If grocery eCommerce trends are to be believed, the next five years can be the ultimate playfield for online grocery stores.Â
As per research, while in-store grocery sales will rise by about 1.3% YoY, online grocery services will see a 4.5% increase.Â
But here’s the catch: to grow your online grocery conversion rate, you’ll have to stand out in ways your counterparts aren’t.Â
And this is why we’ve rounded up 22 ways to keep your grocery eCommerce conversion rate growing.Â
The Best Ideas to Improve eCommerce Grocery Conversions (2024)
1. Differentiate your freshest supplies
2. Focus on increasing basket value
3. Prioritize “lightning deals”
4. Make your homepage more trustworthy
5. Drive product recommendations via recipes
6. Tell people “how to save”
7. Draw their attention to “autoship”
8. Create urgency through low priced products
9. Take your in-store FAQ seriously
10. Use welcome pop-ups to show instant benefits
11. Categorize your recommendations
12. Don’t hide the “pickup” option
13. Draw attention to gifting
14. Drive the conversation through relatable CTAs
15. Feature your tele helpline prominently
16. Make your sign-up offers attractive
17. Incorporate a quality guarantee
18. Bring out brand values
19. Highlight awards & certifications
20. Make search a cakewalk
21. Personalize, personalize, personalize!
22. Make social proof authoritativeÂ
1. Differentiate your freshest supplies
When Deloitte conducted a survey, they found that 68% of shoppers will pay “top dollar” for fresh foods.Â
Now because that can potentially be a massive chunk of your buyers, you’d want to differentiate your freshest supplies.Â
That’s what FreshDirect does, making “peak quality” a separate category altogether—they also build recall back to the category by labeling relevant items with that tag:
Their “peak quality store” also features top-rated products across three major categories: vegetables, fruit and seafood—what makes FreshDirect’s approach copy worthy is that they go on to explain how they rate their peak quality products within the respective product pages:
2. Focus on increasing basket value
The psychology of the online grocery buyer is telling: a study by Cornell University recently found that online grocery baskets tend to be less varied than their in-store counterparts, with impulse buying also being lesser.Â
Now this is a great argument for increasing the basket value in strategic ways—especially if you offer healthier supplies or even bundles.
eCommerce olive oil brand Graza, for example, nudges shoppers towards buying “The Duo,” which is available in sets of multiples as well—the brand uses the same technique for their single products:
On the other hand, eCommerce fresh product brand Daily Harvest features their bestselling “boxes” featuring X items on their homepage—they highlight undeniable benefits & social proof to make these more attractive to shoppers:
3. Prioritize “lightning deals”
Limited time offers in online grocery shopping are compelling because once availed they can help a shopper enjoy a higher cumulative discount.Â
This is why featuring “lightning deals” as a separate category in your navigation menu helps—what also helps is to label applicable products accordingly across the store, whether it’s on your category pages or product pages.Â
Online grocery brand Weee labels some of their products as “Hot Deals” and brings them up on the deals page—to create urgency they even use text like “50 left” or “500 sold”:
4. Make your homepage more trustworthy
A recent survey reveals that online competition for grocery sales has increased between supermarkets.Â
As a smaller brand, this might just be the right time to make a move—in terms of creating more trust, offering more shipping options and featuring exceptional customer support.Â
Balkan Fresh, for example, takes snippets from their Trustpilot reviews and features them in their hero header:
LA based online grocery store Yummy.com, on the other hand, uses real-time dynamic content to offer the closest delivery time:
You might like reading: Above the Fold: 12 ideas for better conversions (+ amazing examples)
5. Drive product recommendations via recipes
With groceries, repeat customers aren’t always promised—even if you run a great loyalty program or feature subscriptions at great prices.Â
One way to prevent your grocery conversion rates from falling is to create content that ties in relevantly and interestingly with your product recommendations.Â
That’s exactly what Safeway does—and the reason it works is because the recipe justifies the purchase of the listed products, converting shoppers on-the-go:
6. Tell people “how to save”
Value shopping is higher than ever when it comes to online grocery shopping.Â
And that means your shoppers are more intent on getting the best deals—however since most grocery stores are already full of flash sales and weekly discounts, there can be choice paralysis.Â
To avoid this, lay out clearly what shoppers can do to make the most of the deals you feature, across channels.Â
Food Town makes “ways to save” a part of their main navigation, attracting visitors as soon as they land up on the site:
7. Draw their attention to “autoship”
After all, everyone needs groceries all the time.Â
However, to truly convert visitors, you’ll have to change their perception that they may have to put in extra effort to buy from you again and again.Â
Autoship takes that out of the picture and helps improve customer lifetime value in the process—something that Hive Brands highlights while clarifying that shoppers have to “build a box” to be eligible for it:
8. Create urgency through low priced products
Unlike the popular concept of running limited time offers on usually high priced products, consider doing this with your low priced products.Â
To increase your eCommerce grocery conversion rate, this can be worthwhile because the differentiator won’t be the price—but the fact that you’re curating the best low price products for a short while.Â
This is what ALDI does and to great effect, leading people in through a featured homepage section and then categorizing them under “this week’s finds”—this is an approach that’ll also have your old customers flocking back in, when they want to buy additional products apart from groceries:
Further Reading: eCommerce Pricing Strategy: How These 9 Brands Are Nailing It
9. Take your in-store FAQ seriously
It will certainly not come as a surprise that almost 83% of shoppers make a brand website their first stopover to figure out if they'd like to buy from it.
