The idea of Store Pickup is very simple. Customers order online, but instead of waiting for delivery, they will visit the store to pick it up themselves. But if it’s really that simple, given its amazing benefits, Store Pickup will likely be far more popular than it is today.
We at HappyPoints believe that there are far more complicated issues & problems in running a Store Pickup service than meets the eye. That’s why we’ve identified and analyzed 04 Key features that may contribute greatly to the success of a pickup service so that you – the store owner, could understand what it takes to do so.
Table of Contents
Feature 01: Store Locator
The core feature of any delivery-related service, the Store Locator. Think of it this way, if the customers need to visit your stores to pick up their items, they have to know where it is. Oftentimes, there will be a list of stores for customers to choose at the checkout page, right after they’ve chosen Store Pickup as the delivery option. While this feature seems simple enough, there’s also other things that might make it go from “Good” to “Perfect”.
Firstly, store information. Apart from the obvious details like Store name, address & phone number, there are many other things that a store might want customers to know about, such as website, social media, email address, etc. The customizability of one or two custom fields would help you a lot down the line.
Secondly, a filter. If you happen to have more than a few stores, you’ll need a filter to help your customers choose a store when checking out. They could sort out the stores not just based on alphabetical order, but also based on distance as well. One click and old John would know instantly which stores are closest to him and exactly how far he’d have to travel to get his cleaning supplies.
Feature 02: Date & Time Picker
Similar to the store locator, the Date & Time Picker is also an important feature to the operation of Store Pickup. It allows the customers to choose the date & time of their pickup, so that you – the store owner, could prepare the products in time. While your customers only need a calendar to pick their date & time, there’s of course other features that could make the experience far better for everybody.
The first needed feature is “Set preparation time”. There’s products that require some time to get ready, which means that if the customers choose to pick them up too early, they won’t be ready by the time the customers arrive. This is when the preparation time feature comes into play, where you could assign a preparation time to any of your products and it will be added on the pickup time slots.
The second needed feature is called “Shifts”. Even though your store opens from 9 to 5, there’s time in between when no one is around to fulfill orders, like lunch break for example. There’s also time when there’s an extra shift for the day, maybe starting from 6 and ending at 11. As a result, the store owner like yourself might sometimes want to add another shift to the day or remove a time slot off the pickup calendar. The point is, the ability to control operating hours will add a new layer of flexibility to the stores’ operation and greatly help out customers in need.
Feature 03: Notification
If customers were to order something on your website, they must know if their order had been received. They must know if the store has just changed the order status from “Preparing” to “Ready for pickup”. A simple but effective system of notification would be greatly appreciated by customers since it’ll keep them updated and allow them to plan their travel accordingly.
The majority of Store Pickup services out there offer email or SMS notifications, and that’s really all you need. As long as the notifications are sent timely, there shouldn’t be any issues.
Feature 04: Performance Tracking
Opposite to the notification feature, there haven’t been any Store Pickup applications on the Shopify App Store that integrates a performance tracking tool. This feature could very well be the make or break feature of any businesses’ operations. Why? Without data & insights into the stores’ activities, any business owners will have issues identifying problems, improving processes or planning for future endeavors.
There are various types of information that could be extracted from a Store Pickup service, many of which could greatly help out the store owners in managing their stores. We are talking about:
- Most chosen stores and most collected items
- Most searched locations
- How busy your store is at any date and time
- Pickup orders to all orders ratio
If a store in Pennsylvania was chosen far more times than a store in Mississippi, you might want to deliver more stocks to that store. If a few hundred people search for “Ohio” in the last month, you might want to consider distributing your products there. If your Manhattan store is always full of orders around 5pm, you might want to move some of your employees to that shift.
All in all, there’s many things you could learn from your stores, and therefore many things you could do to improve them.
Conclusion
Through this detailed analysis, we hope that you now have a clear understanding of what it takes to succeed with Store Pickup. We hope that the information we provided will help you successfully plan and execute your Store Pickup service in the near future.
After all, this is what inspired us to create our first app on Shopify, Store Pickup by HappyPoints! It has every feature we have mentioned and more, so if you are interested, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We are happy to help!
