As a continuation of the ‘4 features for your Grocery App’, let’s look at 3 additional features that can be built to garner loyalty from the user base. The key winning point for any brand that wants to build a fan-following for their app is to hit all 3 of the above.
Now, let’s look at the features.
1. Shopping lists
Complexity: Low to Medium
What is this feature?
From a business perspective, there are two types of lists that customers have: the list of Should (like the cereal, milk, vegetables etc)and the list of Want (Icecreams, chocolates, and other such products). What has been found is that as the delay between order completion and delivery increases, grocery customers spend less, order a higher percentage of “should” items, and order a lower percentage of “want” items. Hence, if we’re able to help the customer create the should items automatically, we can then nudge them to satisfy their need for shopping (let’s face it, there is some psychological satisfaction in buying groceries off an app) through the (often higher-margin) want items.
How can this be achieved?
Starting with a simple ‘Shopping list’, you can get the user to add common items that they think they’ll buy often. After a few transactions, you can then add the common items and use that as a starting point for every transaction journey. The idea here is to quickly get away from the common buying process and get the customer to spend time on the fringe purchases. The questions of ‘Do I want Ice-cream?’ pop-ups sooner once the important bits are out of the way. 🙂
2. Dynamic pricing
Complexity: Medium to High
What is this feature?
Question: Would you like to build a basket of $250 to get a discount of $10 OR would you like to earn discount for every item added — more items you add the better the price you get on the next product? I’d wager you would like latter. Typical grocery buying discussions are more on the lines of – if I buy 2 of these, do I get them cheaper? – rather than, if I cross a threshold, do I get a discount?
Dynamic pricing works in favor of the business by organically increasing the basket size and saving a lot on indirect costs (Promotions/Advertising etc).
Implementation of this feature requires a lot of finance team and reporting involvement, so be careful and ensure you’re not handing out margin-breaking discounts.
3. Delivery time-slots
Complexity: Medium to High
What is this feature?
When you go out shopping, you know exactly when you’re going to get the products you’re buying: immediately. The objective of the grocery app is not emulate that behaviour, but to create a habit — I get my groceries delivered between 9am to 11 am every Wednesday. Statements such as those are critical to build a loyal following.
You’ve to find a right balance between reliability and expectations — You can promise delivery between 10am and 10pm, but that keeps things completely unpredictable for the customer. Essentially, that is a unreliable service, even if you deliver during that time, every time. However, if you do slots of half hour, there is a considerable stress on your last mile delivery.
How can you achieve this?
This requires a lot of last mile delivery discussions. The easiest way I found is to keep the right stock, in the right location with the right frequency of delivery vans making deliveries on the right route. And it is literally easier said than done. Figuring out the ‘right’ in every statement made above requires multitude of teams, especially the data team, to break their heads on this. However, you can start small and achieve a few areas/time-slots and learn as you go. Remember, each brand & location is different. Test, Evaluate and Evolve!
And that concludes it! Hope you liked it. You can checkout more of my work here on this site or on Medium. Please leave a comment below if you found this interesting!