Stay up-to-date on the latest food retail news and trends
Subscribe to free eNewsletters from Supermarket News
Sponsored By
What’s Holding Stores Back from Being In Charge of Their E-Commerce Experience?
How many of the following factors are keeping stores from building an e-commerce experience they own?
October 3, 2019
3 Min Read
Customer using e-commerce site to shopPhotograph: Shutterstock
Sponsored by Mercatus
By 2025, nearly a quarter of grocery sales representing $100 billion will happen through digital channels, according to research by FMI and Nielsen.
But before stores rush into a relationship for a quick and cheap turnkey solution, it’s important to consider whether the store will be in charge of its customers’ online shopping experience.
With many grocers quickly outgrowing their early e-commerce solutions and feeling pressured to sign on with last-mile providers, the risk of giving up control and profits keeps growing.
How many of the following factors are keeping stores from building an e-commerce experience they own and can be proud of?
There’s no room in the budget.
There’s no hiding it: Building or upgrading a store’s e-commerce experience can be a big investment. Retailer-controlled technology investments do require upfront work. While it may be tempting to see “no setup cost” solutions as free, those solutions definitely have financial costs and reputational risks that will add up down the road. When choosing a partner committed to putting the store back in charge, e-commerce can be tailored to the size of an operation and its budget, and can scale at the speed of a specific business. More important, stores will get a bigger slice of the shopping dollar, thanks to no fulfillment fees, no loss of vendor dollars and no losing customers because of high markups and poor service, all of which are common with third-party solutions.
It’s too complex.
An experienced strategic partner who will simplify the process is crucial. When stores partner with Mercatus, they are guided by a team of professional project managers, solution architects and application support experts who design solutions with platform integrations in mind. Recommendations are rooted in deep industry experience in building e-commerce success stories.
It takes too much time to launch and become beneficial.
The amount of time it takes from planning to launch depends on a number of factors, including the complexity of the project. A store’s time investment, however, is rewarded with complete ownership of the entire customer journey, including control of consumer data, consistent branding, flexibility and healthier profits for many years to come.
The store is using legacy technology.
Third-party, one-size-fits-all e-commerce solutions won’t accommodate existing technology stacks. Mercatus’ end-to-end e-commerce platform is expansive and completely configurable, and designed from the ground up to integrate technology.
There’s concern over being “locked in” with a technology that may become outdated.
Retailers should ask technology vendors about their product road map and schedule of updates and upgrades, and they should also discuss their approach to innovation with their clients. Mercatus Technologies is continuously innovating. The most recent launch of AisleOne™ on the Mercatus platform, for example, marks the next generation of intelligent personalization enabling grocers to connect one-to-one with shoppers in a way they never have before. To learn more, click here.
No one is sure where to start.
The right partner should be able to demonstrate how they will guide a store through the process. At Mercatus, that begins with discovery sessions to talk about specific e-commerce needs, operations and current technologies. Then the team will work with a store to build a one-to-one, omnichannel shopping experience that is fully branded to a specific store, and only that store.
To learn more about how Mercatus puts stores back in charge, visit Mercatus.com to book a demo today.
