How to handle the challenges of hyperlocal commerce

Pivoting your business to the hyperlocal commerce model is definitely an idea in tune with modern buyer behaviour and preferences.

After all, catering to changed buyers' habits (which have shifted from discount-based purchases to convenience-based options) is the need of the hour. 

Wondering why? 

Here are a few figures to help you validate the idea of going hyperlocal. 

• $ 5 billion is the expected global hyperlocal services market by 2030
• 14.9% is the expected CAGR of hyperlocal services from 2021 to 2030
• 48% of all e-commerce buyers in India are hyperlocal shoppers
• 214 million hyperlocal buyers in India by the end of 2022

Source: Watconsult, Indian Retailer

Well, the hyperlocal commerce market is enormous, and expanding by 50% annually. There can’t be a better market scenario to launch your hyperlocal business than now. However, hyperlocal solutions come with their own set of challenges, let us look at them all.

A complete guide to Hyperlocal Commerce (With Challenges and Solutions)

Hyperlocal ecommerce is here to stay, thanks to the changed buying habits and convenience we got accustomed to during the Multiple enterprise brands have already adopted the hyperlocal business model and are thriving in the ecommerce industry.

If you have also been contemplating adopting the hyperlocal model but concerned about the challenges, this is the blog for you. Let us understand everything about the trending hyperlocal model and learn how to overcome its challenges. 

What is hyperlocal ecommerce?

Hyperlocal ecommerce is a business model where the sellers sell their products or services online to customers in a specific geographical area. The hyperlocal delivery set-up requires faster deliveries done through a chain of local stores or service providers. The order is routed to a nearest vendor to ensure quick and smooth delivery. The success of a hyperlocal commerce business depends hugely on the local stores and vendors. It therefore is important to have a strong vendor network and a streamlined delivery system. 

Although the process sounds pretty streamlined, coordinating various aspects (vendors, delivery boys, customer locations) can be tad-bit challenging. 

Challenges of Hyperlocal Ecommerce and their Solutions 

Wondering if your ecommerce boat will sail the hyperlocal tidal wave with traditional business practices? 

Sadly no. You need to inculcate unique ideas that have room for horizontal growth, and help your business become profitable. 

And just like any other business model, adopting hyperlocal ecommerce can have unique challenges your business needs to negotiate.

Wondering how to handle them? 

Right from building your brand presence to offering personalized targeted marketing on your enterprise ecommerce solutions, you need to ace the hyperlocal game at all levels. 

In this article we take you through the major challenges of hyperlocal ecommerce and how you can overcome these challenges with the best enterprise ecommerce solutions.

Top 5 challenges of hyperlocal commerce and how to handle them

Every business has its own set of challenges and the same goes for hyperlocal solutions. However, every challenge has a solution to it. Yes, with big players like Big Basket and Blinkit surviving the hyperlocal market, we know you can do it too.

The very first step towards which will be identifying the key challenges that are blocking your growth and finding solutions to tackle them the right way. Let us look at the top 5 hyperlocal commerce challenges faced by enterprise brands and the solutions to it.

Challenge 1: Competition from local sellers 

When you sell hyperlocal, you face immense competition from local sellers. With the growing demand, numerous sellers have entered the industry posing a challenge to become customer favorites. 

Solution: The simple solution is to onboard quality sellers on your B2B2C ecommerce solutions to build customer trust and credibility. As you offer a wide spectrum of sellers to your customers, they understand that you value their money and time. 

With StoreHipp’s comprehensive multi-vendor feature, you can seamlessly onboard multiple vendors and allow them the freedom to upload new products or manage their shipping. However, the admin has full control over the business operations. Admins have the power to add, approve or reject vendors and their products, view complete vendor details, calculate their commissions and payouts, and analyze the performance of the vendor, online store and traffic. 

You can also attract local customers to your enterprise ecommerce solutions through vendor-store partnerships. You can offer branded packaging, additional discounts for buying online, branded freebies etc. by partnering with local vendors. They can in turn encourage customers to shop from your hyperlocal ecommerce marketplace.

