People today are opting for convenience and they prefer using their smartphones to purchase things online. Recent survey states that out of all online marketplace sectors, online grocery stores have the highest success stories. Multiple players are on this platform and there is a high competition especially in India and U.S.A. setting up a grocery ecommerce platform will provide wider opportunities for retail grocery markets and localized customers. Many leading grocery platforms like bigbasket, letgo have gained more attention from their target audience and have maximized their returns. This fact has inspired many startups and now they seek ways on how to make an app like bigbasket or letgo. Just by following a few tips you can easily start your own grocery ecommerce platform.
Business and Audience Analysis
Before entering into any online business, it is very essential to understand what is in trend and which product has the highest demand in the market. This will help us to avoid unwanted loss in business as you will have a clear idea about your product and your audience. You need to conduct a survey and get the accurate feedback and then you should analyze the feedback. After scrutinizing the process you can start your own grocery ecommerce platform.
- Segment your users– fix your target audience and segment them with certain priorities. You can arrange them location-wise or age-wise or gender-wise. This will help you when you start promoting your brand.
- Check for users’ behavior – you need to find out the user’s behavior and know how far they prefer buying products online. This will get you a clear picture about the growth of your grocery ecommerce platform.
Build Your Grocery eCommerce Platform
After analyzing your audience and the market demand, you can start framing the features that are essential for your online grocery platform. With all essential and mandatory features you can build your grocery store.
- Build it from scratch – this is a tailor-made platform development and it completely covers all your grocery ecommerce platform requirements. If you have enough time and a heavy budget then you can prefer custom-made grocery applications.
- Readymade grocery platform solution – experienced software development companies will have readymade grocery software that will be ready to use. The software will contain all features and will meet your expectations. It is also customizable and if you are a startup then it is advisable to prefer readymade software.
Flexible Marketplace Integration
Your grocery ecommerce platform is incomplete unless it can get integrated with third party applications. There is a vast need to integrate your platform mainly for payment delivery notification and many more integrations.
- Payment gateway– this is very essential as it involves all the participants of the grocery ecommerce platform. The buyer needs to pay for a product and the sender needs to pay to the admin and admin needs to pay back sellers after deducting a commission from sellers. Apart from sellers and buyers, third-party advertisers and affiliates or also involved and you need to get and give payment.
- Shipment gateway– to simplify the purchasing process of buyers your grocery ecommerce platform should be integrated with shipment agencies. If the product is delivered on time in a secured way then the buyer will be satisfied. So this has a major impact on sales and revenue.
- Communication Gateway- through your grocery ecommerce platform you need to communicate with buyers, sellers, third-party advertisers, and affiliates on a regular basis. So you need to integrate with SMS gateways and other bulk email software.
Reads More: What are the Pros and Cons of a Free VPN?
Choose the Right Hosting Solution for Your Grocery eCommerce Platform
There are three types of hosting solutions that are commonly preferred. You need to select the one that suits your business and budget.
- Shared hosting- the most economical solution that is widely chosen by any startups and other static websites. The shared hosting solution is suggested if you lack in technical skills
- Dedicated hosting– owning a full server for hosting is termed as dedicated hosting. When your site has numerous traffic and you own a lot of resources, then you can select this type of hosting.
- Cloud hosting– the most trustworthy hosting is a cloud hosting because if there is any issue happened and the server fails, you need not worry as your website will be safe
Promote Your Grocery eCommerce Platform
Proper marketing and promotion decides the success rate of any marketplace. People need to know about your platform and should get familiar with your brand. You need to plan your advertisement investment and focus where your audiences are highly available.
- Social Media Promotion – social media is the active platform that contains millions of active users and there are several social media channels like Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter and many more. People are scattered in all platforms and you need to focus on all platforms simultaneously. This will get your grocery ecommerce platform higher visibility. Your brand will be easily recognized by your audience.
- Third-party Advertisements– allow third-party advertisers to post ads in your grocery ecommerce website. This will increase your revenue and also this will increase your site traffic. When the traffic is high you can get a good number of leads and these leads can be easily converted to sales. More advertisements you post on your site, the more revenue you can generate.
- Build Affiliates – affiliates will act as a brand ambassador and you will get reference through them. They will bring people to your site and through them you can get business. According to the sale they have generated, they will be given commission. You can focus on building affiliates as there is no need to pay them if there is no sale happening.
Conclusion
Grocery eCommerce platform market value is high and it is in its peak period. You need to grab the opportunity and can earn well through your platform. Never miss an opportunity to impress your buyers and make the platform more active and live that will hold the attention of the audience easily.
Be the first to comment on "Starting an Online Grocery Store- Everything you should know"