What would you get by combining local delivery portals like Instacart and FoodPanda, plus a local laundry scheduling and delivery service added to it? Websites like delivery.com, that’s what you get.
By combining local food, groceries, and laundry delivery networks, this marketplace provides a complete solution for online shopping from the local market. FATbit team, having covered clone script features for exclusive marketplaces for food & grocery delivery services, could not ignore this fused business model and some of its unique offerings. So here are the nitty-gritty details of what we call the king of online delivery services. Let’s see why:
Business Model for Local Delivery System
Such local delivery websites are built with the idea of gathering the entire local brick and mortar market and putting it online. Through these portals, people can order almost anything online from local stores and get it delivered either at their homes or pick it up from the shop whenever they wish to.
A Fusion of Marketplaces
Essentially, your local delivery system will be a hybrid version of a number of marketplaces with different product categories, which include:
In addition to that, you can also add office supplies as a special category in your local delivery platform.
Typically, local delivery systems have two modules – one for consumers and the other for merchants. For consumers, the website should deliver a seamless way to shop locally by storing their credit information and favorite stores. To merchants, the site should provide a comprehensive platform to list their products and services, not just to cater existing customers but also to get found by new ones.
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Now let’s point out the revenue generation channels of this business model.
Revenue Generation Model: How the site makes money?
For consumers, the platform should be free. So, the site primarily makes money through the merchants listed with it. Below is the list of revenue channels that you can add in your local delivery network:
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Commission: Like other online delivery networks, the website will cut a set commission from every order that listed merchants get from the website
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On-site promotion: Merchants should be provided a number of options to promote their services on the site. These options include:
1. Banner Ad
2. Sponsored Listing
3. Custom Web Page
4. Hyperlocal deals
5. Local social media outreach
Now let’s discuss the essential website features that you will need in your local deliver system clone script.
Website Features and User Interface
Web layout of your local delivery portal should be neat & clean and its navigation intuitive. Consider putting a search tool box in the banner section of the homepage. Here are the important things to keep in mind while implementing the search functionality:
- Option to select between product categories, i.e. food, grocery, laundry, or office supply
- Location
Depending on the category a user has selected, there should be appropriate filter options on the result page. For instance, if the user has selected food, then cuisine becomes an obvious filter.
Placing an Order
To begin with the order, users first must be asked to provide their street address, so that the site can suggest better results to them. On the search result page users should be provided following options:
- Do a keyword search for the item they are looking for
- Check out merchant’s quick details and ratings
Clicking through a merchant on the result page should take users to the merchant’s store page. Here users would get following option:
- Menu, info and review tabs to learn more about the store’s products, business hours, and ratings
- A search bar to quickly look up the product to buy
- List of all products offered by the store
- Cart and Delivery/Pickup options in the right panel to allow users quickly manage their order
Customers can directly place the order from the checkout page if a) they have provided their credit details on the site or b) they choose the cash on delivery option. Otherwise, customers should be asked to provide their credit details and then proceed with the order.
Apart from these, below are a couple of features that entrepreneurs interested in building a local deliver system must consider:
- Saving multiple credit account details
- Option to favorite an order and place it easily in future
Now let’s quickly overview the essential user profile options for such portals.
User Profile Options
User profile should be packed with following features and options to deliver a rich experience.
- Check order history
- Manage profile details
- List of addresses that a customer has placed order for
- List of credit details a customer wants to use to place order
Features for Merchants
As mentioned above, the site should have a separate module for local brick and mortar merchants who want to take orders through your platform. The registration process should ask merchants following details:
- Complete street address
- Contact information
- Store name
- Store legal ID
- Type of products offered/ Merchant Type
- Service willing to offer (delivery + pick up or just pick up)
- Designation at the store (manager/owner/other)
- Computer equipped store or not
- Business hours
- Minimum/Maximum order limits
As the website owner, it will be your responsibility to verify store’s physical presence and only then lists it on the site. Once a merchant is approved by the website, he should be provided following profile options:
- Manage menu/inventory
- Mark availability/unavailability of items
- Manage item prices
- Manage business hours
- Manage delivery/pickup options such as distance range and price
- Manage personal details
Now that we have covered all the basic features and functionalities, let’s discuss which additional features you can offer to give more value to your online local delivery platform.
Order from multiple stores
By offering this feature that most eCommerce businesses provide, you can add real value to your website. However, since the merchants listed with you aren’t online stores, implementing this feature might take some efforts. But the enhanced shopping experience that customers will get eventually will make these efforts worthwhile.
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Help
Prepare a comprehensive help section before launching your online local delivery system. Categorize it into different sections for customers and merchants. Also further categorize it based on the question’s category.
Reward Points
To make things more engaging, you can introduce a reward program on your website. Under the program, customers will earn points for making purchases through your website. These points can later be used to buy gift cards for popular online stores.
Referral program
Besides the reward points program, you should also introduce a friend referral program under which user can add some monetary rewards or points for inviting friends to use your website.
GPS-Enabled Mobile App
For your unique business, there should be a unique mobile app. A geo-location feature for your local delivery network makes perfect sense that lists all the listed stores, wine shops and restaurants in the nearby area.
Now, let’s briefly overview what controls the site admin should have for such a portal for the local delivery network.
Admin Controls
The site admin primarily will have following operations:
- Manage customer accounts
- Manage merchant listing
- Verify and authenticate merchant’s physical presence
- Manage inventory details for each merchant separately
- Store customer order history
- Store and manage customers credit information
- Manage order processing
- Manage ad and promotion campaign options provided to merchants
- Manage Delivery points for each customer
- Manage the site blog, and make minor content updates on the site
Final Remarks
This hybrid marketplace is yet to be explored by most of the world. So, there is much scope for such a marketplace in many continental and national markets across the globe.
While building a local delivery website, your focus should be on how to enhance the shopping experience for customers. Points discussed in the above section come handy in this context. And since FATbit team has already done an in-depth analysis of the site, we can greatly help entrepreneurs interested in building an advanced online local delivery network.
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