It’s a challenge for everyone to face this critical situation during the COVID-19. Governments across the globe have taken strict actions to make people stay at home to break the spread of coronavirus.

Therefore, most of them are forced to stay at home. This compelled people to buy unavoidable essential household things like groceries and medicines from the online grocery delivery app at a single click of a button. 

It helps in saving tons of valuable time. Moreover, consumers can also shop anytime and anywhere form a wide range of household essentials products.

But, when it comes to Physical grocery shops, people have always been put down into stress and anxiety shopping experiences. 

Furthermore, this consumes a lot of time by standing in the queue for billing, being crowded and so no. 

This would be the main reason why people today prefer online grocery shopping– that offers an excellent shopping experience effortlessly. 

So, if you’re a physical grocery store owner, you must understand the current situation and adapt to the online grocery delivery app to survive during coronavirus and beyond. 

The Unbelievable Grocery Delivery App Stats

Here are some amazing and unbelievable statistics about grocery apps on Statista. See the chart below:

• This chart displays the online grocery shopping sales in the United States from 2012 to 2021 in billion US dollars.
• When it comes to the year 2012, the online grocery market sale was only US$6 billion.
• In the year 2016, just within 4 years, the online grocery market sales were doubled and it crossed US$12 billion.
• Then, in the year 2018, it nearly tripled and reached US$17.5 billion.
• By the end of 2019, it has crossed US$22 billion.
• Therefore, at the end of 2021, it is also expected to be multiplied by 5 as it will be in the touching distance of US$30 billion.

Why is the Online Grocery Delivery App Essential for Fighting the COVID-19 Crisis?

The foremost reason is, it prevents the intense transmission of the virus by offering convenient and safe shopping from home.

• It also deals with fear by enabling people that there are enough essential products in stock.
• It increases work productivity by ensuring people to relax more and spend time on restoring life energy
• It helps cafes and restaurants to realize their product stocks
• It contributes to global economic stability by providing job opportunities and generating profit.

Some of the Basic Features Of An Online Grocery Store App:

If you thought of developing an online grocery store delivery app but no idea of what features helps you and your customers.

Below are some of the basic features that every grocery delivery app should have to run an online grocery store without any disruption.

Item categories: The arrangement of the products should be highly attractive and visible for the customers to locate the correct item. Hence, make it properly listed with subcategories.

Mobile-Friendly: Today, most of them use mobile phones to purchase online. So it’s very important to improve their shopping experience by optimizing your website/ application on all the devices.

SEO-Friendly: To make your site crawled and indexed by search engine bots quickly, ensure that your site has all key highlights to rank higher.

Search tool: It is one of the basic and most essential features. It lets the customers discover what they need from your store. 

Profile: Once the buyer completes creating their shopping account, the profile is the most important feature where they can track their requests, save their favorite item, recurrent requests, and so on.

Social media icons: Want your business to get good exposure among the public. Implementing features for social media sign up and sharing products on social media is one of the important aspects. 

Individual Advantage of Using Grocery Delivery App:

No Check-Out Queues

People love to visit nearby local brick-and-mortar grocery stores on a regular basis. They also like to go through different products, promotions, feel and touch and select what they want. 

But the most exhausting part comes at the end. Standing in a long queue and waiting for their turn at the check-out counter to pay money doesn’t go well with most of the people.

We all know, people generally remember boredom more than a delightful experience. So, as a physical grocery store owner, if you offer such a boring experience at the end of a delightful grocery shopping experience. 

All your efforts to make the consumer’s experience better will be in vain.

Alternatively, if you are offering physical stores to touch & feel as well as an online grocery app for your store, one can pay with only a few clicks so they can’t complain or feel bored. How profitable and convenient it is!

Easier Product Search And Discovery

While searching for a specific product in a normal grocery store, consumers generally get help from one of the staff members or they need to walk completely to find one specific product. 

First of all, Superstores have plenty of products with multiple varieties for all of them. Second,  to increase engagement, they keep changing the location of products.

