Do you intend to build an e-commerce website for your grocery business but are not sure about the essential features that your store must have?
Perhaps, you already have a grocery e-commerce store and looking to add more useful features to grow your sales.
Whichever the case, you will find this blog post useful. Here, we have shared 8 essential features that your grocery online store must have.
Let’s get started.
#1 Repeat Order
Since grocery products are used frequently by its consumers, they may need to order the same order repeatedly.
Therefore, it makes sense for your website developer to provide a feature to make repeated orders so that your customers can place their recurring orders hassle-free.
#2 Subscription
Grocery products are such that the consumers need them regularly on a weekly or monthly basis. Therefore, it would be a good idea if your e-commerce website has a provision for them to subscribe to a product or set of products & receive them every week or month.
For instance, if a customer consumes a few vegetables every week, he or she can subscribe to receive those items every week, without going to your website and placing an order again and again.
All your website developer needs to do is allow the consumers to save their desired products for subscription and give consent to deduct the money automatically through the system.
#3 Notifications
As an administrator, you must be able to send out regular notifications to all of your existing customer base about the new arrivals and discount codes.
This feature will allow you to grab more sales & revenue from the same customers. A notification can be sent to the customers in the form of email, SMS, or push notification (if you have a mobile app too).
#4 Discount Codes
Everyone loves discounts. Who doesn’t?
Through discount codes, you can encourage your customers to place more orders on your e-commerce store by paying lesser amount.
As an administrator, you must be able to create discount codes through the backend system of your e-commerce website hassle-free. So, you must insist your website developer provide you with this option.
#5 First Order Discount
Your regular customers may know your quality & services, but what about the new buyers.
The buyers are always hesitant to make purchases on a new website. Therefore, you must use some strategies to reduce their reluctance and first order discount is one of them.
By providing your new buyers discount on their first order with your e-commerce store, you encourage them to make a decision and buy products from your website.
There are many plugins and modules available that can be easily integrated with your website to provide first order discount. Therefore, your website designer can easily do this job for you, within the same website design cost.
#6 Guest Checkout
The e-commerce websites that force their users to create an account with them before they can make any purchase, tend to lose a lot of potential orders.
Don’t let this happen to you.
Your grocery e-commerce store must have an option for the users to checkout as a guest in order to make payment & place their order with you. Do not force them to register first and then place the order.
Recommended post: 6 Effective ways to get more sales from the mobile checkout
#7 Cart Sharing
Cart sharing is one of the best strategies to grow your customer base. By allowing your users to share their cart with their friends and community members, you get not only more orders but also helps to enhance your business branding.
A user can share his or her cart through email or social media channels.
#8 Payment Options
Not everybody is comfortable paying with their credit or debit cards. So, you must allow your customers to checkout & pay through different payment methods as well.
You need to study your target market and the prevailing payment methods there. Perhaps, you can also provide COD (cash on delivery) option for your customers if your business policies allow it.
The more payment options an e-commerce website has, the lesser order abandonment rate it will have.
Recommended post: 4 Major payment gateways that you can integrate with your eCommerce website
