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Introduction
Ever since the pandemic became a part of our lives a couple of years back, it took no time for everything to shift online. And way before that, Ecommerce was already the preference over going visiting offline stores. However, shopping for everyday essentials online was not everyone’s first choice. No sooner did shopping for everyday essentials through a Grocery app or grocery website become an everyday thing.
Grocery apps have become a trend, and we can see it only growing. With so many products available at your fingertips and delivery of products within a few minutes is something we can’t say no to. The app allows ease of use and convenience to the users so that they don’t have to step out of their homes to shop. Looking at the present situation, the rise in eCommerce grocery apps has been prominent.
However, the bigger challenge for you as a developer and designer or entrepreneur is knowing what features your grocery app needs and which ones it doesn’t. One of the biggest UX challenges is to have irrelevant features that your grocery website may not need.
Here we have curated a list of the essential features for your grocery app or grocery website.
Features for the consumer app
Easy Sign up
First things first, the signup feature is a must-have. You need information about every user landing on your grocery app or website. Moreover, the users signing up to your app want their data, wish list and such data stored for future purchases. The user signup is useful for saving their data so that you can pick up from where you left off the last time.
Search
The search feature should be located on top for easy searches. Ensure the search results page allows easy and fast product sorting and categorizing. It is very commonly seen that websites lack intuitive filter options for the product results pages. But with a grocery website where people want to place the order in the easiest and fastest way, you must have an organized filter option.
Add to cart
Add-to-cart is one of the key features of an eCommerce website or app. Grocery shopping is accompanied by long discussions or confusion about what to buy or not to buy. But this doesn’t mean the users are willing to fill up their cart repetitively every time they get in and out of your website.
Moreover, some users prefer to fill the cart with the items they need and plan to complete the purchase later or a day later. The cart will be saved in their account login, and they can complete their order whenever they want.
Schedule orders
With our hustling lifestyle, we often forget to pick up essential groceries. But a schedule order feature will allow the users to place the order and select a time slot with the data to get their products delivered at the required time.
Payment gateways
Payment gateways have become an important part of eCommerce shopping. This is no different for grocery apps. Users always look for quick and easy checkout options. They are not patient enough to wait even a few seconds to complete their order payment.
To enhance the overall customer experience, make sure you offer all the payment options to the users like
- Credit/Debit Card payment
- Online bank transfer
- UPI
- PayPal or stripe
- COD
Real-time tracking of orders
Every user is habituated to keep tracking their order from time to time. For grocery shopping, they keep checking their order status. It is no big deal when the orders get delivered on time, but users know the update when the raiders arrive early or are delayed. Instead of being clueless about when they will receive their order, it is better to have a date and time attached to the delivery.
Reviews & Ratings
Users tend to check minor details regarding the products they are unsure about. But one thing that can help them in making an informed decision is a review. Moreover, when there are multiple brands for the same product category, it gets confusing for the users. So to simplify the buying decisions, the reviews and ratings help them choose the favorable product. Moreover, reviews induce a sense of trust among the users, which is helpful from a business POV until and unless it’s positive feedback.
Product Categorize
For a seamless user experience, you need to categorize the products listed intuitively. It should be in a way that each product can be easily found and identified. In brief, the easier it will be for the user, the more they would like to return to your grocery app.
Push notifications
How will your users know about a new offer or a promotional activity you feature on your app or website? Mails and DMs are one way, but there should be something that catches their attention well. All in all, push notifications are an ideal way to update your users about new offers or products.
Offers & coupons
eCommerce apps effectively use offers and discounts to attract more users daily. It is one of the ideal practices to gain more orders and acquire new users. Users love to find the best deals for their purchases. You don’t necessarily need to offer larger discounts, but they should be good enough to attract new users.
Features for the admin panel
The features of the application are not limited to the users. If your grocery app is being actively used, then as a business, you need to keep check of the orders, inventory, contact and payment details, keep track of the logistics, and so much more.
This needs an intuitive interface, as several personas will be responsible for handling the admin panel. Their expertise may not necessarily be on the technical side. The web developers will need to build a web interface that can help manage all the data of users and payment integration, execute the marketing plans, and manage the orders.
Let’s take a brief look below at some of the key features required for the admin side of the grocery website:
Registration
Multiple authorized persons will access the grocery app’s admin side for the admin panel. In addtition, this feature is helpful for the vendors collaborating with your grocery website to sell their products.
