The benefits of in-store sales

For grocery stores, in-store sales offer a number of advantages that can be key to delivering an optimal customer experience and fostering customer loyalty. These advantages include:

Direct customer interaction and personalized service: In-store, customers benefit from human contact and personalized service tailored to their needs and expectations. Employees can answer their questions, advise them and help them make informed choices. This direct interaction can help create a relationship of trust between customer and store, which in turn can encourage customers to return.

Touch and try before you buy: In a grocery store, customers can see, touch and sometimes even taste products before they buy. This sensory experience can be particularly important for certain products, such as fresh fruit and vegetables or bulk goods. It can also reassure customers about the quality of products, and encourage them to buy. Especially as Canadian consumers like to shop in person, with almost 73% visiting a store at least once a week.

No shipping costs for the customer: By buying in-store, customers don't have to pay shipping costs, which often add to the price of products purchased online. In fact, according to PWC, nearly 47% of Canadian consumers are very concerned about their personal finances. Finally, customers can take their purchases away immediately, without having to wait for delivery.

Simplified inventory management: On the operational side, in-store sales enable simpler inventory management (when product inventory is low), as products are directly available on site. Grocery stores don't have to have cash registers to synchronize inventory in real time online and in-store. On the one hand, this can reduce some of the costs associated with operations, but on the other it can hinder business growth, as owners won't have the tools to offer better metrics on the financial health of their business (e.g. indicators showing the best sellers).

The benefits of an online grocery store

Setting up your online grocery business offers a number of advantages, especially grocery stores looking to expand their market and offer their customers a more convenient shopping experience. Here are some of the main advantages of online sales:

Access to a wider, more diversified market: By offering online shopping, stores can reach a wider audience than those in their immediate vicinity. This attracts customers from different regions, given that in Quebec, since the pandemic, online shopping has become increasingly popular. With the transactional site, grocery stores can benefit from a larger, more diversified market. This is particularly true for specialty grocery stores, whose products are more difficult to access in remote areas. In 2019, nearly 420,000 Quebecers will be living in a food desert.

Open 24/7 for customers: With the transactional site, the business is open 24/7, enabling customers to make their purchases at any time and from anywhere. This is a considerable advantage for people with varied working hours, or who prefer to shop outside traditional store opening hours.

Possibility of offering exclusive promotions and offers online: Having the business online means you can offer promotions and special offers only available on the transactional site. This can encourage customers to buy more products and return regularly to take advantage of these offers.

Opportunity to recruit labor:

The transactional site is an additional communication channel for retailers. It can be used to advertise the company to job applicants and post job vacancies. Given that the labor shortage is a major impediment to the development of nearly , it's all the more important to leverage every asset to gain visibility with candidates.

The challenges of online sales

Providing an online shopping experience raises a number of challenges, of which the following are the most important:

Product digitization

Many grocery stores don't have their own digital product inventory. This is the first challenge when creating a transactional site for online sales. During the online purchasing process, customers will be looking for information similar to that available in-store (e.g. nutritional values, ingredients, etc.). So it's important to have high-quality photos and all relevant product information.

Setting up a high-performance transactional site

To sell online, it's essential to have an efficient, high-performance transactional site, capable of handling orders, payments and shipments. This requires an investment of time and resources in site design, development and maintenance. In addition, grocery stores need to ensure that their site is easy to navigate and offers a pleasant online shopping experience for customers. Performance is all the more crucial given that in recent years, the average attention span of an adult in front of a screen has dropped from 2 min 30 seconds to around 45 seconds.

Inventory and delivery management

To launch an online business, it's essential to have a robust inventory management system to guarantee product availability and meet customer expectations in terms of delivery times. This involves setting up real-time inventory management systems and working with reliable delivery partners (or having an in-house system) to ensure fast, efficient and inexpensive delivery of orders.

Online transaction fees

Online transaction fees charged by payment processors must be taken into account. These fees are generally higher than in-store fees, and can reduce retail margins. For example, Stripe charges 2.9% +0.30c per transaction.

Data and online transaction security

The security of data and online transactions is a major concern for customers and businesses alike. Grocery stores need to ensure that their transactional site is secure and compliant with current security standards to protect sensitive customer information, such as bank details and personal data. For more information on securing online transactions, see this article.

Quality customer service

Finally, good customer service is essential to ensure customer loyalty and satisfaction. During the online purchasing process, customers often have questions about the quality and size of the products displayed, delivery times, etc. These issues can be resolved by installing an effective chatbot and training staff. Installing an effective chatbot and training staff can help resolve these issues.

Solutions to help you succeed in your digital shift

Here are a few solutions to help you succeed when creating your transactional site:

Choosing the right grocery e-commerce platform for your business

To begin with, it's crucial to choose an e-commerce platform that suits your business and your needs. There are a number of solutions available, including Shopify, Square Space and Woocommerce. These solutions are generally suited to businesses that offer non-food products or have a limited product inventory. When it becomes essential to integrate with various, often closed, grocery store points of sale (POS), customized integrations are essential.

