The Nelsen report has found out that 25% of customers prefer purchasing groceries online and this number will rise to 70% by 2024. Taking into account that most other business spheres have already been digitized you should ask yourself whether it’s reasonable for your business to wait a bit more or jump into the grocery application development right now.
What are the ways a grocery shopping application can improve your business?
The development of a mobile application can push your company forward to conquering market space in other countries as it enables consumers to easily find and buy goods in your store. Remember, you should hire experienced iOS and Android developers to reap maximum benefits from mobile grocery application.
Apart from that, there are several more ways the grocery shopping app can help you benefit.
Strengthen your brand
Underneath are several of many ways how the grocery shopping app can contribute to the brand promotion.
Learn your customer better
Apps are created to gather useful information by their technical nature. The grocery app can help you better understand your customers by answering questions like:
- What time do your customers do grocery shopping?
- What are the best selling products?
- What are the worst selling products?
- What payment method do your customers prefer using? etc.
All of this is valuable data that can be used for polishing your business processes and making the overall buying experience better.
Launch a loyalty program to gain traction
Digital solutions make the implementation of loyalty programs extremely easy. In addition, you can plug the brand loyalty card to the app and create special offers for customers. Another benefit of mobile platforms is that you can use push notifications to remember customers about existing loyalty programs and special offers for them.
Also read: Leveraging On-Demand Apps for Fast Food
Involving the busiest customers
Modern users are extremely busy and far from all people can spend hour or two doing grocery shopping. With the grocery shopping app, they’ll know exactly what stores of your chain to visit for buying goods they need offline (e.g. check their availability before going there). Or even order everything online with home delivery.
Categories of grocery shopping apps
Brands interact with their audience differently. For example, Nike has several branded apps aimed at selling their stuff and engaging customers. Nike+ App is an e-commerce store for mobile shopping. While Nike+ Running App is the app crafted specifically for people who are fond of running (hose people are a part of Nike’s target audience) and enables them to track their progress and do much more.
So, let’s consider some existing types of grocery apps in order to give you more understanding concerning what your grocery app can be like.
List app
Many consumers experience the need to write down the goods they need in order not forget about what exactly they need. Fortunately, a sheet of paper is no longer needed for this purpose as each customer has a smartphone in the pocket.
The grocery list app should be capable of the following:
- Save customer lists
- Remind to purchase products
- Share those lists with other users
- Let several users (for couples, relatives, roommates) an opportunity for drawing up and managing lists together
Grocery IQ is a great example of the grocery list apps.
Delivery apps
They can be of two types: companies-as-a-service that deliver products from various shops and act as mediators (e.g. Instacart) and online grocery shops like Peapod.
Such apps should have the following features:
- Easily find products
- Show the list of previously bought products and lat customers reorder them
- Pay for purchases online
Price comparison apps
The name speaks for itself. These apps help customers compare prices around different stores and find the best deals.
Features:
- Track price changes
- Send notification about best offers
- Choose various units of measuring price, weight, etc.
For example, Favado is a combination of the grocery price comparison app and grocery discount app.
Branded grocery apps from supermarket chains
The supermarket developed an app in order to engage their customers (e.g. Costco). Such apps can combine the features of every grocery app type we’ve mentioned above.
Features your grocery app should have to be competitive
Top-notch shopping experience
Since many customers prefer buying groceries online you should make sure your app delivers the top-notch shopping experience for them. Otherwise, you may expect fewer sales.
- Browse by categories
- High-quality images of the products
- Well-thought-out shopping cart
Add coupons
It’s not a secret that a tremendous percentage of customers are searching for the discounts on the goods they would like to purchase. Correspondingly, coupons are able to increase your sales.
Push notifications
Notifications are a powerful tool that’s able to draw your customers’ attention. Use it where it’s needed (e.g. special offers, new products, etc.) However, don’t send your customers a thousand notifications a day.
Barcode scanning
This feature can supplement the physical shopping and prevent customers from, let’s say, adding groceries to their shopping list manually.
Also read: 5 Foosball Game Apps for Android
The development cost of a grocery app
Talking about the cost, the average rate of mobile developers is $50/hour. If we take an app similar to Instacart, you should be ready to spend from $46,000 to $64,000 on each platform as the amount of development time for each platform ranges between 925h and 1270h.
| About the Guest Author:
Nataliia Kharchenko
