The Ultimate Guide to Online Grocery Shopping

Since our lives have grown busier than ever, we have created a guide to preparing your restaurant for online ordering, as well as the benefits of using a web-based restaurant app. Today, we’re going to give you the ultimate guide to online grocery shopping.

It’s a concept of convenience; you might get groceries while at work, during your commute, or while having your breakfast.

The change to online grocery shopping takes some getting used to for both companies and customers.

Here are some considerations to bear in mind.

The Rise of Online Grocery Shopping 

Isn’t it true that need is the mother of invention? The COVID-19 pandemic may not have given birth to grocery shopping online, but it did give it a huge boost in popularity.

According to a 2018 study, 6% of all consumers ordered groceries online more than once a month.

In 2020, 74 percent of individuals stated they would shop for groceries online, spending an estimated $89.2 billion. By 2022, 70 percent of consumers are on track to shop for groceries online.

Online grocery purchases have nearly quadrupled since 2019, and by 2025, they account for 22% of all supermarket sales.

The Internet and smartphones have completely transformed our lives. Almost anything is accessible for purchase on the Internet, from clothing to furniture, food to residences. Our generation is heavily reliant on technological advancements.

Businesses must have an online purchasing option to match these consumer expectations and stay ahead of the competition.

Providing Online Grocery Shopping to Your Customers

Shifting from being a completely in-store experience to offering your customers the option for online grocery shopping includes multiple elements.

Here are some things to keep in mind when offering an online shopping experience to your customers.

Your Online Ordering Platform

The first step to offering online ordering for your customers is to provide an online ordering platform. This could be in the form of a website, brand mobile application. You could even offer the ability to accept online orders through your social media accounts.

The choice is important since when you allow your customers to order from your brand online, this will be the face of your brand with which they are interacting.

Their experience with your platform has a huge role in whether they will convert to loyal customers or choose another business in the future.

Blink is a quick commerce enablement platform that allows users to easily construct a customized website and mobile app for your on-demand delivery grocery store.

Blink gives you back-end access to a pre-designed yet branded grocery website template, as well as Android and iOS mobile apps.

With all of our experience at blink, your brand can provide the greatest service to your customers.

Blink guarantees that your in-house teams have entire control over the solution thanks to high levels of analytics, visibility, and reconfigurability. Blink enables you to customize your operations to your consumers’ requirements.

Ability to Accept Online Payments

You must provide a range of payment methods to appeal to a larger audience.

Younger people like to purchase online and have more expertise with it; thus, they would most likely use credit or debit card options.

On the other hand, certain elderly clientele may dislike providing their credit card information online and prefer to pay in person.

Having many options is beneficial: it ensures that you are not losing consumers just because of payment methods.

It’s crucial to know which payment options you allow on your website or app. You may also provide a Cash on Delivery (COD) option in addition to debit or credit cards to make it easier for people to conduct online orders.

With Blink’s online ordering platform, you have integrated payment gateways built-in to the tool to allow you to offer your customers a range of payment options.

Customer satisfaction increases when they can pay via medium of their choosing.

You may take debit or credit card payments from your clients online using Blink’s secure payment gateways.

Blink works with the following payment gateways:

• Checkout.com
• Mada
• Pay2m
• MasterCard
• Visa
• Stripe
• CCAvenue

Promotions, Engagement, and Loyalty

No online business is successful without the right marketing campaigns and tools. You can use different methods to get the word out about your business and have people know your brand.

The more people know about what you offer, the more sales you will make.

Offering promotions, engaging with your customers, and rewarding return customers with loyalty programs are great ways to increase your customer base and create top-of-mind awareness.

Blink offers the ability to engage with customers to send Push notifications. You can also use the SMS marketing integrations with affordable packages and attribute filters for targeted, end-to-end SMS marketing all in one place.

Moreover, you can offer time-bound discounts and promo codes for your customers with automatic enabling and disabling capabilities to entice your customers to choose your brand.

Inventory Management

You are offering an online experience to your customers involves choosing which items and categories you will provide.

The right inventory management solution can also help you run your business more smoothly and streamline your business operations.

Another important aspect is keeping your online ordering portal up to date with your inventory.

You want to avoid creating a situation in which your customer orders a product only to find out that you are out of stock for the item at the time of delivery.

With Blink, you can easily update your categories and items to depict what is in stock and what isn’t.

You can also use the customer data and analytics that Blink provides to see order histories and decipher what items you should be stocking up and which items are not selling and warrant rethinking.

Consider Your Delivery Options

Home delivery is used by 76 percent of online customers, whereas click and collect engage just 39 percent.

Since your online grocery business will likely rely on home delivery, your delivery options are an important consideration.

