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After COVID-19 struck, online shopping became a necessity, reshaping the grocery landscape forever. Amid mandatory quarantines and new social distancing rules springing up every day, digital shopping became mandatory all over the world. People all over the world turned to online solutions to restrict their social mingling.
Covid-19 turned the whole world upside down, drastically pulling down the world’s economy. While businesses have been struggling for a stronger foothold in the market, online grocery retailers improved their business by more than 40%.
Even as things are settling down, consumers are still keen on buying groceries online, raising the demand for more grocery e-commerce platforms. This grocery e-commerce and quick commerce solutions include many features for businesses and customers.
With the rapid increase in these online platforms, you might be having a hard time finding the right fit for your business. To help you make this decision this blog helps you understand which supermarket platform is most suited for your business.
Types of Online Grocery Business Models
The online grocery business is taking off across the globe leading to a higher level of competition between grocery stores. Different types of e-commerce business models have originated giving businesses a variety of choices to open up stores in the online grocery industry.
Before a business launches their online grocery store they need to analyze and understand all the different types of business models for grocery. Listed below are the different types of online grocery business models.
Hyperlocal business model:
The hyperlocal grocery delivery model is based on the unique selling point of rapid and local deliveries. This type of online grocery model effectively balances the demand for groceries with multiple supply options. Ecommerce grocery stores collaborate with local stores in this business model as the key objective of this model is for the end consumer to get their groceries at lightning speed.
Inventory Business Model:
Inventory based model is based on the USP of delivering fresh produce and groceries to the customers. In this model, the e-commerce business buys and stores the inventory by keeping a self-maintained warehouse. This model allows the e-commerce platform to be in contact with the customers and manage the inventory and deliveries.
Multi-Vendor Grocery Business Model
The multi-vendor model is based on a hybrid approach, with the grocery retailer acting as a service provider and an online supermarket. For example in this model businesses can either fulfill orders through their warehouses, or partner with grocery stores and providers to provide logistics and delivery services to end customers. This model allows for a wide variety of products to be sold, including fresh produce, meats, refrigerated foods, meal kits, and more.
Must-Have Features for a Profitable Grocery eCommerce Platform
Listed below are several features that every new grocery e-commerce platform should have.
- Easy search – Cater to your customers’ convenience by having an advanced searching and filtering option for easy grocery search.
- Order tracking – Allow your customers and vendors to know about their order statuses while in the grocery store and while delivering.
- Coupons and discounts – Provide special discounts and coupons to improve your customers’ experience, making sure they’ll buy through your grocery platform again and again.
- Secured multiple payment options – Help your consumers in using your payment methods, assure them of the safety of your platform.
- Reviews & rating – Try to get your customers’ feedback on your customer service and product quality. This helps increase online credibility.
What is Blink for Supermarkets?
Blink is a next-gen fully integrated grocery and e-commerce platform, which provides you with the freedom and flexibility to grow your online business. Blink’s revolutionary online ordering platform for grocery stores provides your business with an end-to-end direct ordering and fleet management solution.
Blink is scalable and grows with your business, giving you complete flexibility to achieve high growth in online sales.
Key features offered by Blink for grocery stores include strong customer engagement and service, a built-in direct ordering system, and business analytics tools that give you complete visibility of your value chain. As a result, Blink helps your business achieve efficient order processing and inventory management, robust payment/refund processing, and most importantly higher customer satisfaction through targeted marketing and stronger customer engagement.
These offerings make Blink an immediate choice for fast-growing online grocers, who are looking for robust, comprehensive, yet affordable solutions. The offerings include:
Rapid digital enablement, driven by plug and play solutions for both web and app-based experiences. Execution and onboarding are enabled through in-house technical support teams, which can help your business go digital in a seamless fashion.
Comprehensive Inventory management, helps you keep track of all In and out of stock items, so you never have to worry about orders for delayed or sold-out SKUs. With real-time stock level updates for your online platforms, Blink’s built-in inventory manager allows for real-time tracking of SKUs that might be out of stock or facing high demand against limited stock availability.
Strong focus on customer experience, with a branded website and app that enables quick order placement, and high customer satisfaction. With the ability to quickly integrate our online ordering platforms with your social media including Facebook and Instagram, our solutions let you expand customer reach and receive orders from a multitude of platforms.
Insightful analytics and data-driven actions can allow you to view real-time data of all your sales and products across multiple geographies, retail locations, and types of customers. As a result, data-driven decision-making helps you grow revenues quickly while achieving high profitability across various product and geographic segments.
Improved customer engagement and loyalty, driven by highly targeted marketing, based on detailed customer-level data which can be sliced and diced across numerous dimensions. This allows your business to define discounts and programs for each segment of users, helping you retain customers and achieve high satisfaction rates.
Quick and smooth deliveries, supported through a suite of logistics and delivery solutions, allow your business to quickly create rides for dispatch-ready orders, perform a 2 step rider assignment, and optimize your delivery routes through live tracking and delivery driver updates.
What is Growcer?
Growcer is a multi-vendor online grocery software solution that helps bridge the gap between vendors and customers. It gives vendors a huge boost in increasing their online grocery business. Growcer helps in growing your revenue by offering various important features including a website, and apps for Android and Apple for both the delivery staff and customers.
The key features for Growcer include a lifetime license, one-year free technical support, easy inventory management, and multiple support and revenue channels.
Lifetime License: Use Growcer to experience complete ownership of your platform with a lifetime license.
Free one-year Technical Support: With Growcer you get any bugs or errors resolved in no time as free technical support is available for the first year of partnering with them.
Multiple Support Channels: A dedicated team of experts is available on all their platforms ready to provide instant assistance.
Easy inventory management: Huge data files can be easily imported/exported facilitating the businesses with easy inventory management.
Multiple Revenue Channels: Growcer helps vendors in making money through different revenue streams including advertisements, subscriptions, commissions, and featured listings.
Growcer helps businesses in a more scalable eCommerce grocery marketplace platform through several APIs tailored to the needs of their vendors and consumers.
Conclusion: It’s a Tough Bargain | But Here’s What We Think
Blink and Growcer are both aimed at helping e-commerce retailers scale their online marketplaces quickly and efficiently, through a wide array of features built to support businesses across the entire value chain.
While Growcer offers some flexibility when it comes to payment plans and pricing, Blink’s fee structure is simple and in the longer-term offers significantly better value.
Blink’s product suite also offers a wider range of features, allowing your business to gain quick and efficient control of inventory, order, and customer management. Blink’s data analytics platform also enables you to generate quick and actionable insights, allowing you to achieve optimized inventory and delivery plans, quick payment issue resolutions, and minimal returns and refunds.
Blink is hyperactive about its customer support and customer interaction investing in customer rewards and loyalty programs. We believe if you are new to the market and just launching your egrocery platform or if you have a tight budget then Blink is the way to go. Blink provides you with the cutting-edge multi-platform technology you need for your online grocery platform without any hidden charges sneaking up at you at the end of your billing cycle.
