Great, if you are reading this post. You have decided to do something different. The very first thing is find out why do we need to start selling grocery online.
Why to start online grocery store
For one moment forget that you are a seller. Ask few questions to yourself
Do you like doing online shopping sitting at home? Do you like checking the price and waiting for right time to grab the deal? Do you like returning the products which doesn’t fit well?
I guess you have got the answer. Online provides comfort, off hours shopping opportunity, competitive pricing. This is something can get you loyal customers. If you don’t provide this experience someone else will do. Companies such as Milkbasket, Bigbasket, suprdaily etc. Better you try it now.
Online Grocery Store
Must have features for grocery e-commerce stores
Easy of use
Any platform you choose, you need to to ensure that you understand the basics of it. Try exploring for 2-3 days.
Support
Talk to their support team to see how they handle the boring questions. You can read the reviews in various platforms. Make sure that you understand paid and real reviews.
Pricing
Pricing is very crucial part of decision making as there are many platforms available with very different pricing. You need to see what pricing is good with you assuming you find it easy to use. In case if you are first time running an e-commerce store then start more carefully.
Slot & Distance based delivery
Grocery store customers are usually local customers which a quicker delivery. Customer can’t wait for long else they might step out and buy themself from some other place. Your platform must provide slots such as morning (10-12 PM), afternoon (3-4PM) etc so that customer can make selection based on their comfort.
At times, if customer is at little distance, you can charge for the delivery based on how far they are rather than not taking the orders and tie-up with local delivery companies for delivery. This will add additional revenue. Make sure your platform provides such functionality.
Consumer App
Consumer app becomes important in frequent buying cases such as grocery. This provides customer faster access to the daily essential items. Apart from ease of access, you also get better control over your customers by sending offers and promotions to your customers directly.
Delivery App
Assuming you got initial success when running grocery store. It may become a nightmare to handle the deliveries. So before you signup for any e-commerce platform. You must ensure that it has delivery app in some plans if not in basic plans.
Apart from above distinct features, you also need to ensure that payment is settled quickly and various online payment modes are provided. You have been provided access to desktop and mobile app both so that your team can share the load once it starts growing.
Available Platforms
Bikayi
Bikayi being early to the market has many of the above features but they lack in delivery app and they are very very expensive. Do checkout their support responses as well before you makeup your mind.
Dukaan
Dukaan being slightly newer player in the space is providing many of the needed features such as consumer app (they don’t publish it), distance based deliver. They don’t have slot based deliveries but may provide some workaround. They don’t provide delivery app and pricing is just ok.
Shopify
Talking about e-commerce apps/sites, we must use the reference with leaders like Shopify. They are no doubt leaders in e-commerce space. However they are very expensive and don’t offer many of the above features out of the box. You might have use some third party plugins. These plugins are really really expensive. I bet some of the plugins are so expensive that you can buy other listed platform subscription in the cost.
Shoopy
Shoopy provides very tailored solution to the grocery stores. Apart from features listed above such as delivery app, consumer app etc, Shoopy offers superb in-store operation support such as invoicing, inventory management etc. The best part is that the pricing is very affordable. You must try once before trusting this blog.
Download the Shoopy Business App (One Business One App).