According to Statista, the size of the Vietnamese ecommerce market in 2021 was $13 billion and is expected to reach $39 billion in 2025, ranking second in Southeast Asia behind only Indonesia. The spectacular breakthrough of the grocery eCommerce industry has coincided with the explosion of the eCommerce market. As a result, online grocery shopping has become a part of 53 percent of consumers’ habits. 

Grocery companies should create their eCommerce website as soon as possible to jump into the bigger game and develop online grocery business activities to capitalize on the enormous potential of the eGrocery market and gradually transition to digital transformation.

SECOMM has outlined the journey to create a comprehensive eGrocery website for the Vietnamese market with over 7 years of experience in eCommerce.

The initial stage: Basic eGrocery website development 

Setting goals for the development of the eGrocery website

The first step for grocery businesses is to set goals and prioritize those goals to plan the result of an appropriate eCommerce website for each stage.

Businesses can consider long-term goals such as brand positioning, exploitation of potential customers, and product online business capability.

Short-term goal activities such as revenue growth, customer monitoring and analysis, campaign effectiveness evaluation, and so on should prioritize by businesses. 

Furthermore, the user experience factor, which includes services such as payment, logistics, online customer care, and so on, is critical to increasing interaction, support, customer consultation, and problem resolution as quickly as possible.

In terms of duration, businesses can choose to deploy quickly to penetrate the eGrocery market or gradually adapt to the market at this stage. When deploying a grocery ecommerce website, the budget will be determined by each business’s strategy and financial potential.

Selecting a basic eGrocery website development platform

Two popular platforms assist businesses in developing eCommerce websites: SaaS (Software as a service) and Open Source. Here are some of the best Saas eCommerce platforms: Haravan, Shopify, and BigCommerce.

• Pros: Rapidity, reasonable price, no IT experience requirement
• Cons: Operating costs rise over time as a result of annual/monthly service license payments, platform developer reliance due to lack of ownership of source code and data, and limited functions such as the ability to integrate and expand the website system.

Open Source eCommerce Platforms widely used in the Vietnamese market include WooCommerce, OpenCart, and Magento. 

• Pros: The user owns the source code and data, has more interfaces and functions, and has better integration and extensibility than SaaS platforms.
• Cons: It takes more time and cost to develop the website initially than SaaS platforms. Also, it requires an experienced IT team to handle its system.

Due to the significant differences between SaaS Platforms and Open Source Platforms, stage businesses prefer to use SaaS Platforms in the initial stages of basic eGrocery

Designing the interface of the eGrocery website

Businesses have to meet the following criteria when designing the website interface: UI/UX standardization, displaying the brand’s and the eGrocery industry’s characteristics, and product presentation synchronization to provide the best experience to customers.

There are three approaches to designing the interface: using available themes, customizing themes, or creating their own. Businesses frequently use the available themes in this stage to save the most money. Still, some companies with financial potential will choose the other two options for better branding.

Adding functions to the eGrocery website

When operating a grocery eCommerce system, businesses can prioritize the development of basic functions to meet the essential needs during this time.

Some basic functions required in eGrocery websites, such as:

• Catalog Management: Manage all data, processes, categories, attributes, prices, inventory quantities, and images/videos to operate and optimize the efficiency of the online grocery store.
• Store Management: Manage product inventory and each branch’s business activities and personnel.
• Cart and Checkout: Manage the shopping cart and customers’ information when they check out.
• Customer Management: Manage customer information to increase marketing efficiency, purchase experience, and customer satisfaction.
• Marketing Management: Optimize SEO and implement marketing strategies with tools to increase business sales.
• Sales Management: Create and manage sales, order, payment, and shipping processes.
• Content Management: Create and optimize all content elements for CMS pages, image storage, customize themes, and design websites.
• System Management: Delegate administrators to review the best methods for website security and maintenance
• Analysis and Report: Help track and measure eCommerce system performance and develop future strategies.

