What is Click & Collect Shopping?

By Adam  |  24 Aug 2015 19:00:00

Have you heard of Click & Collect shopping before? Basically, it's as simple as it sounds: people make their orders online and then just go somewhere to collect them. It's something which is becoming increasingly popular in the world of eCommerce with more and more businesses (like Sainsbury's) starting to adopt it. So if you run an eCommerce website in conjunction with a physical shop somewhere, perhaps this is something which you'd like to integrate?

Of course, Click & Collect isn't for everybody. With Sainsbury's, for example, they have a van outside the shop with its engine running all day with a fridge inside it which is also running all day. They do this as a way to keep the food refrigerated, but for any business which isn't an enormous corporation, this will be a huge waste of electricity and is not likely to be financially viable (that’s not to mention that it’s bad for the environment). But you could likely use this method in more 'regular' ways; you could just put a person's order together behind the till and just have them come in with their receipt and collect it. For most products, this will be pretty reasonable. If you've just got a single shop somewhere, Click & Collect will offer a nice option for all your local customers. If you don't have any kind of physical shop, however, this method is probably not for you as people would likely feel a little uncomfortable about heading to your house to collect a product.

So keep this in mind as something you might wish to offer on your website. In the end, you want things to be as convenient as possible for your customers and accommodating them in this way is going to help you with that. For all you know, there are some people out there who will only be happy to buy things over the internet if Click & Collect is an option, so it can't hurt to offer it if you are able to! But if you don't even have an eCommerce website yet then sign up for Sellr now! You can create your own eCommerce website for no cost at all.