Until March 2020, Online Grocery Delivery Services saw a boost of 202%, proving that the online grocery business is blooming with time. The concept of an online grocery store was based on making people's lives easy and comfortable. However, this sector's growth is also emerging with many online grocery challenges.

Shopping for grocery items is a routine job. It is something which people do to fulfil their household needs. Hence, came the concept of online grocery. Many local and international players came up with their websites and apps. The growing Online Grocery Delivery has many issues and challenges because of users, costs, technology, etc. However, it can not be ignored that it is one of the sectors with great potential and growth.

Instant Genie makes things easy for every busy household. The app-based service is online and easily accessible. This is a 24x7 delivery app that instantly delivers anything to your doorstep. The virtual assistant also helps us with our shopping and selection.

Instant Genie saves a lot of time during hectic daily schedules and also sorts our daily needs. They deliver groceries, essentials, fruits, vegetables, meat, food, and medicine in most major cities. Additionally, they offer a separate service to pick up and deliver packages within the city limits. 

List of Common Challenges Faced by Online Grocery Businesses

Boosting Storage and Delivery Cost

One of the main problems with online grocery shopping is that their storage cost might fluctuate rapidly. Many elements are affected, including taxes, storage space rent, maintenance issues, electricity, etc. Apart from the same, the Delivery cost can also vary according to the expansion of the target market, transportation maintenance costs, fuel costs, etc.

You have a great chance of growing your business if you plan solutions to handle these problems with grocery shopping. Moreover, You can do it by considering factors like your location, target market area, types of transportation, size of the storage space, etc., and plan a tentative cost. Moreover, you can also use supply chain apps to keep a close tab on supply chain management. It will save you from a sudden event or burden, and your business will stay safe from uncertainty. 

Fluctuations in Taxes

One of the significant online grocery delivery challenges includes fluctuating various taxes. These taxes might be of any type, like excise duty, sales tax, income tax, etc. Taxes keep changing according to new bills, amendments, or changing governments.

Therefore, it might affect various costs included in online grocery businesses. Hence changes in these taxes directly affect the price of the products. It can create a bad reputation for the brand or business in the consumer's mind.

The Inability for Efficient Deliveries

The inability to deliver products fast or, in some areas, can become a crucial grocery shopping problem for any business. Providing products is the most important event for any online business. Therefore, it is essential to focus on and predict events that might create a hurdle.

This issue can be solved by creating a perfect strategy in advance. You can create a network of local grocery stores and use delivery persons to pick products from there to deliver. Currently, on-demand app development is trending as well. Building a perfect delivery system for your online grocery business can boost your business.

Non-tech Savvy Customers

In the US, Only 18% of customers aged 43- 62 years prefer shopping online through the best grocery list apps or websites for groceries. There are multiple reasons behind this approach of baby boomers. One of them is their lack of interest in technology.

If we take the example of voice ordering for groceries, GlobalData consumer research says only 3.1% of users used voice commands for grocery shopping.

Spoiled Inventory Management

If you own one of the best shopping apps, you will definitely have to manage an inventory in the background for products you sell. Now, the real deal is that inventory management can be a tricky task. You can face problems with grocery shopping business inventory like lack of product quantities, expired products, old prices, etc. This is one of the most Common Challenges Faced by Online Grocery Businesses.

However, this problem can be solved with proper planning. You can either fix a recurring inventory management schedule or integrate an automated inventory management system within the app to ease the task.

Tough Penetration Into Small Towns

Approaching small towns is still a big task for online grocery businesses. The reason is that the population in small towns still prefer traditional ways of making purchases. Moreover, investors find it difficult to invest money to expand the business to small towns as they lack interest in online grocery shopping businesses from these market areas. 

The Freshness of Edible Commodities

The online grocery business model stores products and delivers them to customers. Therefore, in some cases, it gets harder to maintain the freshness of edible products.

To resolve this problem, you can coordinate with suppliers to recycle products to maintain their freshness. Moreover, you can also buy a limited quantity to maintain the balance between the supply and demand of these products.

Customers' Loyalty and Satisfaction

One harsh feedback can have the ability to affect your business negatively. Therefore, it is essential to understand that customer satisfaction should be considered while developing an online grocery business model. Many customers check ratings on app stores before they install an application. So, a good rating is essential for higher installation numbers.

The thing is, satisfied customers can improve your reputation, and they can also be loyal to your business. In some cases, they might want to purchase from your store instead of your alternatives, as your behaviour is good and theirs is not. So, it would help if you always kept a few things in mind, like etiquette,  respect, etc., while running your business.

User Interface and User Experience Glitch

As the online grocery shopping experience is all about websites and applications, UI and UX matter much. There are a few grocery store problems and solutions regarding the mobile app design. You should be aware of them as well.

However, in short, UI and UX can have issues like glitches, lousy navigation, lags, etc. Therefore, even though it might be a little costly, I advise you to hire top mobile app development companies to develop your grocery app offering an errorless experience. Apart from that, you should always be ready for recurring app and website maintenance costs as well.

Evolving Market Trends

Well, any business can not flourish without a good marketing strategy. Many business owners still follow traditional marketing and advertising methods they read in books. To resolve this one of the crucial online grocery challenges, your plan has to be practical and based on the current top marketing trends.

In my opinion, you can outdo the competition existing in the current market by adopting some practical advertising strategies like Seasonal campaigns and discounts, loyalty programs, payment method-based discounts, grapevine advertising, brand collaborations, mobile apps for e-commerce, etc.

Change is always welcomed with a little bit of resistance. The concept was developed because people would be ready to pay a little extra if their groceries were delivered to their doorstep. The situation turned out to be different from what was expected. With the availability of so many options, buyers want to buy groceries from stores that promise them goods at the most reasonable price with other additional services like offers, free delivery, and even cash back.

Although grocery stores tend to stock up their inventory, the requirements keep changing, and there will be specific needs at unspecified times. The concept of selling Grocery products varies based on factors like bulk quantities, per-piece price, and even storage conditions. People take time to get adjusted to new technology. Similar is the case with online grocery stores.

Online grocery shopping has moved beyond our imagination with the latest technologies and software. Although it's challenging to predict e-commerce trends for tomorrow, we can assure you that grocery e-commerce will continue to grow in an upward direction.