Finalizing the legal procedures

According to Decree 52/2013/ND-CP of the Government, every individual or organization that owns a sales eCommerce website must notify or register with the Ministry of Industry and Trade on the eCommerce Operation Management Portal. 

Websites that exceed the time limit or fail to register/notify the competent management agency within the time frame specified will be administratively sanctioned by regulations.

The following stage: Advanced eGrocery website development

Re-targeting

As the company grows and the market changes, the goals must be adjusted accordingly. This is also the time for leaders to rethink the business strategy’s target and money to invest in the grocery eCommerce website system. During this time, businesses frequently focus on the short and long-term goals of expanding the online grocery store system.

Long-term business goals can include expanding market segments, developing loyalty programs, forming consumer online shopping habits, etc.

Short-term goals for businesses can include capturing more new potential customers, increasing revenue, and supporting Ecommerce Marketing strategy.

Selecting platforms for conversion

When SaaS platforms are no longer effective enough to help businesses expand their online grocery store website systems, they have to turn to Open Source platforms like Magento, WooCommerce, and OpenCart to build advanced eGrocery websites.

In this stage, platform selection criteria include:

• Professional website interface, UX / UI standardization, displaying the brand’s and the eGrocery industry’s characteristics.
• Comprehensive functional system from basic; advanced to industry-specific
• Flexible customization and extensibility, allowing businesses to integrate with a wide range of third-party utilities and support multiple websites, multi-language, and multi-currency.
• High security, assisting businesses in avoiding network attacks, and assisting with data backup when needed 

Absolutely, businesses will face more challenges when switching platforms from SaaS to Open Source, such as changing costs, time to train personnel on open platforms, and data loss or errors during the conversion.

Selecting the development resources (In-house team or Project developer)

Businesses must choose the right resources to develop their website to build eCommerce website on an open source platform.  Typically, companies can create an in-house team or find a project developer. Regardless of the resource, professional knowledge and practical experience about the chosen platform are required.

Businesses should recruit and train IT and eCommerce personnel with expertise and experience in the chosen platform. Building the right team will take a lot of time and money. Still, it will help businesses manage resources better and actively edit or develop the website system according to the requirements.

Businesses should look for project developers based on the following criteria to collaborate with them: 

• Ecommerce experience (the number of years of experience, the quantity and the quality of projects they have done, and the complexity of projects).
• The professional team (solution consultants, IT personnel, customer service).
• Good process (analyzing, proposing solutions, developing, testing, and maintaining).
• Fast processing and support capabilities.
• Warranty and maintenance commitments. 

This will help businesses learn expertise, gain experience, and develop a website in all aspects of the eGrocery industry. Still, companies and their partners must collaborate effectively to achieve a better result.

Re-designing the interface of the eGrocery website

Businesses can keep things the same while switching platforms. There is no need to change the current website interface. Many companies, however, will rebuild the website interface to match the new strategy and platform.

Similar to the previous stage, businesses have several options when designing the interface of a grocery eCommerce website: using available themes, customizing the themes, or creating their own. At this stage, however, businesses frequently choose to customize or design their own theme to reflect the characteristics of the eGrocery brand and industry.

Converting platform

After selecting the appropriate conversion platform, the conversion should be carried out carefully to limit the risk of data loss or enterprise error. To avoid errors, the conversion is usually done as automatically as possible.

The platform conversion process includes steps to extract data from the old system and record it into the new system. After converting the platform, businesses need to double-check to ensure that the converted data is fully and correctly according to the plan.

Upgrading functional system

In addition to the basic functions, businesses should focus on developing a more complex system of functions, including advanced and industry-specific functions for the eGrocery industry.

Advanced functions include order tracking, abandoned cart, similar product recommendations, advanced product search, multilayer product catalog, and others that improve the consumer experience and speed up the shopping process.

Industry-specific functions aid in thoroughly resolving the challenges of implementing intensive departmental eCommerce, meeting the needs of customer segments and businesses such as fast delivery, delivery time selection, and so on.

