Online grocery shopping has witnessed a boom in the recent years. According to Zion Market Research, the share of online grocery delivery was estimated at $286 billion in 2021. It is expected to cross the $USD 2,159 billion mark by 2030.
Many reasons are causing people to shop for their groceries online. The improving access to the internet and increased use of smartphones and apps fuel this trend’s upward trajectory. Online grocery shopping is also partly driven by the consumers’ preference for convenience and ease of access.
The recent pandemic has also been a catalyst for causing a significant shift in shopping habits. With lockdowns and social distancing measures in place, many people turned to online grocery shopping as a safer and more convenient alternative to physical stores.
The trend for online grocery shopping is positive. However, it would be best if you still had effective strategies to make your online grocery store succeed. Here are some helpful tips to improve your online grocery store.
1. Provide accurate information and images.
Regarding grocery shopping, customers rely heavily on images and information provided for making informed decisions. Inaccurate or ambiguous information causes confusion, wrong purchase decisions, disappointment, and a negative customer experience.
In contrast, accurate information about nutritional value, adverse effects, and product ingredients makes your customers confident about what they buy. Plus, it helps you develop long-term customer relationships.
In addition to correct product information, high-quality images influence customer purchasing decisions. Pictures inaccurately depicting a product create a sense of doubt about the product’s quality. In comparison, well-lit photos taken from different angles and contexts improve customer confidence and trust in the development and the store.
Providing accurate information and clear images is especially important if you offer unique items such as specialty coffee sourced from all over the world or exotic flavors of chips and beverages. Moreover, constantly update the product description when there is a change in the product’s nutritional value or appearance. This small activity keeps your online store up-to-date compared to your competitors.
2. Ensure high quality
Concerns about the freshness and quality of many grocery items often cause people to avoid online grocery shopping and resort to old brick-and-mortar stores. People also worry about fresh things spoiling. This means addressing concerns about the freshness and quality of grocery items. You can manage these concerns in the following way:
- Provide refrigerated lockers for delivering perishable items such as cheese, meat, etc.
- Provide detailed freshness labels stating how long an item will stay fresh after delivery.
- Provide customers with a money-back guarantee if the product is not fresh or does not meet their expectations.
3. Make your website easy to navigate.
A well-organized website makes it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for and increases the likelihood of a sale.
Data suggests that 38% of people halt their interaction with a website if the layout is unappealing. Use a consistent color scheme, font, and formatting throughout your website to create a unified and professional look.
In addition, make various aspects of your website, such as registration, product search, adding items to the cart, order review, etc., easy and seamless.
Sifting through hundreds of products and multiple pages to look for specific items, say, apricot-filled croissants isn’t very pleasant. So, add filters and sub-filters for each category to make searching for a product more accessible and less time-taking. Use dropdown menus or a sidebar to organize your content into logical categories.
4. Make your website work well on mobile.
People are relying on their smartphones more than ever. Resultantly, more websites are viewed on smartphones than on desktops. So, your website should look and run great on desktop and mobile.
57% of internet users don’t intend to recommend an online store if its mobile version is poorly designed. Similarly, 85% of users want a website’s mobile version to be as good as or better than its desktop website. Therefore, it is essential to consider how your online grocery store looks and performs on smartphones. Also, ensure your website’s display adjusts to the pixel width of the device your customers view it on.
5. Make your customers happy with rewards and discounts
Offering discounts and rewards is an easy way to make customers happy and encourage them to return to your online grocery store.
Some ideas for making your customers happy are to:
- Offer a discount on a customer’s first order
- Provide a coupon to encourage future purchase
- Offer loyalty programs by offering points or rewards for each purchase
- Provide a discount on a future purchase for leaving a review
- Offer incentives to customers who refer new customers
6. Make the checkout process simple.
A complicated checkout process negatively impacts the customer experience. One of the significant causes of shopping cart abandonment at checkout is that the customers have to pass through multiple steps to complete an order.
Statistics show that complicated checkout processes and slow websites account for 27% of cart abandonments. Cart abandonment means people leave the e-commerce site before finalizing the purchase or completing the order.
So, you might be making your website fancy by adding steps at the checkout, but they are driving your customers away from your website.
7. Continuously improve and evolve.
Stay informed about changing industry trends and adapt to technological advancements. Never hesitate to experiment with new approaches and ideas and implement innovative features to enhance the customer experience.
Actively solicit customer feedback on newly implemented features and use their insights to make changes and enhancements.
Regularly monitor your website’s analytics and metrics to gain insight into customer behavior, shopping patterns, preferences, and dislikes. All this information offers immense value when making corrections and improvements, such as optimizing high-traffic pages and reducing the website loading time.
8. Foster a culture of improvement..
Develop a team with the right expertise, and provide them with the resources and tools to make your online grocery store succeed.
Simultaneously, empower your team to make decisions in their domains and take ownership of their duties. Provide regular feedback, fruitful criticism, and support to improve their work and help them grow with the company.
Conclusion
Online grocery shopping has become more accessible and user-friendly. Many retailers offer apps and websites with easy-to-use interfaces. However, there is always room for improvement. Some ways e-commerce platforms can improve their online grocery shopping store for a better customer experience are mentioned above. Steps like fostering a culture of improvement, having a mobile-friendly website, etc., make your offerings more accessible to online shoppers, improving your bottom line.
