Succeeding in Online Grocery

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Succeeding in Online Grocery Over the last year,
there is a significant increase in consumers
embracing shopping from digital grocery stores.
With the recent spread of COVID-19 and
unannounced prolonged lockdowns, consumers are
shifting towards online grocery shopping to shop
for most commodities. Before explaining the
factors leading to the success of online grocery
platforms, let us first explore Why is shopping
from an online grocery store beneficial? Although
the majority of the people in Pakistan physically
shop in a grocery store, the advantages of using
a reliable and fast online grocery service, like
erocery, are vast tilting the shift to its
favour. It's super convenient Shopping online is
super convenient. No need to physically go to
different stores to search for your favourite
products, simply search the products by tapping a
few buttons on your smartphone, all from the
comfort of your home. Saves transportation
cost With the recent surge in the prices of
petrol and diesel, it is actually expensive to
burn petrol through long traffic jams to reach
grocery stores. Rather, it's cheaper to order
your groceries online. Some reputed companies
like erocery even offer free delivery charges for
orders above Rs. 1000. Price comparisons Browse
through thousands of products/items/commodities
and compare the prices simply from sitting
comfortably on your couch. Discover other
variants and exciting deals of the products which
may not be available at your nearest store. What
strategies are needed for the success of online
grocery stores? Website Appearance and
Functionality First impression matters! For an
online grocery brand, the website is your first
impression. If the website is ugly with poor
designs and low aesthetics, customers will never
stay on the page. The customer may land on your
website from different ads or social media but
once they are on the website, the objective
should be to increase the time he/she spends on
the website and to successfully make a
conversion. Website is an important part of the
customer experience which is why it becomes
imperative that its functionality and appearance
is kept to the highest standards. Studies have
shown that people
tend to shop more on websites which have a good
design and are aesthetically pleasing to look.
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Focus on Mobile Apps The world is fast shifting
to mobile apps. With advanced smartphones and
readily accessible 3G/4G internet connections,
mobile apps have caused an increase in online
shopping revenues. Mobile Apps provide the best
navigation and customer experience. They provide
a systematic and faster way for customers to
browse and shop for the products. Apps can help
streamline the ordering process and are proven to
better facilitate customers. Customer
Support Even after making perfectly optimised
websites and mobile apps, chances are customers
may still need help and might want assistance.
Customer support can be the key defining element
of an online grocery experience. The person
browsing the website may not be in the purchase
stage of the customer journeybut rather still in
the awareness and consideration stage. Offering
customer assistance can help make a successful
conversion. Customer support can be a game
changer for online grocery stores. By assisting
customers with making online purchase decisions
to resolve issues it helps create a seamless
customer experience. How these strategies can be
implemented Optimized websites Websites of
online grocery stores must be optimised and
perfected. Attention should be given to the SEO
and web loading speed of the website. If the
website is taking a lot of time to load,
customers will close the page and move on towards
the next website. It becomes important to reduce
the loading time of the website and implement
smart layout. By using compressed images websites
can load faster. Moreover, by leveraging browser
cache and improving server response time,
websites can load faster. These metrics are also
helpful in increasing the domain authority of the
website as well. The website design plays an
important role in navigating customers to their
desired products. Making sure that the design is
simple and intuitive to use can help the
customers to browse better and shop
effectively. Social Media Marketing Leveraging
social media, online grocery stores can build
brand awareness, draw online followers, and
produce online sales. Online stores can also use
social media to spread the word about latest
deals, offers and promotional codes. This causes
an increased footfall on the website and helps
generate sales. Through running PPC and social
media campaigns, stores can reach a wider
audience and help product-specific customers to
find their products easily. Social media
platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
Snapchat etc provide you with a direct way to
engage and communicate with
the audience.
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Live chat and Assistance Having a live chat bot
or a customer support assistant can assure
customers that they will receive answers to any
questions or concerns they might have. A good
online grocery store can help resolve queries and
even upsell products. An order confirmation text
or a call can put the customers at ease and can
help to smooth over a customers bad ecommerce
experiences.