Furthermore, businesses must constantly update and develop user-friendly functions to stay competitive in the market.

Operating and maintaining the eGrocery website system

When putting the grocery eCommerce website system through testing, businesses must review and test the entire website and functionality in a specific time frame to ensure order processing speed, website stability, and so on. In addition, businesses must immediately contact the in-house team or the developer if issues arise to adjust and improve the website before going live.

After the grocery eCommerce website system has stabilized, businesses should focus on Ecommerce Marketing strategies (SEO, SEM, Email Marketing, Content Marketing, Social Marketing, and so on) or implement Omni-channel to grow their online eGrocery business.

For long-term sales growth, businesses should maintain, update, and upgrade their website system regularly, quickly adapting to changes in the eCommerce market in general and the grocery market in particular.

In general, developing comprehensive eGrocery websites for the Vietnamese market is complex. It requires businesses to invest significant time and money in researching the best eCommerce strategy for each stage of business development.

Our company – SECOMM, has been partnering with many big enterprises such as An Nam Group (Vietnam), Jasnor (Australia), and Changi Airport Group (Singapore). As a result, we are aware of the challenges and worries firms face while developing an eCommerce website system.

Get in touch with us now for FREE eCommerce consultancy and solutions in eGrocery businesses.

Grocery eCommerce is a trend in eCommerce that allows customers to buy goods online. This is regarded as the leading industry in the eCommerce market, particularly in Vietnam. According to an iPrice report, when people began staying at home to avoid the Covid-19 epidemic, traffic to websites specializing in the grocery business increased 45% faster than before. This trend remained stable after the social distancing was reduced, increasing by 10% at the end of the year. Online grocery is the only category that has seen consistent growth throughout the pandemic, with search demand continuing to rise.

Bach Hoa Xanh 

Bach Hoa Xanh is one of the most popular grocery store chain owned by Mobile World Joint Stock Company that specializes in selling fresh food and necessities. Bach Hoa Xanh currently operates nearly 2,000 stores in the South, East, and South Central provinces. This is the most visited website in the top five most visited websites in the Vietnam market, behind only the top four eCommerce platforms today, namely Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, and Sendo (According to iPrice).

– Website: https://www.bachhoaxanh.com/ 

– Traffic: 1.1M/month

WinMart

Organica

Farmer’s Market

Annam Gourmet

Annam Gourmet arose from the two Annam Group founders’ deep love of European cuisine. Annam Gourmet chain stores have been successfully operating in the Vietnamese market for over 20 years, offering high-quality imported product lines such as high-end food, wine, beverages, and cosmetics.

– Website: https://shop.annam-gourmet.com/ 

-Traffic: 8.7K/month

Grocery eCommerce Solutions

With a 200% annual growth rate, the future potential of grocery eCommerce in the Vietnamese market is undeniable (according to Statista). There are numerous opportunities in the eGrocery industry. Recently, many challenges have arisen, necessitating careful consideration of tactics by business managers in order to take the most effective steps.

The eGrocery businesses have opportunities and challenges, requiring business managers to consider tactics to take the most effective steps. Finding a partner is tricky and building an in-house team is tough. Businesses must incur significant opportunity costs and time to reach the goal.

Our company – SECOMM has been partnering with many big enterprises such as An Nam Group (Vietnam), Jasnor (Australia), and Changi Airport Group (Singapore). We are aware of the challenges and worries faced by firms while developing an e-commerce website system.

Get in touch with us now for FREE eCommerce consultancy and solutions in eGrocery businesses.

According to the VISA’s data in 2021 – the world’s leading electronic payment technology company, up to 87% of Vietnamese consumers surveyed are currently using home delivery services, of which 82% said that the first time they used this service was since the Covid-19 outbreak occurred.

