How to Start an Online Grocery Store With Pickup Facility in India

COVID 19 has taught the merchants shut inside their doors, how to cope up with unprecedented situations. Indian merchants have realized the need of the hour; the importance of the Online Essentials Store and the pickup facility.  

And why will they not? India, a country with over 135.26 crores people, is locked down. The only thing that is still up is the need for the essentials like grocery & pharmacy, most of all.

So, if you are someone who is still in search of a point-to-point guide that can help you bring your physical store → online then keep on reading!

Buy Online & Let them Pick-up From your Physical Store.

As we will not just look into how to create an online store but one with a pickup facility, let’s see what that actually means.

Pickup at store facility allows your customers to make & pay the orders online. Later, pick them up from your store once the order is ready to pick.

This not only saves the customers from shipping cost but also minimize person-to-person interactions.

The quick order pickup scenario:

• The customer adds products to the cart & places the order.
• Note that the payment is done online.
• The admin receives the order notification & starts preparing it.
• Once prepared, notify customers that the order is ready to pick up.
• The customers will drive through and pick the package labeled with their names. 
•  Service is done with zero interactions. 

Prep-up for the Online Store

The basic things that you need to pre-think before jumping to building an online store are:

(We will skip the platform selection part as in this article we will talk only about Shopify. Check these helpful food & grocery plugins for other platforms.)

• Logo for your online website. If you didn’t have one for your brick and mortar store then it’s time to go for one. You can take help from hatchful and build a logo using go-to high-quality templates.
•  Second, comes the products. Now, as you were already running an offline store, you already have the list of products that will go live in your store. What you need to work on is the product description of each of your products and good quality images for them. 
• Lastly, the online payment gateways that you would like to have on your store. Shopify has its own payment gateway wherein you don’t need to pay any transaction fee. But, unfortunately, it is not available in India. So, you can configure other payment methods like PayPal, PayU, Paytm, Credit & Debit cards, Cash on Delivery, Netbanking, UPI, Bank transfer, EMIs, Razorpay, and other.

Setup the Online Store

The primary step is to start the 90 days free trial period. Note that the store name will turn into your domain name as well. If you want to customize it, you can also do that but it’s not mandatory. 

💡 Tip: Here are some of Shopify’s FAQs: Click here

Add Products

Next is to add products to your store. You must be ready with the list of products, images & product descriptions as we discussed in the prep-up steps.

You might have a lot of products to upload. Don’t worry, Shopify has no restriction on the number of products that you can upload. You can take the bulk upload step to minimize the efforts. Just prepare a CSV of all your products and upload them.

Important note: Since you won’t be doing any shipping, uncheck ‘This is a physical product‘ field while adding one.

You can further categories your products into different collections. Collections can be made manually or automatically.

💡 Tip: How to build a converting product page.

Customize the Store Theme

The website navigation structure needs to be self-explanatory, clean-cut & easy-to-operate. Don’t let your website be a complex maze with no directions. 

This will create a confusing and unpleasant user-experience, making them leave your website asap. So go for a theme that fits your requirement and is easy to navigate for your customers.

Don’t forget to work on the SEO of your store.

💡 Tip: Learn about the color psychology to implement on your site and the ways to optimize it.

Also, remember to customize the email template of the store according to the need. Make sure to add details regarding the pickup service in the email template.

Add a Store Locator

As you will be providing your customers store pickup facility, it’s so vital to have a store locator on your store. Store locators provide an easy and accessible way for your customer base to find your retail shops.

Moreover, Google Maps will provide them an instant driving direction to your store. 

Launch it

All set, it’s time to launch the store. Purchase a plan, go back to your Online Store, and Disable password. Voila! The store will be live.

Let’s see the multi-seller scenarios:

Store Pickup for Multiple Sellers

You might have a physical store running with multiple sellers. And now you are looking to bring all of them online, earn a commission from them, and provide each of them pick up facility from their individual locations.

So for that, all you need is an application like Multivendor Marketplace that can help you convert your online store into a multi-seller marketplace. With that, enable the Store Pick up feature app to allow your sellers to provide an order pickup option to the customers. 

Hyperlocal Marketplace

You can also choose to turn the marketplace into a hyperlocal one. Letting your customers filter the search results as per the location. Know more regarding the Hyperlocal Marketplace here.

That’s all you need to remember before jumping into the process. If you have any queries or suggestions regarding any of the details shared above, drop it down at support@webkul.com or Webkul UV Desk.