Click & Collect: your omnichannel strategy’s best ally

Last March, the closure of “non-essential” shops led many consumers to go online to make their purchases. In just a few weeks, e-commerce has seen strong growth, particularly in the food sector, and the pandemic is set to accelerate the UK grocery market’s digital shift. This increase has been in part driven by Click & Collect, solicited by many consumers in recent weeks so that they do not have to go to the store to do their grocery shopping.

Through lockdown, non-food retailers have also had to revise their model to cope with the closure of their physical store(s). In addition to embarking on the e-commerce adventure, some players have also implemented or reinforced their in-store merchandise withdrawal system. This has enabled certain brands, such as Dunelm and Booths, to relaunch their business in the short term. We have even seen innovation from groups such as StarStock, who have set up a website called mypubshop.com, enabling locals to Click & Collect orders for household stapes from their local pubs. Although stores are expected to open from the beginning of May, Click & Collect will likely be here to stay, at least for the coming months.

Launched several years ago to digitise points of sale and bring more flexibility to the consumer buying journey, Click & Collect intelligently combines e-commerce and physical commerce.

Since adopted by many brands and retailers, Click & Collect allows consumers to make online purchases before picking them up at the store of their choice, in just a few hours. By offering this mode of delivery, you reduce your lead times, which have increased during the lockdown.

Not only do they obtain their purchase more quickly, but consumers are also not presented with a shipping cost. This equally allows you to save money on your shipping services. By opting for this system, the products ordered come directly from your store’s stock and the point of sale is transformed into a warehouse.

To help merchants develop their omnichannel strategy, some marketplaces such as eBay (for Germany) or Rakuten (for France) allow these players to maximise their online and offline activity and remove as many barriers to purchase as possible. “Thanks to Rakuten Instore, a technological solution using AI, you can synchronise the stocks of your different stores in real-time and allow your buyers to retrieve the orders placed on Rakuten in the store closest to them. The best store is detected via a geolocation system, and available within one hour! Rakuten Instore is accessible to everyone, free of charge: whether local shops with only one store or national brands, several hundred retailers are already taking advantage of this solution through 2,500 stores: Boulanger, PicWic Toys, Jules, Brice, Micromania…”, Alison Boutoille, B2B Marketing Business Development Director – Rakuten.

To support brands and retailers during this period, Lengow integrates Click & Collect within its platform (in beta version). You can now implement this functionality in Lengow on Rakuten (for France) and eBay (for Germany).

To activate this feature, simply add attributes, by store and product, when setting up your feed.
– Rakuten: store identifier, product quantity.
– eBay: store identifier, product quantity, order preparation time.

Once you have filled in these elements, you must create your stores. For eBay, do this using one of our applications. For Rakuten, access the back office of the marketplace to configure your set up.

It will soon be possible to track your Click & Collect orders on Lengow’s platform.