Third, they have huge staff members and their roster constantly changes every week so it is impossible for even their staff members to keep track of all the changes even if they want to.

In such a case, when a consumer wants to find something in the superstore, it can be a nightmare. Therefore, using search and filter options in grocery delivery apps is quite easy and convenient.

Saves Time, Money And Energy

Grocery delivery apps usually save time, money, and energy in many ways too.

Primarily, customers don’t want to travel to and from grocery stores. They can easily order whatever they want through their grocery apps. This helps in saving a lot of traveling money as well as time.

Second, they can easily find whatever products and items they want using the search and filter options. 

They do not have to go through numerous walkways of superstores, they are spared from visual stimuli and they can check their impulsive buying too. However, in the end, the consumer can save time and money.

Lastly, customers love to use shopping apps, including beauty apps, accessory apps, and grocery apps which will run discount offers, coupons, and promotions according to local festivals and seasons which, in turn, saves money.

Hence, these are some of the reasons why grocery apps have really taken off well.

How Grocery Delivery App Uplift Physical Grocery Store Owner

You can Expand Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is very important for any business growth and staying afloat for decades. However, it is not easy to find loyal customers. You can only convert your normal customers into loyal ones.

But, if you run a grocery store and additionally offer a customized grocery app for your grocery store, it is an added attraction.

So, once your consumers start to use your online grocery app and have a good user experience, they soon become loyal to your business.

Note- If you provide only a good user experience to your online grocery mobile app, they become loyal to your business or they will never return to your store or grocery app. 

That’s why you must hand over your grocery app development to an experienced mobile app development company.

Besides, you should also add features like loyalty bonus, reward points, promo codes, offers, etc. to increase the loyalty of your customers.

Better Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Moreover, expanding loyalty from customers, you can have the entire CRM system at your fingertips.

In a normal CRM, you are supposed to create an extensive database of consumers and find the relevant data at the opportune moment.

But on the other hand, if you opt for grocery app development, consumers themselves will create their own profile to use the grocery app. 

In this way, you can automatically create your entire CRM database. Therefore, you don’t need to appoint a dedicated staff, but in turn, you can pull the data whenever you want right from your mobile app or admin panel.

Better Inventory And Order Management

Grocery apps always come with their admin panels so that you can access it using your computers and mobiles. Additionally, using this admin panel, you can easily manage your complete inventory. 

You can also set alerts for stocks that are running low and with the alert, you can order them easily. Moreover, with all the reports available at your fingertips, you can easily manage all the past, present, and future orders and search them easily.

Decreasing Overhead

We all know that getting the right pair of helping hands is always a difficult task. But, when you run a business, you will need plenty of right pairs of hands. 

And the better the employees are, the more you will need to pay in salaries which will increase your overhead. The overhead of your business is the factor that can break or make your fortune.

But, once you implement an online grocery ordering system, it will decrease your overhead in the long run.

An expert online grocery app development company can cost you a good chunk of your annual overhead. However, it will be a one-time expense.

Once, after that, the updating and maintenance of the online shopping portal or grocery apps will cost you very little. Hence, with the help of technology, you will be able to reduce your staff and overhead dramatically.

It will eventually increase your profit.

Conclusion: 

I hope now you understand how valuable it is to have an online grocery delivery app for every online grocery store to grow today and beyond the COVID-19 crisis.

Online grocery delivery systems and grocery apps are growing rapidly in terms of popularity and revenue generation and it counts. 

So, If you are looking for a profitable business idea during this critical outbreak, undoubtedly, it would be an online grocery store app. 

What are you waiting for? Find an experienced and expert partner to guide you through such an endeavor and you will see its positive effects on your business in no time.

Zuan Technologies is such an expert and experienced mobile app development company. We have equal expertise in web development too. 

Our dedicated teams of iOS app development, Android app development, and web development have developed and deployed more than 500+ responsive and robust mobile apps and websites for various industries.

We are experts in on-demand order and delivery systems with plenty of businesses and startups as our happy clients. Get in touch with us to know more and have a quote for taking your business online and on mobile.