Today, more and more consumers prefer online grocery shopping over the conventional way of shopping for grocery needs from departmental stores. Certainly, the choice of smart consumers purchasing groceries online has accelerated during a pandemic. It has made entrepreneurs start their online grocery store by investing in online grocery website development to be part of this profitable sector.
According to studies, online grocery shopping is expected to grow immensely at a CAGR of 23.7 percent by the year 2020-2025. Also, according to research, the grocery e-commerce business will touch $250 Billion in the next five years.
So, the stats above will encourage a lot of entrepreneurs to develop an interest in the grocery e-commerce market. If you find the above stats interesting and wanted to know about e-commerce online grocery website development, key features, benefits, etc then read on before you build an e-commerce grocery store.
What Are The Benefits of Online Grocery Website Development?
Well, starting your online grocery store will bring in multiple benefits for both retailers and customers and will generate revenues for your store.
Benefits Of An Online Grocery Store To Consumers
1) Order and Get Groceries Delivered From The Comfort Of Their House
Consumers can make the most of convenient ordering without stepping out of the house.
- No more making a list of grocery items in advance, spare time, and get ready to visit the grocery store to purchase the grocery stuff.
- Do not need to stock grocery items and keep a check on their shelf life.
- Can opt for same-day or one-hour delivery too
2) Helps Save Time and Money
Certainly, one of the main benefits of shopping online for groceries is its time-saving factor.
- Well, the main objective of online grocery store development is to help the consumers enjoy remote shopping without visiting the actual store
- Online platforms for grocery shopping have helped people meet their daily needs of groceries without spending time traveling to the grocery store.
3) Compare Price To Save Money
Online grocery stores allow customers to compare prices of different brands and products while searching for groceries online.
- Consumers can search through products within a few clicks to check the availability
- Consumers can check if any coupons or discounts are available before deciding on their purchase.
4) Refer Order History To Buy Again
Consumers can check their shopping history to shop for products bought in the past and re-order them.
- Order history is amongst the prominent benefits of online grocery stores for consumers
- The product from order history can be added to the cart again and proceed to check out to purchase them again.
Benefits Of An Online Grocery Store To Retailers
1. Easy Inventory Management
Online stores do not need physical space to manage the groceries.
- To rent or buy a space for the grocery store in cities turns out to be quite expensive
- For online stores, the store management includes managing price tags and product images
- As a retailer, you don’t need to rent or purchase the right place to stock your grocery items.
- The customers just need on-time delivery and deals and discounts from the retailer no matter where the groceries are stored.
So, less inventory management is the primary benefit that retailers get via online grocery website development.
2. Keep A Check On Consumer Behavior
One of the prime concerns for retailers is to know their consumer behavior with the change in buying trends. It becomes difficult to know why a particular product is rejected by the consumers, what is their buying pattern during the festive season etc.
- With an online store, it is easy to assess the buying behavior of the consumers through their past buying history.
- An online grocery store helps you identify the unsold stock as well as products that make more profits. It helps you decide on the brands and products that need considerable stock and the ones that have less demand.
3. Minimal Investment
As compared to starting a physical store, setting up an online store comes with less investment.
- Physical stores need you to buy land, pay for staff, infrastructure, etc
- To set up your online store you just need a domain, hosting service, and tech experts.
- Virtual store management and maintenance turn out to be less than that of physical stores.
4. Connect With New Customers
When it comes to getting new customers, you are not restricted to a certain location while selling groceries through online platforms.
- You can connect with new customers even staying miles away from your city.
- You can connect with customers at an international level through an online grocery website.
5. Can Scale The Business Quickly
One of the integral benefits of an online store is to scale your grocery business without any hassles.
- Physical stores sometimes do not allow you to expand or stock more products.
- In the case of online stores, dropshipping helps add more products to your store without thinking about inventory and shipping of products.
- Online stores help your grocery business grow faster
Common Benefits of Online Grocery Store Development For Retailers and Consumers
1. Multiple Payment Options
When it comes to payment options, physical stores come with a few payment options. All they can offer is debit/credit card payment facilities.
On the other hand, online stores offer multiple payment options like :
- Scan & Pay
- EMI option
- REFID card etc
2. Multiple Options Available For The Customers
Physical stores are not well-equipped to add the latest products due to limited shelf storage. Online grocery stores help retailers to add as many products as they want to. This is because they just need to add product images to the online store for new products.
As far as the customers are concerned, they can browse through several products and compare the prices and brands to select the best retailer.
3. Offer Deals and Loyalty Program
To gain and retain customers, you can run a loyalty program. Now running a loyalty program in your physical store can increase the workload on your staff to manage the crowd.
With an online store, you can run multiple loyalty programs and offer deals that can be used by the customers right through their smartphones or computers
Key Features For A Successful Online Grocery Website Development
To your grocery website, you can include different features to enhance the user experience. Make sure you keep simple navigation and website layout to help users browse through your website easily. Let us look at the key features that can be incorporated into your online grocery website :
- Smart search
- Product Return
- Add to the cart through a Single click
- Filter option
- Secure payment methods
- Push notification
- GPS to track order and delivery
- Subscription
- Review & rating
How To Go About Online Grocery Website Development?
Now that you are aware of the benefits of establishing an online grocery store, its features, it is time to start building your grocery store. You can set up your online store in 2 different ways :
- Develop from scratch
- Use ready-made solutions for building grocery e-commerce stores.
If you want to develop your online grocery store from scratch, you would need an expert website design and development company to perform research, deployment, testing, development, etc. It will be time-consuming and expensive but you will have custom solutions that will meet your business goals and pay you in the long run.
Ready-made Solutions
Talking about ready-made solutions, they turn out to be cost-effective as compared to building the store from the scratch. Certainly, it is a less time-consuming process. A lot of grocery website development services also provide ready-made solutions to help you build an online grocery store with ideal features and functionalities.
Well both the options mentioned above have their pros and cons, so you can consult a reliable website development company in the USA or your city to discuss your requirements and choose solutions accordingly.
How WebFox Can Be Your Ideal Tech Partner To Build An Effective Grocery Store?
WebFox is a trusted website development company in USA that offers impeccable solutions for all types of websites and mobile apps. Our team of developers has vast experience in offering extraordinary solutions for online grocery store websites to help you generate more revenues.
- We have an experienced team of designers who can deliver the best-suited grocery store website design for your online store.
- We have completed multiple e-commerce website development projects successfully.
- We follow best practices and methodology.
- We meet project deadlines
- We offer complete maintenance and support to let your website function smoothly