That further confirms that social distancing and work-from-home models have led to significant consumer shopping behavior changes. In particular, the transition from the direct shopping experience to e-commerce has taken place rapidly in just a few months. One of the industries that have benefited the most from the boom in the e-commerce market is eGrocery.

So, what is eGrocery?

eGrocery (or Grocery Ecommerce) includes online business activities of grocery products such as food (both fresh and prepackaged), household products, healthcare, personal care, etc. Product display, ordering to pay, and shipping are all done on the website of eGrocery businesses.

Some successful eGrocery businesses in the Vietnamese market are Bach Hoa Xanh, An Nam Gourmet, Organica, Farmer’s Market, etc.

The potential of Vietnam’s eGrocery market

Covid-19 is a powerful catalyst, one of the impulses to boost the grocery industry’s demand for shopping for essential products. According to a report from iPrice, websites specializing in the grocery business grew by 45% in traffic when people started staying at home to prevent the epidemic. After the social distancing eases, this trend remains stable, increasing by 10% by the end of 2021. eGrocery is the only industry that has maintained solid growth throughout the pandemic since the beginning of the pandemic, with search demand still increasing steadily.

Additionally, with revenue coming from the U.S, the worldwide eGrocery market is also highly active. The grocery e-commerce business is anticipated to surpass $20 billion in 2021 and $24 billion in 2023 (Statista). According to Redseer’s report, India’s eGrocery market is estimated to reach $10.5 billion by 2023.

Seeing the vast potential that the eGrocery market may bring, now there are many “big guys” not from the traditional grocery industry who also jump in to fight for this lucrative “piece of cake” like Con Cung, Kids Plaza, etc.

Case Study

BigBasket – The giant in the eGrocery market in India

BigBasket was founded in 2011 by V.S. Sudhakar, Hari Menon, V.S. Ramesh, Vipul Parekh, and Abhinay Choudhari. In May 2021, Tata Group’s acquisition of 64% of BigBasket shares helped push BigBasket’s valuation to $1.85 billion.

By promoting the research and development of transportation services and expanding the logistics function system in the enterprise’s e-commerce website, in 2016, BigBasket made fast deliveries within 60 minutes. In the same year, BigBasket also built a B2B delivery service to serve the food needs of restaurants and customers in major Indian cities. This business strategy has been a solid stepping stone for the BigBasket brand in the Indian online department since 2017

Blinkit (Formerly Grofers) – Fastest Delivery Business in India

Grofers is India’s 3rd largest grocery e-commerce platform, with about 13% of the market share, behind only BigBasket (37%) and Amazon (15%). Founded in 2013 by two technology engineers, Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar, after the two founders noticed a massive gap in the local logistics services.

Initially, Grofers only specialized in supplying grocery products such as packaged food, bakery products, mother and baby care, pets, etc., to local grocery stores, medical, restaurants, or supermarkets. But thanks to the advancements in technology successfully applied in the e-commerce strategy, Blinkit has rapidly expanded its business successfully in 28 Indian cities.

On December 13, 2021, Grofers officially changed its brand name to Blinkit to deliver within 10 minutes. Like BigBasket, Blinkit also focuses on developing its logistics system and expanding its network of partner brands on its e-commerce website. Blinkit has more than 60 partners in New Delhi, more than 30 partners in Gurgaon, and many in Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, etc.

Bach Hoa Xanh – MWG’s strategic card in the eGrocery market

Bach Hoa Xanh is a mini supermarket chain selling fresh food and necessities under the Mobile World Joint Stock Company (MWG). Bach Hoa Xanh has nearly 2,000 stores across the South, East, and South Central provinces. According to iPrice, this website is in the top 5 most visited e-commerce websites in Vietnam, just behind four e-commerce platforms (Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, and Sendo).\

Since its establishment in 2015, Bach Hoa Xanh has advocated two key campaigns, competing with traditional markets and developing e-commerce websites. At first, Bach Hoa Xanh set up branches at selling points near the market, but in suburban areas and provinces, the space rental cost is much more affordable than in the central area. At the same time, the company creates a website system to boost online sales channels and draw in customers who enjoy making purchases online, particularly young people.

