As global digitization continues to accelerate, it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to imagine their lives without digital devices, which almost everyone now has. This trend has not been lost on the marketing sector, which has responded by becoming increasingly digital.
Mobile marketing for supermarkets and retail businesses is a strongly favored digital channel, and virtually every high-performing business has a mobile app store for business operations.
Even grocery stores are moving with the cloud. More people are turning to mobile grocery shopping, and it would be wise to have a mobile app as part of your marketing strategy. So why should you follow this trend? Read on to discover the benefits of mobile apps for your grocery business.
Enter Pandemic-Style Grocery Shopping
To be sure, online grocery shopping, especially through mobile apps, has been a growing trend for a while. However, the worldwide social distancing directives resulting from the 2020 pandemic boosted this trend to a new level. A 2022 metanalysis of online grocery shopping trends from 50 independent research samples indicates this beautifully.
As of 2019, 81% of US consumers had never purchased groceries online. However, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic completely flipped the situation so that, in 2020, 79% of US consumers were ordering their groceries online. Even in Europe, over 15% have adopted new online grocery stores. And while the end of the pandemic in some places (and its drastic reduction in others) has enabled many people to resume the walks to the grocery store, many consumers still prefer the mobile grocery store experience.
Why A Mobile App Is Necessary for Your Grocery Store
Let’s turn our attention to the benefits of a mobile grocery app. What advantages will it bring to your table?
Easier to Track Customer Behavior
Tracking customer behavioral patterns is essential to conducting a business, and one of the main things to keep track of is their buying patterns. Customers have different needs at different times, and their shopping schedules and frequency usually reflect those needs. Additionally, customers tend to buy in patterns when they enter a grocery shop, starting with the items on their list that are easily visible to them.
However, tracking these behaviors is an arduous task that requires constant monitoring—which, physically speaking, is very hard to pull off and also quite creepy. If only there were a way to efficiently keep track of customer behavior without creeping them out or stressing yourself. As it turns out, there is.
You can easily understand your customers’ patterns when you develop a mobile app for your grocery sales and delivery. By looking at that data from their search filter, cart items, and their frequency of ordering certain items, you can know which items to keep in stock at what periods.
Credit Avoidance and Diversity of Payment Methods
It is common for customers to go to the grocery store only to realize they have forgotten their cards or cell phones. So, in the end, they decide to purchase on credit. That’s not good for your business at all! In fact, given the prevalence of bad credit even in developed nations, it’s more likely than not that a given customer will fail to pay on time. That means your cash register slowly becomes less and less a reflection of how much has left the shelf.
Furthermore, tracking each customer’s credit balance brings unnecessary complexity and opens the way for miscalculations. However, a mobile app mitigates this problem. There is no such thing as credit buying in a mobile grocery store, as you simply can’t progress to complete an order unless you’ve paid for the items. That way, you can avoid credit payments. But the benefit doesn’t end there.
Mobile grocery apps offer a greater variety of payment methods not available at offline stores, and if you wish, you can add more. For instance, you can add a crypto payment option to allow customers to pay in any cryptocurrency you consider acceptable.
Convenience for All
When people shop on mobile apps, they don’t have to bother with pushing a laden cart down one aisle and up another in search of the next item. Instead, they can simply search for the product they need based on any search parameters, and if it’s available, they’ll find it in a split second.
And what about paying for items? We’re all familiar with the dishearteningly long queues at stores. Imagine what it looked like in 2020 while people were off panic-buying. Queueing issues like that were non-existent for people who patronized mobile stores. No need to queue; just fill in the necessary details, complete payment, and wait for your order. Convenience like this will significantly boost customer satisfaction metrics for your grocery store and streamline your business operations.
More Efficient Loyalty Programs
Fostering customer loyalty to your brand is one essential operation in any business; loyalty programs are how you go about it. However, maintaining an effective loyalty program is a complex task that requires you to keep track of your customers’ buying patterns, compile them, and determine which rewards to give to which loyal customers.
This task, however, is very streamlined for anyone running a mobile grocery store. Mobile apps are excellent data collection plates that enable you to collect and compile all the data you need to run an effective loyalty program.
Boon to Brand Image
You can consider the relationship between your brand image and your users in mobile app conditions as a welcome cycle. Given the massive impact of modern software applications on customer experience and their effect on customer engagement, most people now think of apps as the future of marketing.
By upgrading to a mobile app platform, you essentially let your customers know that you have not been left behind. You are moving with the cloud of modern technological innovations in marketing. That progressive image will create greater confidence in your brand and commitment to quality service and customer satisfaction.
Set Up Your Grocery Store Now
The future is mobile, so is your grocery store keeping up? Apps for grocery shopping have begun to dominate the grocery market and to significant effect. Take ParkMart as a case study. This Bulgarian supermarket chain opened in 2017 and has since boosted sales by 30% by launching the ParkMart app. Additionally, it now derives over twice as much revenue as it got with its website.
This could be you very soon. So, why hesitate? Get on top of this trend now and see a massive boost to your grocery sales and customer satisfaction levels. And in case you’re wondering how to build a grocery app, there’s nothing to sweat about. BeyondCart can help you build your app as easily as playing solitaire. So, get on one, and you will have an app up and running in no time.
Push Notifications Center
