Ecommerce Online Grocery Website Development

Digitisation of the world encourages the business to come on the online platforms and increase their reach. Various companies get benefited from the leverage of online mode. In recent years we have noticed that grocery store owners also come out from the traditional brick and mortar stores and spread their wings on the digital world. If you plan to start an online grocery store and move the already established grocery store to a digital platform, you must have a robust website to kickstart your journey. Read this article and start from today. It covers everything you must know about online grocery website development, so read it entirely before moving to set your online store. The recent covid-19 pandemic has been the biggest motivation for grocery owners for their online grocery website development. Lockdown imposed worldwide to control pandemic spread has shut the doors of many brick and mortar grocery stores. In this challenging time, the internet world remained their most extensive support and survived their business.

The pandemic also pushes customers to buy essential products digitally. Ecommerce has become the new way of doing business. Now from fashion to food, stationary to grocery, everything they want to order from the comfort of their home. Various other factors which attract grocery owners to set up a business online are less cost in setting up an online store and the opportunity to gain customers even from a longer distance. Hence in this 21st century, having a website built with essential features is a brilliant way to increase the reach of your grocery store at a minimal cost. If you are in a dilemma about whether developing a website for your online grocery business would benefit you or not, then have a look at these stats.

• Amid the covid-19 pandemic, tens of millions of consumers in the US became online grocery buyers for the first time. It is predicted that in the future, shopping online will become a consumer’s habit. Check out the below graph, which shows changes in the grocery shopping patterns of consumers over time.

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• 2.14 billion people in the world shop online in 2021, which is 27.6% of the overall world population(7.74 billion).

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Don’t these stats amaze you?

After going through these stats, we are sure that your curiosity to learn more about online grocery website development has skyrocketed. Many questions related to it are scribbling in your mind. Some of them are:

• What are the advantages of online grocery website development?
• What are the must-have features for a profitable online grocery website development?
• How to start online grocery website development?

Have some patience. You’re going to get a well-explained answer in this article. So, let’s get started right away.

What are the advantages of online grocery website development?

Setting up an online store for your grocery shop provides various advantages to both customers and retailers. The future of your business is in the hands of customers, so if they are benefited, it will directly impact your store revenue.

Advantages to Consumers

• Shop from home

Online grocery shopping provides flexibility to customers to buy from the comfort of their homes. They don’t have to plan it prior, and they can order at any time of the day, early morning to late night. Along with that, they don’t need to check the store hours and no need to worry about when they restock the shelves. Various other benefits like same-day or within some hour delivery also attract the customers to buy groceries online. Amid the covid-19 pandemic, shopping from home is evolved out as the best to maintain social distance and control the spread of the pandemic. In fact, it is encouraged by the government bodies as well. 

• Time-saving

Along with money, it’s a smart decision if you can also save your time today. One of the most significant advantages of online shopping is time-saving.  The primary purpose of online grocery website development is to provide the power of remote shopping into the hands of consumers. Maybe it is a pleasure for someone to walk around in the shopping mall and fill the cart with their choices. But everyone does not have unlimited time to do it. The commencement of grocery stores on online platforms is a blessing for these people.

• Save money with price comparison

Customers can easily compare the prices of products of different brands while buying groceries online. They can easily browse by product or see the list of available products at their fingertips. Consumers can see the available discounts and coupons and quickly make the purchase decision; they don’t need to approach anyone to get updated on prevailing offers.

• Shop by history

The ability to use the shopping history to make repeated purchases is also one of the crucial benefits of online grocery shopping for customers. The grocery websites store the order history of users. Hence online stores provide the privilege to customers to do quick shopping by simply adding the products from history to the cart and checkout. 

Some of the grocery delivery websites like BIGBASKET recorded your preference for item replacement as well. As a result, you don’t have to create the shopping list for each order from scratch, saving time.

Advantages to Retailers

• Less Inventory management

Unlike the physical stores, you don’t need shelf space to manage your grocery, which is very expensive in big cities. In virtual stores, everything is in the form of product images with price tags. You don’t need to buy a premium location for stock storage. As your customers will not see them, even they are not bothered where the stock is stored. They are only interested in discounts and offers they are receiving and on-time delivery of groceries. Hence reduced inventory and fewer store charges are the two biggest advantages retailers gain through online grocery website development.

• Tracking consumer behaviour

Today’s biggest struggle is finding out what shoppers want and make them happy such as changing trends in products bought, seasonal buying habits, the reason for rejection of any product, and many more. But in an online store, it is effortless to evaluate consumers’ behaviour by going through their past shopping history. With the help of your online grocery store, you can quickly figure out unsold stocks and highly profitable products. In this way, you can get an idea about which products of which brand are more preferable and accordingly fill your inventory with those products only and reduce the less demand one.