If you’re starting an online grocery store, you should consider your shipping alternatives.

Some customers may want same-day delivery, while others may require next-day delivery of goods ordered online.

You’ll also need to decide on the size of your delivery area and where your delivery radius will reach before you start your business.

With Blink, you have an add-on option for a fleet and delivery management system.

The fleet management portal and delivery app provide a premium customer experience by allowing for rapid and seamless deliveries that are all handled in one system.

You may generate rides for dispatch-ready orders using Blink’s q-commerce platform.

In only two steps, you can assign deliveries to riders. Choose a rider from the dropdown menu and allocate the order to them.

Order assignment to riders via the blink delivery app and system-generated order updates provided to consumers in real-time will help you save time.

Common Customer Fears About Online Grocery Shopping and How to Solve Them to Boost Sales

Providing an exceptional customer experience is often the key to increasing your online grocery sales.

While online buying is becoming more popular, many people are still unfamiliar with it. As a result, some customers’ anxieties can affect the number of sales you make. Because of these anxieties, people are less willing to immerse themselves in the online purchasing experience.

If you want to improve your online grocery sales, you must first recognize and solve your customers’ fears. As a retailer, you must continuously demonstrate to customers that you can address their concerns.

Here are some of the most prevalent consumer concerns about online grocery shopping and ways to handle those concerns, thereby assisting you in increasing online sales.

Concerns of Quality and Freshness

Grocery shopping involves purchasing a variety of different things, including cleaning products to pet food. Among these products are things such as fresh produce and perishables.

Customers are concerned that their purchases may not be fresh or in prime condition due to the time it takes to reach them, even if they are picking up.

This is where you need to think of last-mile efficiency.

Blink for delivery is a high-performance platform for more efficient delivery. This portal provides an add-on option for Blink users.

Businesses use Blink’s Quick Commerce Fleet Management Platform that need quick commerce solutions to plan, control, and scale their last-mile logistics.

Manage your deliveries efficiently, identify the fastest routes, check rider attendance, assign deliveries to riders, and more with the all-in-one fleet management system.

With Blink’s geo-fenced fleet management software, you can track your riders’ attendance and identify their positions in real-time.

By creating more efficiency in last-mile delivery, as a brand, you can assure your customers that they will receive their orders swiftly and thus be able to promise quality control over perishable items as well.

This “last mile” of delivery is critical in determining whether or not a customer will return and become a brand supporter.

A positive home delivery experience – prompt, efficient delivery combined with excellent customer service – can quickly spread via social media or word of mouth, resulting in a rise in online grocery sales.

Concerns of Loss of Control

Grocery shopping is an intimate purchase. Groceries are what people buy for their homes and the people they want, and each individual who usually goes grocery shopping has a very specific idea of what they want to purchase.

When individuals physically go grocery shopping, they have the opportunity to examine the products they are about to purchase, and they can get a feel for them and touch them, etc. Giving them a sense of control the majority of the time.

To remove customer’s fear of lost orders or loss of autonomy, you want to make a customer’s experience pleasant and give them the information they need to know they still have that control.

One way to do this is to focus on the way you are presenting your items on your online ordering platform.

When you offer descriptions and pictures, customers can still have a sense of the items they are purchasing, allowing them to feel both at ease and in control.

Customers can order through your brand’s website, mobile app, or even Facebook and Instagram using Blink, giving them control over their shopping.

As a business, with item uploads through POS or ERP integrations, bulk item uploads utilizing file imports, and manual item generation, you can add, change, or remove menus and items.

Concerns from an unfamiliar experience

The comfort of the familiar is appealing to consumers.

A shopper knows where to go at a local grocery store because they know the layout, have memorized the aisles, and have established habits and budgets based on the daily deals.

As a result, switching to internet purchasing can be unsettling for some people.

You must make the switch as painless as possible if you want to expand your online grocery shopping.

As a business, you should aim to provide your customers with as many characteristics of the in-store experience as you can while shifting it to online shopping.

Engage your customers via SMS, email, or social media to let them know how to purchase groceries online and have them delivered to their home or choose curbside pickup.

Find a means to deliver your weekly deals online as well, especially if it was something you offered your customers frequently in store.

With Blink, you can send out SMS campaigns to your customers to keep them informed and stay connected to them. You can also offer deals and discounts through your website or mobile applications.

In Conclusion 

Offering online grocery shopping will undoubtedly present you with certain challenges and concerns to address.

It is, nevertheless, a lucrative, underdeveloped market that will help your business succeed.

Remember that you’ll need to put great effort into connecting with your target audience. Only then will you outperform brick-and-mortar establishments.