So, to make a real difference to your eCommerce grocery conversion rate, you’d want to create a storewide FAQ section that does justice to:
Quality
Shipping & Delivery
Taxes
Returns / RefundsÂ
Deals / DiscountsÂ
Cereal brand Magic Spoon offers a wide range of FAQ across common topics to target shoppers across the conversion funnel and improve grocery conversion rates—what’s better, they’ve created topic tabs that take shoppers straight to the FAQ in that section:
Recommended reading: Grocery eCommerce Email Marketing: 28 Incredible Examples
10. Use welcome pop-ups to show instant benefits
Most online grocery stores are large enough for new visitors to be overwhelmed by.Â
And that means converting them can be tough if they’re unsure about how easy it’ll be to shop with your brand.Â
Bringing in a welcome pop-up can solve this problem—they’re especially helpful on mobile devices, which shoppers use to browse before shopping on desktop.Â
Check out how Food Lion achieves this in a simple way—what makes their welcome pop-up stand out is the CTA to create an account / sign into an existing one:
11. Categorize your recommendations
Making your store easy-to-explore is one of the keys to improving grocery conversion rate.Â
Instead of only highlighting the main categories, you may want to highlight a bunch of recommendations through seasonal categorization (like “shop summer fruits”,) meal-based categorization (like “shop lunch ideas”) or even feature-based categorization (like “shop gluten-free”).Â
Hungry Root makes recommendation categorization through health-based keywords like “anti-inflammatory” and “gut-friendly”:
Don't forget to read: 33 "Underrated" Conversion Rate Optimization Ideas For eCommerce Stores
12. Don’t hide the “pickup” option
BOPIS is on the rise—and more so when it comes to online grocery shopping.Â
So, it needs to be a visible option on your store if you’re trying to improve your grocery eCommerce conversion rate.Â
The ideal location for it is on the main navigation bar, where visitors can see it clearly as soon as they land.Â
Fresh by Brookshire’s, for example, offers this as part of their “select store option”:
And when a shopper wants to switch between pickup and delivery, a popup shows like this:
Safeway does it even better by integrating store options and pickup / delivery options to avoid confusions—what’s even better, they show the distance between other stores from the one a shopper is currently browsing:
13. Draw attention to gifting
Yes, there are people like these out there, who if you can convince around the year and not just peak season, your grocery eCommerce conversion rate is bound to rise:
The ideal way to do so is to highlight gifting in your primary navigation, though this may make more sense if you feature artisanal products.Â
However, even if you’re an aggregator displaying varied brands, you can feature gift cards or even gift bundles—and offer them as options on your product page & cart page.Â
eCommerce bread and pasta brand Wildgrain draws attention to gifting by featuring gift cards as part of their first fold messaging—what further helps is they have a separate page reserved for their gift cards, which also feature necessary FAQ:
14. Drive the conversation through relatable CTAs
Going by numbers, 40% of shoppers order online groceries every week.Â
But going by competition (in variety and deals,) most shoppers wouldn’t bother staying back on your online grocery store unless taking action was compelling enough.Â
Which brings us to creating calls to action that can incite curiosity, hint at a relatable problem or even point towards community efforts at creating sustainability.Â
Thrive Market, for example, creates an internal conversation for the shopper through their first fold CTAs on the homepage:
Imperfect Foods, on the other hand, makes their membership program more attractive by calling out the “free” aspect within the CTA itself:
Further Reading: CTA Button Examples (+ 50 Call to Action Phrases)
15. Feature your tele helpline prominentlyÂ
A great grocery conversion rate really depends on how fast you can respond to customer complaints.Â
Now while stores in other categories may get away simply by showing a great live chat function, for a grocery store, that may still not work.Â
This is mostly because with perishables, customers expect instant help—and they want to be in control.Â
Do what Seabra Foods does: they mention their tele helpline vividly in the footer section and also subtly display it on the header.Â
16. Make your sign-up offers attractive
Since getting first party data has become more important than ever, your online grocery business has to cut through the clutter of regular sign-up prompts.Â
Think about it: “Get 20% off on your next order” can be compelling on a category like makeup, but would it make as much sense for groceries?Â
This is why your signup prompts have to do one of the following:Â
🍏 promise a discount on multiple orders,Â
🍏 feature a high-value giveaway (which is also likely to foster loyalty,) orÂ
🍏 offer a decent price slash on a single order.Â
We love what Instacart does with their multi-order discount:
Ramen brand Immi, on the other hand, raises the stakes by nudging towards a big giveaway:
Further Reading: 28 No-BS Ways To Get More Email Subscribers in eCommerce
17. Incorporate a quality guarantee
4 out of 10 grocery shoppers still prefer a mix of physical store & online store buying to get their needs met.Â
This also means that if you’re primarily a DTC brand, you’ll have to fight the quality worries of customers.Â
