Grocery is one of the top requirements in the kitchen of every household, and technology enables us to purchase it at ease via accessing online grocery stores.
Apps like Instacart, Kroger, Amazon Fresh, or FreshDirect are known to almost all of us. The only reason behind their popularity is that we can access them anytime to order the required grocery items. These apps have been in trend since the pandemic, and businesses are leveraging this trend.
If you are also interested in launching your grocery business online, you should also know the benefits of an online grocery store.
Discover the hidden benefits of online grocery stores for your business right here.
Before you dive into the next sections, let’s take a look at some key grocery store industry statistics to give you a clear understanding of the landscape.
Now, you have an idea that the online grocery delivery and ordering industry is in full swing. Online grocery delivery is beneficial for users and businesses in all terms.
It will be clearer in the upcoming sections of this blog. So, let’s start with the benefits.
The grocery retailing landscape is rapidly changing, and customers are migrating from offline to online grocery shopping. Online grocery sales are expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.7% over the next five years (Brick Meets Click). It reflects good growth.
So, the prime benefit of having an online store for the business is ample growth. It is not only a single benefit; there are others that also exist. Here are these:
Through an offering consisting of product pricing, a variety of products, and accurate products, you can improve the credibility of your business.
With an online grocery store, you can provide a personalized experience of grocery shopping where, within minutes, the customers can order their complete list instead of spending an hour collecting the stuff and waiting for its billing at the counter. It will bring value to your business.
If you are looking to expand your business in less time, then the best way is to develop a grocery platform for your business where customers can buy groceries at any time.
It is already mentioned that more than 50–51% of shoppers prefer online grocery shopping only for convenience. With your online grocery shop, they will have a new option to shop, which will be helpful to expand your business.
If you are working with the vendors, then you know more about how hectic it is to handle their requests. But with a hyperlocal grocery marketplace, most of the challenges get resolved as vendors will have their own dedicated panels.
They can handle it with ease, from updating inventory to uploading the product image description, setting up the price, earnings management, and more.
Even with an online grocery marketplace, you can add new vendors seamlessly. Vendors can use grocery inventory management software to automate and streamline their inventory processes, improve accuracy, and reduce costs.
An online grocery store will unlock multiple methods to promote your business online. The best example is using in-built social media promotion tools; you can promote your store on various social media channels.
Another best use case is that you can create multiple offers, discounts, and deals to attract customers. Although it is a partial technique to promote the brand, it works, and multiple businesses are leveraging it.
How good will it be if you do not need to buy or rent a physical space to start an online grocery store? Yes, it is true that customers only need to order groceries at their convenience and get them delivered to their doorstep at the desired time.
They do not bother about where groceries are getting delivered from. You can start your online grocery business from a home location or from an unknown location to the customer.
You also do not need to stock the items; you can deliver them directly to the customers via drop shipping. An online grocery store requires less investment compared to a brick-and-mortar location.
One of the biggest advantages of creating an online grocery store is that you can make a wide range of products available at a single point.
The retailers can add multiple products as much as they can and create a range of bestseller products. When customers find out the availability of their desired product, they will automatically connect with your online grocery store.
There will be no headache of changes or spending the time to manage the cash at the counter. With an online store, you will have everything at your fingertips.
There are multiple payment methods by which you can receive payments directly to your account, such as net banking, credit card, debit card, e-wallet, and others. Within a single tap, you will have all the details of payments on your screen.
Grocery delivery app development can help you make your customer’s purchase journey smooth. For example, integrating AI-powered chatbots can help them get quick information regarding the product or services, or you can leverage AI-ML to recommend the products based on their past purchase history.
It will help you enhance customer engagement to a greater level.
The market competition is getting tougher day by day, so you need to adapt to the new technologies and trends to stay on top among your competitors.
Using the latest technologies, you can exceed the expectations of your customers, as most of them prefer seamless experiences such as powered product search, price comparison, click-and-collect shipping, or others. All of these can help you meet your target audience’s needs.
For business growth, strategic planning is a must, and data plays an important role in it. The grocery e-commerce website or app is beneficial in all terms of studying the behavior of customers.
It works like a grocery delivery platform, containing customer data that you can collect and analyze to make a fine business strategy.
You can research data like products purchased frequently, preferred payment methods used by multiple customers, and others. It will help you develop strategies to grow your business.
The traditional ways were dismantled after Pandemic-19, and the retail sector got the maximum hit. Most people adopted online grocery delivery methods to get their groceries on demand.
On the other hand, businesses adopted new ways to operate seamlessly, such as preferring online grocery software solutions or offering an on-demand grocery delivery app to customers.
So, it would be best to know about trends ruling over the market, which you need to consider for your business.
In terms of getting on-demand grocery delivery, the choice of all customers globally is almost the same, as they need instant delivery.
So, if you are planning to start your business with an online grocery store, then plan carefully about the delivery mechanism.
AI is progressing more than we thought, and now its adoption is rapid. If you are looking for the future trends of grocery delivery, then in the upcoming years, there will be grocery eCommerce platforms that have automated inventory features, demand forecast mechanisms, automated supply chain operations, and more.
Here, you can start with an accurate product recommendation feature.
It is ultimate fun to request Alexa to play a favorite song. What if you have an app compatible with voice-enabled smart devices where, with a voice command, you can add multiple items to your grocery shopping cart? Some of the best examples are:
It has already been done, and more advancement is going on. Voice is the future of grocery shopping. So, it would also be best to consider it while going for grocery delivery app development for business.
Although drone deliveries are in a testing phase, they will happen very soon. The key advantage of drone delivery is that customer’s parcels will not get delayed due to traffic, and they will have instant delivery.
It looks like the most futuristic trend, but it will be possible very soon. Do not be surprised, as Amazon has started it.
Most grocery delivery software or web and mobile apps are equipped with a variety of payment methods, such as net banking, debit cards, credit cards, e-wallets, and more.
Due to the influence of cryptocurrency, multiple brands have adopted it, such as Starbucks, Chipotle, Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub. Businesses can also integrate different types of e-wallets into their grocery software for seamless transactions.
Online grocery delivery and ordering are trending, and based on the survey and consultation done by Strategy, the common findings related to millennial customers are:
You can target all these touch points via an online grocery store. Now, you are aware of the benefits that you can have with grocery delivery software or an app. It is the right time to invest in it for your business.
As a grocery and food delivery app development company, we are here to assist you with all your queries. We would be happy to provide you with an answer if you have any specific queries.