Are you willing to lose 1% of your business? This one question stood out to me the most from Ignite – The Ecommerce Leadership Conference, powered by Syndigo. While brick and mortar grocery won’t be replaced by ecommerce anytime soon, grocers are currently losing at least 1% of their business to online shopping, whether it’s through Amazon, Walmart, or another competitor. In fact, a June 2019 Forbes article notes that 2% of food retail is purchased online. That number is only expected to grow as consumers become more comfortable with others selecting their fresh meat and produce. The thought of adding an ecommerce offering at your store seems overwhelming. It takes time, effort, and money to fully implement it. It can be an uncomfortable change. But as Kate noted in her recap of the event, discomfort is what leads to innovation. Innovation can lead to exponential growth. But you don’t need exponential growth right now, you just need to understand the environment. Start asking questions about costs, data files and technology integrations. Ask your customers if they’d be interested in…
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Building Profitable Sales in Online Shopping
Unlike a baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, if you build an online shopping marketplace, customers might not simply come to play. When a store first launches online shopping, a few customers will be ready to jump on board right away. Everyone else, however, will need some coaxing as they’re asked to change long-held shopping habits. The general rule is to get a customer to make three online grocery purchases to make them a regular online shopper. Beyond general marketing of the program, how else can you encourage online purchases? ONLINE & FACEBOOK ADVERTISINGFind online shoppers where they’re hanging out: the internet. Through online targeted advertising, retailers can advertise to a specific demographic on specific websites such as Better Homes & Gardens or Men’s Health. Highlight special online-only sale or even a certain item. The same can be done on Facebook. While a store’s general posts may be seen by its Facebook followers, you can pay to have your post shown to the people you want to see it, adjusted by age, gender, location and interests. Include…
Adobe Summit Recap – How Best Buy is Competing with Amazon
I recently watched a keynote session from this year’s Adobe Summit. Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Adobe, sat down to chat with Hubert Joly, the CEO of Best Buy. Joly shared some innovative ideas that may encourage any retailer who feels their business has been disrupted by the digital world. Seven years ago, Best Buy knew they needed to do something so they didn’t “die” to Amazon. They had to find a way to reach customers other than by selling them a product. They discovered customers were coming into their store to shop for products and then leaving the store to buy those products from Amazon. To discourage that, Best Buy started price matching Amazon. This was part of their Renew Blue, a marketing campaign about rebuilding the company and fixing what was broken. They also invested resources into their website and online shopping capabilities. They now ship as fast as Amazon does, for FREE. And they’ve invested in their employees to improve the customer’s in-store experience. Then came the marketing campaign, Building The New Blue, which is about reinventing…
Disappointment in Online Grocery Shopping
This blog post started as a recap of recent news in the online grocery world. I got about halfway through last night and decided to finish today. Then I tried to shop for groceries online over my lunch hour. Let’s talk about that. I’m having a party to watch football at 11AM tomorrow morning, so I want to pick up my groceries on the way home from work this evening. Those egg casseroles need to sit in the fridge all night, after all. Online grocery options on my way home or near my home are currently limited to Hy-Vee, Walmart, and Instacart. I’ve used Instacart in the past, and as a customer I’m not wild about their product markups and service fees. So I thought I’d check out Hy-Vee’s service. After filling my online cart, I go to check out. I realize they have the wrong store selected, so I change it. After making the store change, I see I can’t pick up the groceries until the 6-7PM window. That’s later than I want to pick up, so I change…
The Best Way to Ensure a Successful Online Shopping Program
Just like in store, providing high-quality customer service can make or break your online shopping program. In a recent digitaltrends.com article, writer Erika Rawes tries out Walmart’s free grocery pickup service, but waits more than 30 minutes from the time she pulled up to the store to collect her family’s groceries to the time she leaves. Once home, she finds out she was charged for 10 missing items. If I personally had this experience, I doubt I’d try it again and I would guess that I’m not alone. The whole point to offering curbside pickup is to make grocery shopping easier and faster for the customer. Selecting a partner that provides a clean and user-friendly online experience is the first step, but after that, it’s up to your team to provide a pleasant experience for your customer. First, you have to select a personal shopper who knows what they’re doing. They need to know how to pick and handle the freshest produce and other perishable items. As a customer, I’d rather not get a carton of milk (or any perishable…
Do you need online shopping customers’ approval on produce?
