A few months from now, it would have been hard to believe that grocery would be one of the most emerging retail sectors in 2020! Yet, the statistics prove just that.
The McKinsey report points out that during the lockdown, online sales of grocery have gone up by 53 percent. Retailers with Hyperlocal ecommerce business models such as Bigbasket and Grofers have seen a huge spike in orders lately. So much so that these brands had a tough time fending local vendors and coping with deliveries.
BigBasket reported 2X (times) kind of growth and baskets size grew by 15-20 per cent. Grofers too registered a spike of 5-7 percent during weekdays and increased demand by 80 percent over the weekends.
So what does this tell you? Read on!
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Multi-seller stores to sell grocery online are coming of age
With the majority of the people subjected to stay-at-home directives, supplying them essentials at their door-steps makes more sense.
While for many retailers, the lockdown means poor sales and business threats, it also means a whole new opportunity to shift your business on the web.
The fear of the pandemic until vaccines are out, followed by the convenience of home-shopping poses an opportunity to local kirana stores and offline retailers to boost sales. So if you are a local vendor, seller or distributor running out of business, then to sell grocery online could be a ray of hope.
The good news is that with the help of a reliable platform such as StoreHippo, it takes only a couple of minutes to quick-start your online store and get going!
A Hyperlocal system - how does it work?
This model comprises building a local ecosystem to enable customers to shop for grocery from their neighbourhood stores.
The variety of vendors on your multi-seller store can match the quick demand of products with the nearest available supply in the most optimized way. In short, if your customers require baby tomatoes and wish to get it delivered on the same day, one of your vendors in the vicinity can help!
So now that you know how even a big store owner, as well as a guy with a small Kirana store, can all be a part of the multi-vendor ecommerce, let’s see the must-to-be features that can help you with a smoother business flow.
Multi-vendor support
As the name suggests, you will need to list different sellers on your website to sell a variety of products -right from premium quality rice to basic spices.
This will need separate vendor dashboards at the backend so that different sellers can manage their respective product pages, inventory and shipments.
StoreHippo offers systematic multi-vendor support to give sellers complete freedom related to their orders and inventories. With separate admin and individual vendor dashboards, seller-ledgers and commision-based, auto-split payments, it provides end-to-end vendor support.
Once a customer places an order on your hyperlocal ecommerce, it can directly reflect on the dashboard. The carrier can take care of the shipment and the commission can be automatically split between the owner and the vendor.
Multi-store feature
Creating multiple stores in the marketplace can boost your sales significantly. By creating various stores and targeting different areas, your vendors can cover a variety of local neighbourhoods and serve more customers.
It’s as simple as this: If you have just one store in the city, how many footfalls can you have in a single day and how much profit can you make? Against this, if you have 2-3 stores in different locations, you can serve a wider audience group and increase your sales.
StoreHippo Multi-store ecommerce enables you to create a chain of sub-stores based on location, products, vendors etc. and manage it using a single dashboard. How easy can it get?
Mobile apps
Have you completely missed the fact that nowadays most of the shopping happens through smartphones? Your customers will also be checking out daals, flour and oil through mobile apps.
However, it gets so much easier with Progressive Web Apps. This provides your users with an enhanced experience similar to a native app. Also, for the owner, it is way cheaper than mobile apps. StoreHippo also provides you Android and iOS apps without any additional cost or coding.
Multiple payment options
To sell grocery online, you need to integrate your website with reliable Payment gateway companies. This way, your customers can receive pre-paid orders with no-contact delivery.
Also, amidst lockdown, the safest mode of payment transactions would be through cards or e-wallets, you still cannot ignore the huge percentage of the population that prefers COD.
Going online is as much new to the vast majority of people as it is to you. Thus offering people the traditional mode of payment can help you cater to even those audiences which still feel that e-commerce is alien.
Integrated Logistics
While coming up with hyperlocal ecommerce, Logistics could be your biggest worry. Supplying customers on time is the key to winning them and can be achieved with a good shipment strategy in place.
Autonomous processes like auto-pickup of orders, bulk upload of orders can help you cut down on time and manpower. Also real-time tracking of goods can let you and your customers know where the products are once they leave from the vendor’s store. Real-time tracking also helps in avoiding wrong deliveries and late shipments.
StoreHippo with its shipment aggregator platform, ShipKaro not only helps you get in touch with established carriers but also assists you with auto-shipment processes.
Set up a hyperlocal ecommerce grocery store instantly with StoreHippo
It’s not the time to get into the ifs and buts! The lockdown has provided an opportunity to retailers, distributors, supermarts to sell grocery online. And what’s the brightest part? A multi-seller store helps keep the sales running for all small and big businesses alike.
Building your store with StoreHippo also provides benefits such as;
- Location-based stores as per customer’s geolocation
- Automatic order routing for quicker and optimised delivery
- Location-based availability of products to customers
- Location capture with Google Map
- Run location-based offers for targeted marketing
It’s quite possible that until now you might have never thought to create a multi-vendor ecommerce, at least not for selling raw food supplies. But once you start your web store, its extraordinary capability to drive sales will make you realise that there is no going back!
Learn the amazing way to sell groceries online with StoreHippo’s free trial store. Get in touch with us at [email protected] to schedule a demo.
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