Not every one of the users of the admin panel gets access. Hence, to manage the access permissions and authority to each one, registration with a set of authorization lists is perfect!
Dashboard
The admin view requires having all of the important statistics in one places. More importantly, the data should be efficiently presented on a single screen with an intuitive dashboard design. One of the top benefits is that you can identify the relation between the numbers, which will help improve your grocery website. The following are the details you will want to see on your dashboard:
- Orders
- Payments
- Deliveries
- Inventory alerts
User management
Undoubtedly, the user comes first, and to ensure that no customer leaves your grocery website disappointed, you’ve got to ensure the customer experience is good. To make that happen, keep management where every interaction with the user is pleasant for the user. It starts with the users navigating through your grocery app, and if they have any queries, you can attend to them through chat or call.
Store management
If you have multiple stores, it is important to have the data and status of each store, their number of orders, and customer details stored in a single place. Additionally, adding and removing the stores will be managed from here.
Order management
The receiving and delivery of orders are updated here. This feature ensures you don’t miss out on updating order details and updates for the delivery. It will help in allowing the users to know their order status.
Inventory
This feature helps with keeping track of the inventory and managing your stock. It is critical to have inventory management for a grocery app where users make purchases every minute.
Discount engine
The discount feature will allow you to manage the offers and coupons through the admin panel. You can choose when to add or remove discount offers and activate or deactivate coupon codes.
Payment
With a grocery app running smoothly, you can’t afford to have any trouble with the monetary transactions and handling the finances. Consequently, store all your operations-related transactions in one place.
Category management
The list of grocery items is endless. However, to manage such large data, you can categorize the products into main and subcategories to keep track of all the products listed on your grocery app.
Features for the delivery side
The following are the features for the delivery personnel for your online grocery store
Registration
To keep a record of every individual involved with the delivery of orders, a registration feature helps and is important. This way, you know you are associated with only the verified person by the vendors or you. Therefore, once the registration and verification are done successfully, you can kick start the delivery process with the person.
Order Management
The status update of orders and their management is critical for both the admin and the delivery side. The delivery personnel can keep track of the order and update the status of each order they complete delivery for.
Delivery History
A version of the order history for the delivery personnel is important. The delivery history of the order delivered by the delivery person will help them know their updates. Moreover, they can keep check of the details about each order and its delivery like the type of payment done for each of them.
Maps & navigation
Maps are important for the delivery guys. It will help them find the locations to deliver their assigned orders. Furthermore, inbuilt navigation in their application will help them find the optimized routes for delivery.
Digital wallet
Digital wallets have become a necessity these days. Plenty of people prefer to use cashless payments through fintech applications. Hence, with digital wallet scans and more integration, the delivery guy can help avail the cashless and UPI payments for order payments.
UX for a grocery app
User experience is a priority, no matter the industry or product type. Like any other website UI and UX design, an online grocery website is no different. Here, the customer experience of an online grocery store will define the high conversion rate. Grocery apps or grocery website need to be fast and easy.
The orders made on the grocery app are mostly last-moment purchases when the user has no time to visit a store and prefers to get their order delivered to their doorstep. To deliver a fast and intuitive user experience with your grocery app, you need to ensure that you make use of the right UX practices. The following are the practices for a successful online grocery store:
Infusing the social behavior
People believe in other people before anything else. For a grocery app, one person’s good experience will influence others to use the same app. If your friends, relatives, or neighbors use a good grocery app, you’ll easily install it. In the same way, the users want to know the experience of fellow users on your grocery app.
Moreover, the reviews and rankings for the product and their shopping experience will help influence buyer behavior. You can show how many people have bought a particular product in the last hour. Like an offline store, people will be influenced to at least check out a product. The same behavior can be seen with an online application.
Personalization
A product’s success relies on customers’ perspectives toward it. For the grocery items, users will be making recurring orders. Additionally, personalization helps build a connection between the product with the users.
- The recurring order feature should be optimized well
- Notify the users of offers & discounts relevant to their purchase
- Send relevant reminders and updates
- Product recommendations based on previous orders
Conclusion
However, the success of your grocery app or a grocery website will rely upon several other factors. You can still ensure from your side that you’ve left no page unturned with the right features while the app develops. All in all, it is all about the strategies and planning you put into it. You can decide on the right set of features for your grocery app or website based on niche user research.