Time and again when online shopping is brought up some Negative Nancy inevitably says “What about produce?” like they are the first person to think of this potential problem. Setting aside the fact that the average person really doesn’t know how to pick out ripe produce, stores train their staff in how to spot a good tomato. If a store is going to be really successful in the online shopping game then they will have a well trained staff who know what produce to select for you. Despite hearing this, some customers will remain unconvinced. To combat this Walmart has patented the “Fresh Online Experience”. According Supermarket News, customers would be able to “order produce, meat and bakery items online using stock photos, but then have the opportunity to approve the actual items being purchased via image scans (either two- or three-dimensional) sent to them by Walmart store workers.” After the customer’s approval the items wold be tagged with an “edible watermark” to show it was indeed the item the customer selected. Perhaps this technology will become the standard. However,…
How to Promote Your Online Shopping…Online
Does your store offer online shopping? Do your customers know about the program? …are you sure that they do? Online shopping is part of the future of grocery retail. In 2016, one in five shoppers had an online purchase and that will likely increase to one in three this year. Yet in a survey of 500 consumers, 41% of shoppers didn’t know if their stores offered online shopping (2017 Online Shopping Forecast). As Kate mentioned in a recent blog post, online shopping isn’t an “if you build it, they will come” program. When launching an online shopping program, your marketing and advertising campaigns need to inform your customers about the program and teach them how to use it. Kate also noted that digital marketing is key to these campaigns. While in-store promotion is necessary, digital marketing will point customers directly to the online shopping platform and that gives them a chance to see it and hopefully try it! Here are some examples of AWG retailers who are using digital marketing to promote their online shopping programs: Website Do more than…
Trends in email marketing
The marketing platform company emfluence held their annual conference Friday, Sept. 25. The event had plenty of speakers and there were tons of people there to learn from. If you are involved with digital marketing in anyway I highly suggest you attend. The session I got the most out of was a panel discussion about trends in email marketing and automation. Here are some of the trends they highlighted: Web-based email account for 31 percent of all opens. Gmail claims 21 percent market share. – The big news this year is the increased ability in adding creative elements to emails. Gmail now allows for responsive designs, improved font styling and better support for many CSS properties. HTML5 Video is now supported in iOS 10. – Apple supporting HTML5 allows video to be embedded in emails. This allows for a more interactive experience right in the email instead of having to go to a website. Interactive emails – More things are able to be done right in the email than ever before. This lowers the barriers for engagement and makes clickers…
Internet Technology and It’s Crazy Capabilities
I attended a presentation on technology and consumer trends. Here’s a little of what I came back with. Ever log onto the Interwebs to browse your favorite sites and an advertisement pops up? Of course you have. Did you think it was coincidence that the ad was promoting something you had searched before? Well, it wasn’t. In fact that advertisement was specifically for you. I know you’re thinking to yourself. How is that even possible?! I knew the government was hiding aliens! No, not really, well maybe, who can really be sure. What I can tell you; is that aliens didn’t generate that advertisement; it was delivered to your screen by something called AI (Augmented Intelligence). Augmented Intelligence is a technology that analyzes 2.5 Exabytes per day. What’s an Exabyte? I know, I had to look it up too, but to save you time I’ll share. An Exabyte is one quintillion bytes, or one billion gigabytes. Gigabytes are one billion bytes, so it’s a billion times a billion times 2.5…A LOT of data. We all contribute data. The sites you…
Pros & Cons of Meal Kit Delivery: What Retailers Should Know
Earlier this year, Jason shared a blog post introducing the phenomena of meal kits and the quick growth this market has experienced. I’ve heard a lot of hype about meal kits and finally decided to give one a try. Not only was I curious about their popularity, I also figured it would be great market research. By knowing the pros and cons of meal kit subscriptions, retailers can use this information to compete in this attractive market that’s taking dollars away from grocery stores. The Study The meal kit service I subscribed to is Plated. Pricing for this service is about $12 per serving and around $6 for shipping. Subscribers can choose to buy two to seven meals per week, each at two to three servings per meal. After filling out a quick survey on food preferences, Plated picks meals that it thinks you will like for the week; however, you can swap meals to match your personal flavor preferences from a choice of about seven to ten recipes. Pros Ingredients: I’ve cooked four meals so far, and everything I’ve…