• Less investment

Setting up an online store or website is comparatively cheaper than physical stores. You have to invest in purchasing land, designing your store, appointing staff, electricity, and more in physical stores. While in the virtual or online one, you just need a domain, hosting, and a team of developers. Managing and maintaining virtual stores is undoubtedly cheaper and easier than physical ones. 

• Reach new customers

You aren’t limited to customers within a particular geographical space on the online channels. Instead, you can easily reach out to customers more than thousands of miles away from you. An ecommerce selling can take on different channels, and each channel has its unique audience. With your online grocery website, you can even reach international buyers. Marketplaces like Amazon provide a wider audience and help you find the market related to your niche. Other than that, in marketplaces like – Etsy, Poshmark, etc., you can approach a server-specific audience looking for particular products.

• Can scale the business quickly

The crucial benefit of the online store is, it makes it easier to scale your business. Due to limited space, it is not easy to grow your product line in brick and mortar stores and add more cashiers. While in virtual stores, when people are clicking and buying, you can increase your ad budget without thinking about how to cope with the demand. As in online shops, with the help of dropshipping, you can easily add new products to your store without worrying much about holding inventory or shipping products. Hence online stores allow you to grow your business quickly and smoothly.

Advantages to both Consumers & Retailers

• Payment option

The physical stores have limited payment options. At max, they can offer the facility of credit/debit card payment. While in online mode, there are various options of payment like- scan and pay, RFID card, and EMI option, which attracts the customers most. 

• Give more options to customers

With the increasing competition, brands are coming with new products with enhanced features and quality. In physical stores, it is impossible to accommodate all demanding products within the limited shelf space. This is not an issue in online grocery shops; retailers simply need to add more images with each new product arriving in the market. The shoppers have more products of different brands to compare, and retailers have more space to display more products to customers. In this way, both shoppers and retailers get benefited.

• Create a Loyalty program and offer deals

As we all know, retaining customers is much more challenging than gaining new customers. In order to intact your customers, running a loyalty program in physical stores will increase your load as more cashiers and employees you have to appoint to tackle the increasing crowd. At the same time, it is just a ballgame on the website as there is no limitation. Hence, customers benefit by receiving exclusive offers sitting at home, and retailers don’t waste money on space.

What are the must-have features for a profitable online grocery website development?

You can add various features to your grocery website to improve the user experience. The website design should be simple and allow customers to navigate from one page to another easily. The less time the user takes to shop for products, the more they will love to shop again. There are various essential features; adding them to your website will attract more customers and retain current ones. Let’s discuss some of the best here.

• Smart search

A smart search engine should be integrated into your website. So that whenever a customer searches for any product, it will display results quickly. Along with that, also include offline functionality so that even without internet access, users can browse on the website.

• Single click adds to cart

After searching, customers will do two actions: buy the product or move to another page. If they want to buy, a single click adds to cart feature will be beneficial. If they are not interested, make sure they don’t lose interest in shopping while moving to other pages. Indirectly encourage the customers to shop more with one click add to cart feature. Also, the cart’s total value should be displayed on the top, which will further help them to track their budget.

• Product Return

It is always the primary concern of customers whether the product will return or not in case of broken product or wrong product delivered. Must add the feature to return the product by the customer on your website, it helps to gain their trust.  

• Filter option

Add a filter option in your eCommerce website to ease customers’ efforts while looking for a particular product. These options can be based on price, weight, Brand name, etc. Do ensure to provide these filter options at the appropriate place. 

• Push notification

It is one of the best features to hold your current customers. Using these push notifications, you can do many things like greet them on good days, notify them of ongoing or upcoming offers, and remind them to buy their monthly groceries. One thing to notice here is that too many notifications will irritate the customers. Still, the correct usage of this feature- the correct information to the right customer at the right time will surely help your business.

• Secure payment option

After browsing for hours and selecting the product of their choice, customers expect smooth and secure payment options. The customers feel safer when they get the payment option of their choice. However, in online shopping, gaining the trust of customers is vital, as payment is online. It is found out that more payment options an online grocery store has less is the order abandonment rate. Hence must integrate multiple payment options into your website.

• Order and deliver tracking with GPS

Once an order is placed, customers are always curious to know the status of their order. To provide such information, you need to integrate proficient order tracking software within your website. The trustworthiness of your business increases many folds if customers can track the delivery boy location via GPS or if Google maps are integrated.

• Review and rating

It will help you in two ways. Allow customers to share their shopping experience through the review and rating section. If you get good reviews, it will help to attract new customers, and in case if you get bad reviews, take them as feedback and improve your services.

• Subscription

Consumers consume grocery products on a weekly and monthly basis. It would be a great idea to allow your customers to subscribe to a set of products and deliver them weekly or monthly. You just need to allow the customers to subscribe to the product. And take their consent to deduct the amount automatically.