Featuring a quality guarantee alongside other quality assurances across your site could be helpful—this is exactly what Misfits Market does especially on their sign-up /membership page (their guarantee assures either a refund or food credits).Â
18. Bring out brand values
eCommerce brands dealing with essentials and daily necessities have to face the daily challenge of differentiation.Â
Better deals, more products and high-value bundles that are priced decently make it difficult for grocery brands to play off each other.Â
And this is why you’ll have to ensure your online grocery store makes your brand values & USP come out distinctly—Bubble Goods is a brand that achieves this in multiple ways:
✔ They keep their standards high—and make them known:
Along with easily scannable info-graphics, a running ticker drives home what ingredients the brand stands against—implying they only stock products that are of high quality:
âś” They stock products / categories that not many online grocers stock:
Highlighting these makes their store more dependable / worthy of exploration for audiences that are looking to create a differentiated experience through the groceries they buy:
âś” They talk about the people who make the brand possible
After all, more than 4 in 10 grocery customers say they want brands to actively help them to make healthier choices.Â
So, Bubble Foods doesn’t just make space for the founding team—they also mention each member’s go-to grocery list:
19. Highlight awards & certificationsÂ
People want their food to be good—it’s that simple.Â
So, they’re actually looking for solid reasons to trust you—and trust you more than your competitors to be able to convert.Â
Highlighting your awards & certifications can take out the last level of doubt for high intent shoppers—exactly how Yelloh creates transparency around their seafood:
You could also feature institutional collaborations or community outreach programs you support—this creates trust & validates buying decisions in a crowded industry.
Check out how Bob’s Red Mill, a family-owned online grocery store reserves a whole page for the legacy they’re leaving behind in education, nutrition & wellness:
20. Make search a cakewalk
The typical grocery buyer is in a double bind: they’re in a hurry and they want to buy what’s fresh.
Since the two are a bit of a paradox, your grocery store’s search function has to lend itself to this situation.Â
The most high-converting online grocery stores get some of the following right in their site search:Â
✔ They show “top searches”
This is a great way to help out first-time visitors as well as people shopping on the fly discover products immediately
✔ They offer a “View All Results” CTA
This is a great way to ensure your online grocery search function doesn’t miss out on any category and related product - even if the shopper has mistyped the search term!
âś” They let shoppers type in their zip codeÂ
This invariably returns a more precise & personalized search—if an online store has tie-ups with physical grocery stores, then this makes a huge difference - this approach is also helpful to calculate taxes that may be different for different regions your store serves.Â
In fact this is exactly what Mercato does (that too on the first fold)—and flanks it with some copy that nudges the shopper to try their search:
21. Personalize, personalize, personalize!
76.5% of grocery shoppers want a tailored online grocery experience—and get frustrated if they don’t get it.Â
Which means to get your grocery eCommerce conversion rate higher, you’ll have to focus on personalization—here are a few ideas some of the best online grocery stores have implemented:
✔ They make “live shopping” a feature
This enables multiple things at the same time: easier discovery of products & brands, greater trust through the shared content (which often features founders & experts) and a way to learn—exactly what online grocery brand Martie leverages:
✔ They have a “recommended” section based on zip code
This instantly creates deeper awareness for new shoppers or those who’re on the lookout for the freshest products or the best deals.Â
âś” They feature a grocery selection quizÂ
Pre-select the most popular choices for every multi-choice question to help a wider variety of shoppers - make it more compelling to take the quiz by introducing a limited time countdown!
Thrive Market features an online grocery quiz that’s easy on the eyes (zero cognitive load,) and easier to answer with a progress bar keeping the shopper on track:
We recommend you read: 31 Brilliant Examples of eCommerce Personalization
22. Make social proof authoritativeÂ
While customer reviews and testimonials seem to float the boat for most eCommerce categories, with online groceries, it’s a bit different.Â
Since groceries are considered everyday, without expert social proof, you may find it difficult to differentiate your brand or product offerings.Â
This is why bringing authority into social proof snippets helps—you could feature expert collaborators who feature in your live streams or influencers who have promoted your products through your influencer gifting program.Â
Ramen brand Immi sources their authority reviews from across genres & industries to make social proof more comprehensive:
Great grocery conversions need better UX
98% of visitors who visit a an eCommerce site—drop off without buying anything.
Why: user experience issues that cause friction for visitors.
And this is the problem Convertcart solves.
We've helped 500+ eCommerce stores (in the US) improve user experience—and 2X their conversions.
How we can help you:
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