Challenge 2: Building a brand presence 

Building a good brand presence can be a challenge for your hyperlocal business. It takes 5 to 7 impressions on average for people to remember your brand. To set your business on an upward growth trajectory, you need to create a seamless brand presence on multiple channels for your customers.  

Solution: You can create your brand visibility on multiple platforms like social, mobile etc with next-gen omnichannel solutions from a comprehensive enterprise ecommerce solutions like StoreHippo. The headless commerce platform is designed to help you build your unique brand identity.

 The 300+ API endpoints help you create the most personalized and unforgettable omnichannel buying experience for your customers. You can add new customer touchpoints quickly using the same backend logic and APIs.

With the built-in mobile app solutions from StoreHippo, you can quickly build Android and iOS mobile apps. The stores powered by StoreHippo are PWA powered stores that look, feel, and work like mobile apps even on entry level devices. 

With the inbuilt blog engine from StoreHippo, you can publish a variety of content and build a unique brand presence for your hyperlocal business. 

Challenge 3: Huge technological cost 

While building a hyperlocal commerce solution, companies have to bear huge technological costs and also need to invest in terms of time to build a fine-tuned hyperlocal ecommerce solution.

Solution: If you are wondering how to curb your technological costs of building  a hyperlocal business, the simple solution would be finding an ecommerce solution that comes with plug and play solutions to pivot to the hyperlocal model. 

The buyer habits are evolving everyday and your B2B2C ecommerce solutions need to be equipped with the right features to help you pivot to different business models easily. StoreHippo offers cutting edge enterprise ecommerce solution with built-in solutions to support a disruptive hyperlocal business. You can go to the market in record time with battle-tested solutions that help you build, run and grow your business better than your competitors.

Challenge 4: Targeted marketing 

As you are providing hyperlocal delivery to your customers, you also need to market the idea. Since you are competing against the local sellers, who already have a wide audience base, you need to put extra effort into winning over these buyers. Targeting a specific audience from a small area can be a challenging task to do.

Solution: With hyperlocal commerce marketing campaigns, you can go for extremely targeted campaigns that prioritize a particular area of a city or a niche audience group. Customers love a brand that offers personalized marketing tailored for their needs. 

With StoreHippo, you can implement completely customized marketing strategies for different buyer groups on your location-based B2B2C ecommerce stores. With the right marketing tools and data-driven insights, you can implement strategic marketing campaigns. 

StoreHippo offers a gamut of built-in marketing tools along with seamless integrations with the best-in-breed marketing and analytics tools. As you collect data from different stores and analyze them using the inbuilt reporting engine from StoreHippo B2B2C ecommerce solutions, you can also offer content based on their purchase behavior, favourite products or create location-based marketing campaigns using best of breed marketing tools which can be easily integrated with StoreHippo.. 

Challenge 5: Streamlining fleet management 

One of the biggest challenges of running a successful hyperlocal enterprise business is streamlining quick deliveries without any hiccups. 

Solution: To be able to streamline your deliveries, you need to first find yourself a logistic solution that can help you automate and simplify the entire delivery process. Right from accepting the customer order, to packing, scheduling the pick-up from the vendor store and delivering it to your customer, also tracking the order while in transit can be a lot to handle. 

Once you have managed your fleet of delivery boys well, you are all set to carve a niche in the hyperlocal commerce market. 

However, you can automate the entire process with automated in-built tools from StoreHippo. You can also seamlessly integrate with your local delivery partner to ensure quick deliveries on your geo-location-based stores. StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce solutions also come with a built-in delivery boy module that enables the vendors to manage their own fleet of delivery boys. The delivery boys can also have their own mobile admin interface that enables them to ensure error-free deliveries.

Conclusion

With the surge in hyperlocal commerce and changes in the buying habits of customers it has become important for businesses to align their brand for meeting buyer expectations..

With the comprehensive locations-based enterprise ecommerce solutions like StoreHippo, you can seamlessly leverage hyperlocal ecommerce. The hi-tech features from StoreHippo help you provide the right push to your hyperlocal business. You can create multiple locations-based ecommerce stores based on customer geo-location and cater to their unique needs.

Are you ready to explore the B2B2C ecommerce solutions from StoreHippo and its enterprise grade features? Start your 14-day free trial now.