How to start online grocery website development?

After knowing the advantages of setting up the online grocery store and learning about the features that will help attract customers and retain the current ones, we are confident that you are excited to start your online grocery store. 

 There are two ways to start your journey. 

• Ecommerce website builders
• Professional web development companies

First, talk about ecommerce website builders; these are the platforms where you can easily design your online grocery store by using a simple drag and drop option and without touching a single line of code. It is best for startups and small businesses with the minimum initial investment. 

                                                                                                Best Ecommerce website builders

Pros and cons of an Ecommerce website builders

Pros

1. No coding skills are required.
2. Cheap and fast
3. Easy to export
4. No design skills required

Cons

1. Not suitable for professional business
2. Limited features and functionality
3. Slow loading time
4. Not SEO-friendly
5. Poor support and maintenance
6. The free version has a limited number of pages

Although with website builders designing your dream website has become easier and cheaper than ever. If you are a start-up, then it’s good to go with ecommerce website builders. But you can achieve only limited features and functionality in your grocery website. If you desire a great looking site with all the features mentioned above and extensive functionality, it is better to go with web development companies. With the help of a professional development team, you can achieve a highly customisable site with the exact look and feel you think of. At APPWRK IT Solutions Pvt limited, our experienced full stack developers will convert your dream of an online grocery website development into reality within your budget and time frame.

How can APPWRK help in online grocery website development?

APPWRK IT Solution is a leading industry in web designing and web development. With over 10 years of experience, this firm has driven the business to its deserved success level. Appwrk has launched more than hundreds of website projects in various domains, including grocery business worldwide. We integrate content-based grocery website design into the two most robust and scalable website platforms for content-based websites-  Joomla and WordPress. To achieve a highly complex online grocery website development, our on-site  Laravel developers will work with you to cater for any programming requirements. We believe that communication and availability are the main keys to a successful grocery website development. That’s why we boast a wonderful experience for every grocery store client. If still any queries remain untouched, contact our support team at any time.

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Process followed at APPWRK for online grocery website development

• Research- First, our development team, project manager, and analyst dive deeper to understand your business needs, target audience, market trends, and competitors analysis.
• Strategy Building- After proper research, it is clear now what we need to do and how to accomplish it. We’ll build a sound strategy considering your budget and time frame. We will ensure it will align perfectly with your business goals and KPI’s
• Design- With our designer’s expertise, we will create wireframes and mock-ups, taking your brand and UX into account. After receiving your approval on that, we move to the development phase.
• Development- Our experienced team of developers will complete your online grocery website development using their deep understanding of PHP, CSS, and HTML.
• Quality Assurance and Launch- Finally, your grocery website will be launched and continuously tracked to ensure it is functioning properly.
• Maintenance & Support- Regularly updating your website is necessary to keep it in the competition race. In case of any updates or other issues, you will get quick maintenance and support from us. Our support team is 24/7 available at your service.

If you wonder how our professional development services can help you scale your website, let’s look at the technologies we employ.

APPWRK expertise in website development

• Microsoft Technologies
• PHP Development
• Mean Stack (Angular)
• Mern Stack (ReactJS)
• Python Development
• Database Solution

Quality Services delivered at APPWRK IT Solutions

• WordPress or Joomla platform setup and configuration
• Customised design that is responsive and mobile-friendly
• Free tips for conversion rate improvement
• CMS platform training for basic website edits
• Post-launch, SEO, Social Media, and PPC review
• Conversion tracking on a contact form
• A 24/7 support via call, chat or email
• Complete transparency from development to deployment

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How long will it take to develop an ecommerce grocery website?

 A:   It will take around 10 to 15 days for the website to go live.

Q: How much does it cost to develop a grocery website like Walmart, Bigbasket and Grofers?

A:   The grocery website development will cost in the range of $10,000 to $ 40,000. If you want to go for an hourly rate, it is around $10 to $ 80 per hour. In this case, more the time for development higher will be the development cost. So it’s better to go by one-time charges; it will be cheaper.

Q: How can we market grocery store websites?

A:   There are various ways to market your online store. Some of them are- social media marketing, google product advertisement, custom introductory marketing campaigns, and many others. Reach out to our marketing team to learn more about how to maximise the reach of your grocery store.

Word From Author

 Over the past few years, the shopping pattern of customers has changed. With the digitisation of the world and the commencement of smartphones, both consumers and retailers understood the importance of online platforms. Now it is easier for both of them to buy and sell products from the comfort of their home. Like all other industries, the food industry also tried its hand in the internet world and got success like others. Hence it’s always a wise decision to start your journey on online platforms. So, if you want to set up a website for your grocery store, we believe this article will surely help you. We have covered everything you must know before starting your journey of online grocery website development.