Building a Grocery App That Sells

You’ve just started a grocery store. You are located in the best possible area of the town. You start enjoying an excellent footfall. Congrats!

Time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of your new successful store, right?

Wrong!

This is when you buckle up and expand your business, targeting those customers who haven’t made you their go-to choice yet. And the best way to do it – expand your channels.

And in this mobile-dominated world, what better way to reach these potential customers than through your own native app.

Why an App?

That’s probably the first question that would have popped into your mind. The short answer is – customer demands are changing rapidly, and in this modern world – people love to shop on the go.

Now let’s get to the long answer –

Mobile apps revolve around e-commerce which has made the lives of people simpler and easier. With today’s fast-paced world, people are finding it all the more difficult to set aside time to visit the grocery store, select the items they need, stand in a line to pay for it, and then drive back home. Grocery apps mitigate this dependency by allowing your customers to order anytime anywhere and get them delivered to their doorsteps. For them, your mobile app is the store, and your product listing pages are the shopping aisles!

But as a business, what benefits do you get?

A lot, in fact…

An often overlooked benefit of mobile apps is the customer insights that you can derive from them.

Think of it this way, hundreds of visitors come to your physical store every day and purchase thousands of products. At the end of the day, you might know which was the most popular product sold, but you will never know what type of customers purchased what type of products.

On the other hand, thanks to the in-built analytics engine of your mobile app, you can easily identify the demographics of the customers purchasing different products. Using this data, you can target more people falling under similar demographics, recommend similar products to the existing customers, or even offer discounts on those products to clear them out quickly.

For instance, you might find that in people falling under the age group of 25-35, fresh produce might not sell as well as pre-cut and prepackaged produce. Also, you might find out that most of these people shop on weekends. You can use both these insights to increase the stock of pre-cut and pre-packaged products on weekends to avoid shortages.

How Does a Grocery Delivery Mobile App Work?

The basic premise of a grocery delivery mobile app is quite simple. Most of us know it,  especially since we have all purchased hundreds of products from our favorite e-commerce stores. But let’s quickly summarize the customer flow and business flow of a grocery app –

Here’s a typical customer flow in an online grocery app –

• A user signs up in your grocery app by entering basic details such as name, email, and mobile number.
• They search for one or more items through the product search function.
• Add the required items to the cart.
• Proceed to the checkout section, where they enter the address to let you know where to deliver the products.
• They then make an online payment.
• If the payment is successful, the user receives an order confirmation message.

Now let’s look at the business flow –

• The app admin receives the order, which is forwarded to your store manager.
• The store manager packs the grocery items after sending the customer a notification that their order is being packed.
• Once packed, the order is dispatched through a delivery agent. The customer is notified that their order is on its way.
• Once the product is successfully delivered, the delivery agent will confirm it through their hand-held device and a notification will be sent to the customer once again to inform them that their order is delivered.

Of course, the store manager and the admin have the added responsibility of inputting the correct stock quantity every day for every item in the catalog.

These are the mandatory steps for any grocery apps. You also have optional flows such as offering discounts or providing coupons to improve conversions. All such functionalities come built-in through a no-code app builder like Vajro.

Must-have elements of a successful grocery mobile app

In case you are building a grocery mobile app, the following elements are a must-have –

Signup

When building a grocery app, a quick and easy signup login process is essential. Users will leave you when they find that the signup process is long and detracts them from what they want to do – shop quickly on your platform. A simple signup flow encourages customers to get through the registration process quickly and start browsing through the catalog of products.

Product listing and catalog

Product listing and catalog is where you will be showing your products for the user to choose from. These pages will also need searching, sorting, and filtering functions to enable users to skim through huge catalogs quickly and find what they want.

Easy ordering and checkout flow

Once users find what they’re looking for, they want to checkout and order the product as soon as possible. This means that a simplified and quick checkout flow is vital in a good grocery app design. If you make it too complex, you risk users abandoning their carts and ultimately go elsewhere to buy what they want.

In-app notifications

Finally, in-app notifications can help you apprise your customers about new product launches, discounts and offers, seasonal sales, and more. This can significantly boost customer engagement, which in turn can lead to loyal customers. An app-builder platform like Vajro lets you create and manage push notifications effortlessly.

Here is a complete guide on Vajro’s push notification feature.

Wrapping Up

If you don’t have a mobile app for your grocery store already, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is most of your competitors already have one. But the good news is it’s never too late to join the party.

Mobile grocery apps are convenient for your customers and useful for your business – a win-win situation for all. But many businesses refrain from building an app, thinking it to be an expensive and challenging activity.

With a no-code app builder like Vajro, it is not only affordable but also easy. We have helped numerous stores set up their mobile app including several grocery and food businesses. Here are some of our happy clients.

Want to know more about building a grocery app? Talk to us now!