These days, the company has officially entered the Vietnamese retail “triad association” with Saigon Coop and WinMart (formerly VinMart), achieving a record of 26,300 billion VND in revenue in 2021 – an increase of 38% compared to the first 11 months of 2020.

Besides Bach Hoa Xanh, some other successful businesses have been applying grocery e-commerce, such as An Nam Market (specializing in serving foreign customers or former international students in Vietnam); Organica (focusing on offering customers from around the world ecologically friendly items), etc.

eGrocery is still in development and has not yet formally taken off. Thus the market’s growth potential is still tremendous despite the existence of several major companies. To confidently enter this lucrative market, grocery stores in Vietnam can use the lessons learned from their forebears and select a platform to construct a website system that fits the e-commerce business model.

Our company – SECOMM has been partnering with many big enterprises such as An Nam Group (Vietnam), Jasnor (Australia), and Changi Airport Group (Singapore). We are aware of the challenges and worries faced by firms while developing an e-commerce website system.

Get in touch with us now for FREE ecommerce consultancy and solutions in eGrocery businesses.

Grocery e-commerce is an inevitable business trend in the current Vietnamese e-commerce market. Some grocery stores have implemented e-commerce very early and have achieved great success, such as An Nam Gourmet, Bach Hoa Xanh, WinMart, and Co.op Online.

However, not all businesses are fortunate to deploy effective e-commerce because risks and wrong decisions when doing business can happen in any market, not only in the eGrocery market.

Some mistakes are fixable, but there are mistakes no matter how much budget and time it takes to make up. Here are some online grocery store mistakes that eGrocery business leaders need to know.

Building operating procedures for complex e-commerce systems

The grocery store business process in chain stores and e-commerce websites is entirely different. However, when implementing e-commerce, many businesses put the entire existing process on the website system without any customization or modification to conform to general operating procedures.

To shift business from offline to online, businesses must face difficulties such as synchronizing data from POS (Point of sale), e-commerce platforms, and e-commerce websites for other systems like CRM, ERP, BI, etc.

Grocery e-commerce is an extraordinary industry, with many complex features such as products with many units, selling methods, weight differences, constantly changing prices (day/week/month/year), expired products that need to be canceled, or imported new must have specific data, complicated payment processes, cumbersome warehousing operations, etc.

In particular, most products in the grocery store are fresh and fast food, so the damage rate is high, and the delivery time needs to be faster than in other fields. In addition, for these items, “housewives” also need to choose the correct delivery time.

Because of the complexity of the operation process, the requirements for the e-commerce system are also more unique compared to other industries, making it difficult for managers to grasp the business situation and not be able to manage the number of products in stock in each branch.

Enterprises should build their in-house team or look for experienced grocery e-commerce developers to design the system operation process for specific industry and business problems that SaaS platforms cannot provide.

Wrong choice of an e-commerce platform for egrocery

An e-commerce platform is software that businesses use to build an e-commerce website. Choosing a platform is always the first step in the e-commerce business process, so choosing the wrong one will lead to the entire online grocery store strategy going down.

After a period of using the unsuitable platform, businesses are required to “change blood” with another platform. This mistake wastes time and budget to build an e-commerce website for businesses without bringing about the expected results. It takes time to recruit and train employees to get used to the new platform.

To avoid this unnecessary mistake, businesses need to clearly define short-term and long-term goals for the brand, thereby building the criteria for choosing the most suitable e-commerce platform. To do that, businesses can do their research or seek professional advice before making a final decision. Of course, this takes time, but it will save time in the long run for the business.

Currently, businesses that want to implement e-commerce step by step often choose Saas (Software as a service) platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, and Haravan in the early stages. This helps businesses save budget and time in the short term, market exploration, etc. Then, switch to open source platforms (Open Source) such as WooCommerce, OpenCart, and Magento to upgrade and expand the website system with convenient features for users and businesses.

