If you are a grocer trying to navigate the rapid increase of consumer buying behavior, you aren’t alone. In recent years, many reliable grocers experienced numerous challenges revealing the full impact of not having an ecommerce platform or the vast limitations of their existing technology.
Supermarket News predicts that online grocery sales are expected to climb from $35 billion to more than $250 billion, increasing your pressure to keep pace with the skyrocketing ecommerce demand. What used to be “nice to have” features quickly turned into “must haves” features.
In addition to the ecommerce basics like security, scalability, personalization, a single source of data, and a connected commerce experience that boosts conversions, here are three reasons why you can’t afford to miss the opportunities a digital transformation can give to your future.
Reason 1: You Could Lose Customers if you Fail to Be Agile and Consumer-Centric
IDC explains retailers that sell food and other household necessities have no choice but to invest in technology to meet customers’ new demands, competitors, and operating pressures. The worldwide pandemic crisis demonstrated just how vital a robust online commerce solution is to essential services like grocery retailers.
As customers abandon offline brick-and-mortar stores in favor of online ordering, delivery, and pickup, you must be ready to compete for customer loyalty and prepare your commerce channels for any scenario. The growth of online grocery and its long-term impact makes it clear you must improve your customer’s experience across brick-and-mortar locations and digital channels to strengthen your brand and deliver a seamless experience. You must also make investments in digital functionality, especially around search, discovery, and product information.
Reason 2: You Don’t Want to Miss Out on Harnessing Customer Data to Increase Your Profitability
The speed at which your grocery customer is changing requires agility and insight. To prepare yourself for the future, you need to own, harness, and analyze your customer data to optimize your grocery business. When you use an ecommerce solution that allows you to own and analyze your data, you can run highly personalized promotions to drive additional revenue by increasing the number of orders, order frequency, and even average order value. You can also store customer’s preferences regarding payment, pick up or delivery methods, reorders, and loyalty rewards, which can become powerful ways to fuel successful promotions, marketing, messaging, inventory management, and loyalty programs.
Technology can directly impact profitability, and your ecommerce platform can become one of your many competitive advantages. Many grocers found they lost much of their valuable online customer data when they employed a third-party platform. Find an ecommerce solution that allows you to leverage your data to elevate all areas of your business.
Reason 3: Your Competitors Won’t Wait to Personalize and Expand to Omnichannel
Omnichannel marketing becomes about providing an experience to customers that transcending any one channel, providing customers what they want, when they want it. Your customers today don’t shop exclusively in just one way. Consumers of all generations buy online, and in-store and they expect a sophisticated experience that rewards their loyalty. Using chatbots on various channels, mobile apps, websites, and social media can help guide customers with queries.
While the global pandemic was a turning point in ecommerce development, this leap in consumer confidence for grocery drives your need for a highly flexible and scalable ecommerce platform that will enable you to meet your customer’s existing and future consumer demands and expectations. Easy-to-use commerce solutions such as Quick Start Grocery, Fast Commerce Grocery and Grocery Accelerator can make it faster and easier than ever before for retailers to start or expand their digital reach to serve customers better.
Contact OSF Digital, the only global Salesforce partner to be recognized as an Expert Navigator in four major commerce categories, about how you can go to market fast with a grocery-dedicated online shop you’ll customers will love.
