Looking for the perfect recipe for blending content and commerce? We have some to share! OSF Digital Strategy team will release the 2022 Grocery Omnichannel Retail Index (“Index”) mid-September. Updated from pre-pandemic 2019, this report provides the ingredients for best practices and trends. Our consultants mystery-shopped and reviewed 50 food retailers’ websites noting the best tasting features and what is too salty for shoppers. Time to update your recipe box with new opportunities to satisfy your customers' appetites.
Today’s food retailers are driving commerce by serving up shoppable content, making it convenient for consumers to shop for groceries and meals online. This year, the Index revealed an 88% overall adoption rate of offering content such as videos, recipes, and brand manufacturer content on their sites, up 10% from 2019. Our benchmarkers noted some great examples of grocers integrating content and commerce, providing value to the shoppers.
One grocer does a fantastic job making their recipes shoppable right on the recipe page, listing the ingredients that can be easily added to the cart, a feature that 48% of indexed grocers offer. They also promote their pre-made food or meal kits in case you don't want to make the meal from scratch!
A different regional grocer offers recipes and the ability to add the ingredients to the cart (or their list if they want to save the product for next week’s haul), but they take it one step further. Customers are offered multiple options for each ingredient allowing them to really personalize the recipe to their preference. A fitting example of guided shopping done right and making it a tailored, tasty experience for the consumer.
Our shoppers found some disappointments with content + commerce. For example, one food retailer’s website is only used as a content destination. They have a lot of great content, but it's not tied to commerce. This experience could frustrate a shopper and have them abandon the site.
Our mystery shopper saw some disconnects with lists, too. On some sites, the shopper had to go to the PDP (product detail page) to add the item to favorites or a list. It would be much more convenient if the customer could add to the list from the PLP (product landing page) and save the extra click. Another issue was adding items to the cart from a saved list. The pain point occurs when the customer wants to move a single item from the list to the cart and it defaults to adding the whole list to the cart. It's not always intuitive how to add just one item from the list.
Whether you are a foodie or not, you can get more grocery insights from the Grocery Omnichannel Retail Index. Be on the lookout around mid-September for the 2022 report release; it’ll be packed with findings! For more information, contact us.