Businesses with a long-term e-commerce business orientation often choose open source platforms right from the start to long-term companionship with businesses. Starting and developing continuously on an open source platform helps businesses save money and time to switch platforms, and own and fully control the system from source code to customer data, efficiently and proactively develop new features suitable for users and markets.

However, similar to building an operating process, choosing an e-commerce platform does not have a typical “recipe” for all businesses. Hence, each business needs to understand its business strategy, operating model carefully, and so on. in each stage of development.

Not investing in website interface design

The interface is essential in the grocery business, and it is necessary to meet UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience – User Experience) standards. These are two crucial factors in any e-commerce website. However, many businesses forget these two factors when designing websites, leading to consequences such as an unattractive interface, not showing the characteristics of the business and the grocery, poor website performance, and page loading—slow, poor navigation, and few specialized functions for e-commerce, etc.

The UI / UX standard design has not been emphasized. However, the user experience on the enterprise’s website becomes worse, unable to retain users, affecting the revenue and brand positioning of the business.

So when choosing an e-commerce platform, businesses should also choose platforms that can help businesses customize the interface and functionality of the source code.

Currently, there are 3 ways to design the interface for a website:

• First, use existing themes (interfaces): Businesses can choose from themes available in the market, development community, or cooperation units. This will help businesses save costs, but brand awareness is low because it is easy to duplicate with other websites.
• Customize the interface based on the existing theme: Similar to the above, businesses can customize their characteristics by affecting the code in the front end. From there, businesses both save costs and express their characteristics.
• Design your interface: This is often more expensive than using a theme, but it meets the business’s most specific and specific needs.

Inappropriate feature build roadmap

At the right time, the functional system is not what “needs not to have” and “what has is not needed.” For example, in the early stages of entering the e-commerce market, businesses often do not have a certain number of users, so the functions of the Loyalty Program (loyalty program) are not necessary. Instead, businesses should focus on building functions that help exploit potential customers. Then, after having a stable number of users, businesses can gradually build more specialized functions, solving industry-specific problems.

Building a functional system that is not suitable for users’ needs at each time will waste time and cost to build a website without providing a satisfactory shopping experience, affecting revenue efficiency and can be left behind competitors in the industry.

In general, egrocery is the “golden opportunity” for businesses to implement e-commerce. However, to capture opportunities and market share, businesses need to pay attention to many factors, especially the mistakes to avoid mentioned in this article.

With experience in successfully implementing complex grocery e-commerce systems like An Nam Gourmet, SECOMM understands grocery businesses’ obstacles. Contact SECOMM now for a free consultation on detailed e-commerce system development solutions!

When grocery business activities face many obstacles such as strict lockdown measures by Covid-19, shortage of necessities, and geographical distance, the demand for egrocery increases daily.

Ecommerce marketplaces such as Tiki (Tiki Ngon), Lazada (Lazada Supermarket), Shopee (Shopee Fresh), and super apps like Momo (Online shopping), Grab (Grab Mart), etc. all, in turn, deploy egrocery to respond to consumer needs promptly. In particular, grocery stores’ eCommerce websites such as Bach Hoa Xanh, WinMart, and Co.opmart quickly seized the opportunity and grew impressively!

The egrocery market continued to thrive after the lockdown period was removed, indicating the expanding potential of the grocery eCommerce business.

Not only was grocery eCommerce appearing in the Vietnamese market but also globalization. For example, in the United States market, egrocery has an annual growth rate of 200% (according to Statista).

Businesses must swiftly develop an eCommerce system fit for industry and customers to capture changes in the market. However, administrators must consider several concerns while implementing grocery eCommerce to efficiently engage in the market.

Choose the right eCommerce platform

Choosing the right eCommerce platform is essential for any business, not just the grocery industry. An eCommerce platform compatible with business strategies will help companies save time, accelerate the digital transformation process, and save money on deploying eCommerce websites in both the short and long term. In addition, businesses do not need to switch platforms many times, saving time and budget for recruiting and training personnel to familiarize themselves with the system.

