At Myfoodlink we aren’t just an eCommerce Platform but your Digital Grocery partner. Our team is equipped with in-depth knowledge on how to best run your Online Grocery store to maximise sales, healthy growth and how to impact in-store operations to boost profitability.
The Myfoodlink Delivery Zone & Window Management tool is powerful and sophisticated, to give you the flexibility you need to configure your order management how you need it for your customers. Whether that is controlling order volumes, charging fees, time-slots or availability our system is designed to handle this with ease for your customers and staff.
What to think about when setting up your Click & Collect windows
Often online shoppers are time-poor people and are willing to save time at the cost of spending more money. This trend has become increasingly clear in many industries over the last few years and couldn’t be more true for Grocery and the shift into Online Shopping.
Click & Collect has become part of the weekly routine for a lot of busy people who want to get in and out of the grocery store quickly. For example, a busy parent might need to drop kids off at school by 8:30 am, take the dog for a quick walk by 10 am and then quickly pop into the supermarket whilst they are out and about. Click & Collect makes this possible, but only if you set it up so that it meets your customer’s needs.
Thinking in the shoes of yourself and your customers it’s often that we only have a one hour gap in our busy schedules to slide in a visit to the doctor or maybe a haircut, that same hour wouldn’t be enough for us to do our grocery shopping. We would need some extra time to park our car, get the trolley, walk through the aisles, find the right products, get them through the checkout, get back to the car and head to our next appointment. Click & Collect needs to suit this hour window as often this is only the time customers get in their busy lives.
A common experience that we see is Click & Collect windows that are 4-8+ hours wide e.g 9 am-1 pm or 9 am-8 pm. This essentially tells the customer it could be ready at some point between these hours, not a great experience right? We have all in our lives experienced that booking with a Plumber, TV or Internet person where they say they will be there at some between 8 am-12 pm, half your day wasted without knowing. Online shopping for groceries doesn’t need to be like this, and we can show you below how to manage it.
How should I set my Click & Collect windows up?
Time of day
Ideally, your Click & Collect windows should be available from one hour after store opening to one hour before closing time.
Hourly windows
Hourly windows give your customers a clear indication of when to get their groceries. Provides more control with volume to overlap orders throughout the day. And because storage is often an issue in stores, having hourly collection windows will free up space allowing you to have your next new orders ready and well-positioned in the store for the next collection slot.
Order cut off times
You can set your cut off times to be within the hours you have your pickers rostered and, when customers come to collect outside of these hours, it is easy and already organised so your checkout team or duty manager can hand the groceries over. For example, your morning windows could be cut off by 10 pm the night before and your afternoon slots by 12pm that day and your evening slots by 3 pm. You can then roster your pickers between 8 am-5 pm daily who will be able to pick all orders on time ready for customers whilst giving customers the ability to choose to collect when it suits them.
Storage capacity improvements
Storage in-store is a valuable commodity when you offer both Click & Collect and Delivery options. To create additional storage, you can always use collection fridges, freezers and ambient-temperature shelves at the front of your store.
Creating the extra space will also reduce confusion between pick-up and delivery orders. Collection storage makes it easier for the checkout team to process collections when customers arrive. They are also a fantastic vehicle to use to advertise to customers that you have an online store available.
Order capacity per window
Analysing how many orders your team can pack in a day is essential to maximising capability. By having hourly Click & Collect windows you can spread your capacity across the day using our Order Limit functionality within each Window. For example, in the morning you may only have 1-2 orders per slot due to low staff count, but for afternoon/evening slots you may have 3-4 per slot as you have increased your staff count throughout the day who can assist with picking orders. As your order volume increases and you increase your staff count to manage it, you can tweak these capacities in windows where they are being frequently filled. This will keep things under control in-store, identify what are favourite windows by customers and improve the availability of where customers want it.
