery online shopping, customers wish to get their favorite products right away. Which is like a nightmare to grocery eCommerce merchants seeking to offer a better user experience. 

Retailers can meet user expectations with intuitive features and navigation such as favorite products, suggested products, or saved shopping lists. 

Many customers prefer product filtering options to avoid specific allergens, carbohydrates, fat, sugar, vegan, eco-friendly, etc in grocery shopping sites. The filter list for grocery items must be diverse and have essential options that simplify the process of finding products online.

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Best online grocery solution provider of 2021

If you read all the above-mentioned tips carefully, you have gained all the necessary information needed to improve order in your online grocery shopping store. Now, you need an online grocery store development company to set up your online grocery website successfully!

Choosing a solution provider to launch an online grocery store is more efficient than relying on other resources. Whereas it will establish your online grocery store faster with all the necessary tools and technologies.

Zuan Technologies is emerging as the best online grocery solution provider for launching small to big scale online grocery stores.  

Here is a list of key features in our online grocery store that helps you to stay ahead of competitors. 

• M-commerce ready: Statistics report that revenue generated from m-commerce will reach 37.96 billion US dollars in upcoming years. These figures clearly suggest the importance of owning a mobile-ready grocery store. Zuan provides responsive web design and extraordinary core features to build a powerful mobile-ready online grocery store.

RELATED READS: Follow the Magic Growth of MCommerce to Climb Your KPI

• Fits your budget: Our solution can perfectly fit in the budget of small grocers and aspiring entrepreneurs who wish to succeed in online grocery businesses. The package of Zuan is budget-friendly and you get an all-inclusive online grocery store at a one-time cost.

• High security: Online security is important for all types of businesses dealing with frequent payments online. Every customer needs to opt for a safe transaction while checking out from an online store. Zuan guarantees to offer a highly secured and smooth shopping website/mobile app that keeps your customers coming back for more.

• Flexibility and scalability: Modifying your online grocery store according to the evolving trends and industry needs can be difficult with a rigid e-commerce solution. Whereas a completely flexible grocery store solution allows you to customize the entire online grocery store hassle-free.

Additional Tips to Improve Order and Make Money with your Online Grocery Store 

Depending on your business model, you can make money using multiple methods and enjoy more profits. Here are few ways to make extra money while selling groceries online:

RELATED READS: 8 Cliff Of Readymade Grocery App To Save Money

#1. Product margins

Most of the grocery stores selling products online, generally buy the products in bulk quantity and sell them at a small discount. Which helps them to gain a decent profit on every product. 

Online grocery businesses running on multi-vendor business models are beneficial as it charges a commission per product.

Depending on your grocery store demand, you can implement various commission rates for different products. This will help you to maximize profit margins by improving online orders.

#2. Subscription 

A subscription feature helps customers to subscribe to certain products at regular intervals to avoid the order process each time. 

This includes the products that customers use on a regular basis such as milk, vegetables, meat, fruits, and hygiene products. Subscription can ultimately boost your sales and bring in more profits.

#3. Membership 

Another popular method to make money and improve order in your online grocery store is offering a membership subscription to your customers. 

This should include added benefits like free shipping, priority delivery, and special discounts. Even most of your competitors are using this membership to boost their revenue.

RELATED READS: Top 9 Tricks in Online Wholesale App To Get Super Sale

#4. Merchandise 

Most of the offline grocery sellers are shifting online and making money via this method only. You can feature your own grocery items online along with others to increase your sales and improve order.

If you don’t own a product range yourself, partner with other brands who are willing to sell their products under your brand name. This method will not only help in launching your personal brand but allows you to maximize more profits.

#5. On-store advertising 

This revenue generation feature is an added advantage to online grocery stores striving to generate decent traffic and sales. 

Allow your vendors and brands to promote their products on your platform, this helps you to generate extra income regularly. 

You can begin with simple banner-based advertising and then move on to integrate an advertising module like Amazon. 

Bottom Line 

Online grocery shopping has moved beyond our imagination with the latest technologies and software. 

Although it’s really challenging to predict e-commerce trends for tomorrow, we can assure you that grocery e-commerce will continue to grow in an upward direction. 

Retailers who are looking for strategies to win over competitors must take the next step quickly and fearlessly. 

To know more about the digital future of grocery shopping, feel free to contact us. We have helped many grocery businesses to achieve great.