Not to mention that with these platforms, the retailer is responsible for digitizing its entire inventory, which can increase costs and implementation time. For grocery stores, a turnkey solution such as that offered by OneTrip is more suitable, as it includes digitization of grocery products using AI, synchronization of the store's physical inventory with that of the online store, and connection to local delivery partners. Grocery store owners no longer have to worry about the complexities of integrating with various platforms and digitizing the thousands of products in their business.

Choosing the right POS provider

Choosing the right POS provider is crucial to the development of your online business. Some systems have closed contracts that renew every 2 years or more. Others don't allow connection to third-party platforms, or don't make it easy to export information. A closed system can make it more complex to synchronize and track inventory between the transactional site and the physical store.

Optimized, reliable delivery logistics

The choice of delivery system, whether internal or external, is essential to ensure a positive online shopping experience for your customers. To choose the right delivery partner, the following criteria should be analyzed:

• Method of calculating delivery cost: does the cost vary according to parcel size or weight? Is the cost based on distance and km only?

• Delivery time: same-day delivery or several working days. In the food sector, certain fresh products may be more difficult to preserve during long-distance deliveries.

• Type of packaging required

• Type of notification sent to customers (sms, email, etc.)

• Integration with your transactional site and inventory management system

Depending on the partner chosen, costs can vary from $7.99 to over $40 per order delivered.

Have a digital marketing strategy

Creating a transactional site without marketing will have very little effect. It's important to implement simple tactics to attract and retain customers. Whether through regular posts on social networks, monthly newsletters or any other approach, it's imperative to have a strategy in place.

By implementing these solutions, you'll be able to make the most of online sales for your grocery store. Please feel free to explore the various options, or contact us if you have any questions about best practices for online success.

Should I sell my grocery products online or only in-store?

The answer to the question isn't that simple, but with the following steps, you'll be able to make an informed decision:

Age of the grocery business:

If you've just opened a grocery store and haven't yet built up a customer base, it may be more complex to create your transactional site at the same time, as you'll need to make marketing efforts on both the physical and online store. Usually, businesses that have been in existence for at least 1 year have a customer base that allows them to launch the online store more easily than newer ones.

Analyze the needs and expectations of your current customers: When you launch your transactional site, your current customers will be the first to order. So it's important to take their opinions into account before embarking on the adventure. You can conduct surveys or market research to better understand your customers' needs. The most important thing is to have clear figures on the number of orders you can expect, taking into account the average conversion rate of an online grocery site, which varies between 1% and 5%. With this conversion rate and knowing your average shopping basket, you'll be able to estimate the additional revenue a transactional site can generate for your grocery store.

Evaluate the costs and investments required:

• Implementing a modern cash register that tracks inventory is expensive. Some companies offer perpetual licenses costing close to $20,000, or monthly licenses ranging from $2,000/year to over $10,000/year.

• Implementing an online store, which can cost from a few hundred dollars a year to over $10,000/year if you need customization.

• The cost of digitizing your inventory.

• Marketing costs (promotion, customer returns, etc.) associated with online store promotion.

Consider the location of your business: Proximity to your store and ease of access to products can influence the decision between online and in-store sales. If you're located in an area with a high concentration of potential customers, in-store sales may be more beneficial. On the other hand, if your business is located in a less-frequented area, online sales can help you reach a wider audience who might find it more difficult to obtain your products.

Analyze your competition and the external environment:

The online store can be a significant competitive advantage over your competitors. For the same or a similar product offering, a business with a transactional site could have an advantage over its competition, as it will be able to serve its customers through different channels. On the other hand, if you're in a niche where almost all customers tend to visit stores only, or don't have the budget to order online, a transactional site is probably not ideal for your business.

Analyze your skills:

Opening an online store is like opening a 2nd store. This store requires marketing efforts, management of the transactional site, inventory management and so on. If you don't have the time or resources to do this, it can be more difficult to manage in addition to your business. That's why at OneTrip, we offer you a turnkey solution that allows you to automate your operations, optimize your time and have your online store in “self-pilot” mode.

Our opinion

There is no universal answer to the question of choosing between in-store and online sales for independent businesses such as grocery stores. The future of commerce seems to be omnichannel. The physical store must be present to energize commercial arteries and draw customers into the store. Subsequently, the online store provides an additional growth lever to reach new customers, but also to serve existing customers whose consumption profile evolves over time. Ideally, an online store should be added to a business' life cycle after 1 or 2 years, in order to reap the maximum benefits.

Before embarking on the online adventure, it's important for the business to assess the costs and options available. For example, if offering delivery is too costly, you can offer in-store collection and let your customers benefit from the other advantages of the online store.

At OneTrip, we understand how busy homeowners are. That's why we offer a turnkey solution that includes all the tools you need to make the digital shift a success. Don't hesitate to make an appointment to find out more!