What Click and Collect Can Do for Your Customers
Click and collect lets customers order online and collect in store. It’s a great way to bridge the online-offline divide. It gives your customers the convenience of browsing your wares online, from the comfort of their own homes, while also bringing those customers into your shop. Your customers will experience your physical, bricks-and-mortar shop and they’ll walk past all your lovely products as they go to collect their purchase. This system is a win-win for both customers and retailers. It gives customers the convenience of shopping online, without sacrificing the in-store shopping experience.
This is great for your existing customers, but it can also be good for bringing in new customers. There are shoppers who aren’t sure they want to visit a shop’s physical store. Maybe it’s a long trip and the consumer doesn’t want to travel if they aren’t guaranteed to buy anything. Maybe they work weekdays and weekends and there’s no convenient time for a nice long shop. With ecommerce and click and collect, customers can know for certain that the journey is worth it. And if they can only pop in for a moment? No problem, they’ve already decided what they want, they won’t need to have a long look around. Once they’re in-store of course, they might find something else they hadn’t considered. Something they didn’t look at online, but has caught their eye now that they’re in to collect.
Alternative to Shipping Charges
The great retail paradox is that customers want the highest quality products, but at the cheapest possible price. Shipping costs can cause customers to hesitate. Especially on smaller purchases, where shipping can double the cost of the product, and larger orders, where shipping can escalate in price very quickly. Offering click and collect eliminates this awkward cost of delivery.
Click and collect can also be faster than delivery. It might seem strange, but it’s true! The standard time-frame for a small delivery is 3-5 days, with next-day delivery coming at an uncomfortable premium. With click and collect, your customers can drop by to pick up their purchase as soon as you accept the order. This means same-day delivery (of sorts) for customers that are likely to be passing by anyway.
If you’d like to learn more about click and collect, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team here.
Read our article about the benefits of e-commerce and see how you can get online retail to bring more customers into your shop.
