Online grocery delivery services like Instacart, Fresh Direct & Peapod facilitate the process of buying fresh groceries and making deliveries within a couple of hours. Within a few years, this business idea has gained much popularity, which is resulting into the massive success of different online grocery delivery marketplaces.
This business model is impressive enough to motivate budding entrepreneurs across the globe to start their own online grocery delivery ventures targeting a regional market. Realizing the growing demand of websites like Instacart & Fresh Direct, business analysts at FATbit Technologies initiated a detailed analysis of their revenue model and website features to help entrepreneurs start similar online ventures.
Let’s first discuss the business model of online grocery delivery platforms and learn how they make money.
This unique business model has huge scope for generating big profits. But in order to ensure that, you have to pay attention to the implementation of two things:
The partnership with top local grocery stores will play the crucial role in establishing such a business, since you won’t be maintaining an inventory of grocery items yourself. A minimum 2-3 tie ups per neighborhood can help you run your grocery delivery website quite easily.
You would also need to establish a robust delivery system that efficient enough to make the delivery within a couple of hours of the order.
As for how these online grocery delivery services make money, there can be many revenue channels. But first, you need to decide on which one of following will be your primary revenue medium:
First revenue models from the above two has a greater success prospect for the sole reason that customer is not charged extra. As a matter of fact, all major online grocery delivery platform follow the same revenue model.
Apart from that, other revenue channels include:
Not only these additional revenue channels will bring in mode money but will also make your website more valuable to customers.
Your online grocery delivery website should have a neat & clean interface that allow customers to understand your platform easily and begin with the order right away. Here are some essential homepage implementations that you should pay attention to:
The sign-up process should be integrated with the zip code/city name input text field. As users enter this detail and click to move forward, the website should ask them their name, email address, & a password to get the account created and enable them begin with the online grocery shopping.
In addition to that there should be sign-in button in the top navigation bar and important quick links in the footer area.
Note that in case the service is not yet available in a user’s location, he should be notified about it as soon as he enter the zip code/city name. To make things even better, the non-availability message should appear with an option through which user can get notified when the service will be available in his area. Implementing such feature will improve the user experience of your website considerably.
Rich UX-design is the key to higher conversion rate
This is the feature on which your business relies upon, therefore, it is important that you implement it mindfully and carefully. Any flaws in this part of the clone script can lead to dissatisfaction among the users of your website. Here are the features to confirm in the shopping functionality:
Users should be given options to shop from their favorite stores in the city. Therefore, a list of stores should be displayed as soon as a user selects the location. Clicking on a store will take the user to that store’s page. In addition to that, users should also be provided the option to add items from different stores to thier carts.
You need to make special department categories within each store to list products. Most popular products should be listed in the front for the ease of buyers. Every store will have different department categories based on its products. All department categories could be further divided into sub-categories. Department categories and subcategories should be neatly placed as a drop-down menu.
Remember to provide a search bar at the top of the product listing page. The product search should produce results, not from within the selected store, but from all the stores in the neighborhood. depending on the searched product category, there should also be relevant filters on the search result page.
To make things interesting, you can also offer an option that allows users to add products to their favorite list. This feature should also come with options to organize the favorited items into different categories.
This feature will make things yet more interesting. Let users allow to create a shopping cart and share it with friends. The feature will also allow friends to add products in the cart. This is a must-have feature for every online grocery delivery clone script different members of a family can add their own items in a common shopping list.
Apart from the main features listed above, you should also include some other unique features which have led to the success of this grocery shopping portal. These features have been listed below:
Store page will also have a section that would list various recipes (list of food items) for dinner, desserts, breakfasts, snacks, salad, party, etc.; all listed into separate categories. Following features and functionalities must also be provided with the recipe section:
Launch your own grocery delivery website with more advanced features.
The checkout functionality should be intuitive and seamless as it has direct impact on your conversion rate. Following options should be considered when checkout page:
To deliver customers a rich buying procedure, you need to implement following features and options in the user profile area:
As an online grocery delivery platform, you can hire personal shoppers who are responsible for collecting the ordered items and delivering them to buyers. A lot of youngsters are working as freelance shoppers for all existing major grocery delivery platforms to fill up their free time. Such a feature will be a welcome addition to your online grocery delivery clone platform, but it would require offline access to manage freelance shoppers. Key features of this section include:
So these were the basic clone script features for your online grocery delivery platform. Now, let’s discuss a few value added features that will make you clone script more advanced.
Businesses love to delight their customers with sales and new offers. Your online grocery delivery platform should also smartly employ this marketing technique. Here is list of suggestions regarding which promotional offers you provide through your grocery delivery website:
A website cannot do without a well-managed Help/FAQ section especially if it deals with online transactions. Since your grocery delivery platform will be serving 2 type of users – customers and stores, there should be separate categories for them in the Help section. Also, make sure that the FAQ/Help section is easily accessible. Additionally, allow users to ask new questions.
You also need to have a mobile app for all major mobile platforms to allow your customers do the grocery shopping on the go. Make sure the app has all the features with rich functionality present on the website.
Current market stats tells that online grocery delivery marketplaces are growing their business at lightening pace. While their reach is certainly touching new markets with every passing day, lots of potential investors too are showing their keen interest in them.
So, it won’t be wrong to say that this is the best time to start an online grocery delivery website for your own area. However, it is essential that your business is built by implementing all the advanced clone script features we have discussed in this post. Additionally, execution of these features is equally important. Therefore, it is crucial that you pay equal heed while hiring the web development professionals for building your online grocery delivery platform.
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Comments (2)
ashita maheshwari
FATbit Chef Post author
Pingback: Hottest Service and Data Driven Online Businesses of 2015 and Beyond
too good
and also helpful
Thanks Ashita
Glad you liked it.
Cheers
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