Generate more store traffic via Click & Collect with tips and tricks from Rakuten

Hi everyone, my name is Romain Roy, I’ve been with Rakuten since 2016, first as a Head of Business Developer, and now as the Head of B2B Sales.

For us at Rakuten, click & collect is not just a trend. This feature embodies the hybridization of physical Points of Sale and online stores. This high-quality customer experience leads to customer loyalty. At Rakuten, we have been offering the click & collect option for several years now, because we believe in its potential and its beneficial effects for the business as well as the consumer. Its growing popularity, accelerated by the recent lockdowns, only confirms our point of view that tomorrow’s business will be one that benefits everyone. In any case, this is what we aspire to every day: we seek to strengthen the local economy by putting at their disposal our different assets, such as innovations and new technologies. This is a win-win situation that works for everyone: companies, businesses, city centers and consumers.

There is a wide gap between Brick & Mortar and the web in terms of environmental impact and digitalization. However, during the pandemic, consumers discovered that shopping online doesn’t have to be at the expense of physical stores. Moreover, e-commerce can support the activity of Brick & Mortar. During the lockdown period, click & collect allowed stores to maintain an economic activity which otherwise would have been deprived of outlets. In addition, it increases in-store traffic. Almost one in two customers don’t limit themselves to the item ordered online when they go to pick it up. Indeed, 40% of people buy other products when coming to the store after the use of click & collect.

As a partner of all businesses, we believe in the complementarity between physical and online commerce. Did you know that we are the only French marketplace to drive traffic to the stores thanks to click & collect? On our platform, in 2020, we noticed a 60% increase in the number of products purchased with in-store pickup. Our sellers understand that this is an ideal way to expand their catchment area, as twice as many of them activated this functionality in 2020. And this is further confirmed in 2021 as we have recorded +80% of products sold through this channel, compared to last year.

Recent health events have only highlighted the importance of omnichannel commerce. At Rakuten, we deeply believe that click & collect has many positive outcomes. In 2021, this delivery option was chosen by 33% of online buyers, against 28% in January 2020. During the quarantine, 36% used the Web-to-Store delivery option to keep shopping from their usual stores. In fact, 82% of French people believe that businesses should strengthen this service (Source: fevad). Rakuten believes in the potential of click & collect and its future. Not only for its social side, with the preservation of small shops and therefore of city centers, but also for its environmental side. Today, we are thinking about extending the number of pick-up points to facilitate consumers’ lives and generate more traffic in our partner stores.

Photo: Ivan Samkov / Pexels