How to Ship Online Grocery Properly

How do you ship online grocery properly?

1. Make your ordering platform easy to use
2. Use appropriate packaging
3. Emphasize speed and efficiency
4. Use cold storage techniques
5. Avoid mixing food with non-food items

If you’re involved in the grocery eCommerce business, it’s important to know how to ship your online grocery properly for your customers. Delivering groceries is a whole new ball-game — you’re dealing with specialized items and other non-perishable goods that still have to arrive in perfect condition to your customers without compromise.

Fortunately, the switch to online grocery shouldn’t be much of a problem for you, as long as you’re aware of some tips. For one, it’s important that you make your ordering platform easy to use. Aside from this, you should also give your customers the convenience of allowing them to track their orders, receive deliveries in the fastest time possible without sacrificing the condition. Continue reading to learn more.

Make Your Ordering Platform Easy to Use

One of the first things that you have to take into consideration, is the design of your ordering platform. As much as possible, you want to keep it simple in order for your customers to have a smooth and seamless experience. You don’t want to pepper them with ads and obnoxious promotions.

For example, you’ll want to focus on making the design intuitive, that even those who are just beginners to your platform won’t have difficulty using it. Since you’re delivering grocery products, implement design strategies that can allow the users to locate both non-food and food-based products with ease. You should also include comprehensive product information that really tells the user what it’s all about without overwhelming them.

Another tip you could use is to place checkout options in appropriate locations. Likewise, you’ll also want to optimize this step further by making it simple for the user to input their contact details, delivery information, add products to their carts, and check out their items.

Use Appropriate Packaging

Packaging is one of the other top concerns when shipping groceries. Take note that customers may be having a lot of breakable and fragile items shipped to them, especially egg cartons, glass containers, liquids, and other brittle goods.

You don’t want to skimp on the packaging. There’s definitely no such thing as being too careful when dealing with groceries, so you’ll want to use up as much foam and other protective materials that can secure the items while in transit.

For example, when shipping glass jars, wrap them appropriately in tons of bubble or foam wrapping where they won’t shift around during the delivery proper. Boxes with fragile items should also be labelled accordingly for added protection.

For liquids, on the other hand, make sure that the contents do not leak from the container. You may need to put adhesives in order to seal them better and prevent them from spilling during delivery.

Emphasize Speed and Efficiency

One of the goals of any eCommerce venture is to make a profit while still delivering excellent and efficient services to the customers. Customers want their goods to be delivered to them as soon as they hit the check-out button. Even more so with groceries, where there’s virtually no room for any delays whatsoever.

Keeping this in mind, you’ll want to assure your customers that all their grocery items will arrive at their doorsteps in the shortest time possible. Aim for deliveries that can be completed just after an hour after the customer has checked out all their items. This ensures that all their grocery items remain intact and fresh on the same day.

Use Cold Storage Techniques

Not all types of grocery items have the same requirements when it comes to temperature storage. While some products may need to be stored at room temperature, there are products that need to be in cold storage before, during, and after the delivery process.

Some items that may require cold storage include fresh poultry, meat, fish, ice cream, and ice. For these items, you may need other specialty goods such as dry ice that allows you to ship the products above without melting them or allowing a drastic level of heat transfer.

Combined with adequate amounts of dry ice, you should also store these products inside a well-insulated polystyrene storage container that has thick walls to protect the items from shifting.

Avoid Mixing Food with Non-Food Items

Another reason that makes shipping grocery products much trickier, is that non-food items shouldn’t be contained in the same packaging as food items.

For example, essentials like detergent, hand wash, dishwashing liquid, soaps, and the like can emit fumes that can affect the taste of food products that they’re stored with. To avoid this, you’ll want to have them packed in separate containers/sturdy cardboard packaging that can be airtight, if possible.

This is also a great way of making it easier for your customers to unpack the items and organize them in their own pantry, or storage compartments.

Key Takeaway

In the article, we’ve discussed some of the most effective ways on how to ship online grocery properly. You need to understand that when you’re dealing with these types of items, speed, quality, and efficiency should be on the top of your list.

You can follow a range of techniques and methods that can be traced back to the quality of your grocery shopping platform. After that, you can already focus on having the right packaging for the products, making sure that they get to their final points of destination in good condition, and using cold storage techniques wherever possible.

If you really want your groceries to be accessible to your customer base, you could always partner with a reliable grocery delivery service, such as Airspeed’s SpeedGrocer. With an easy-to-use platform and trusted delivery, customer satisfaction is definitely guaranteed. Click here to learn more about SpeedGrocer.