Some grocery business eCommerce platforms include Ziel Commerce, Haravan, Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. In particular, Ziel Commerce is a platform designed explicitly for eGrocery businesses.

SaaS platforms like Haravan and Shopify are suitable for SMEs (small and medium enterprises), startups, or new entrants to eCommerce. WooCommerce is ideal for businesses that need to own the source code and customize the website at an affordable cost. The Magento platform is suitable for many different business models (B2C, B2B, B2B2C, etc) and many different business sizes (SME, startup, large corporation, etc).

This platform meets the needs of building an industry-specific eCommerce website under its characteristics, with full ownership of the source code and the ability to customize the website. However, due to the prolonged deployment time and high prices, many businesses are hesitant to use Magento, while many enterprises trust it.

Building a system of industry-specific features

A big problem that egrocery businesses need to pay attention to is that the grocery industry has a relatively complicated operation.

Grocery products have many units of measure, weight differences, and different ways of selling; prices constantly fluctuate and update continuously by day/week/month/year.

The import and export of warehouses are complicated (general warehouse, store warehouse, warehouse for each area in the store), so when deploying an online grocery store, businesses need to synchronize the price and quantity of products so that when restocking, the data will not be lost. Weight and cost data on branches are changed under control, avoiding the lack of synchronization between frontend and backend, causing data processing to be interrupted.

At the same time, grocery products are mainly fresh foods such as meat, fish, eggs, milk, etc, so they need to be refrigerated, delivered quickly, or selected with the correct delivery time.

Handling all the problems in the complex operating process of the grocery industry requires a team of highly qualified IT and eCommerce personnel to design an eCommerce system that is suitable for the specific process and requirements of the business – something current SaaS platforms are not enough to meet.

Enhance customer experience

When running an online grocery store, the user experience requirements are very high; from navigating shopping behavior to the checkout process, order delivery needs to be optimized. Because user experience increases the likelihood of customers placing their first order, it also gives customers more reasons to buy again, contributing to a competitive advantage over competitors in the same industry.

There are many ways for businesses to enhance the user experience, such as layering product categories to navigate customers more intuitively and building specialized functions such as quick add products to cart, fast checkout, search enhancements, and product recommendations based on collected data, etc.

At the same time, personalizing the user experience is an essential factor in the customer’s shopping journey. Businesses exploit, analyze, and leverage data to build the right customer journey, match consumer behavior, and increase the user experience level of personalization.

Personalize from CMS content and display products to navigate the shopping journey for businesses to increase loyalty and customer lifetime value (CLV).

Implement attractive promotions

The secret of doing an online grocery business is building incentive programs suitable for customer segments.

Some popular promotions that businesses can apply in the early stages include free shipping, buy one get one free, gifts/vouchers, or promotions with specific conditions (certain items reach a particular value).

After that, businesses can deploy loyalty programs such as accumulating points for purchases, VIP membership, converting reward points into discount codes, donating bonus points to charities associated with the brand, subscription plans, etc.

Applying omni-channel

Omni-channel is one of the inevitable eCommerce trends in 2022; the application of Omni-channel will help businesses do online grocery business more conveniently.

Omni-channel will help customers’ shopping experience be seamless from the physical store to the website, helping businesses follow customers from eCommerce platforms, social networks, websites, etc.

In addition, by collecting and analyzing information from Omni-channel, businesses can efficiently study customer behavior, preferences, and psychology and know whether they are satisfied with the product, service quality, or not to take reasonable measures to change.

It can be said that the grocery eCommerce business has both opportunities and challenges, requiring business managers to think carefully about tactics to make the most effective steps. But, of course, that work is not easy, finding a companion is also tricky, building an in-house team is not easy, and businesses have to pay a lot of opportunity costs and time to reach the “finish line” themselves. 

With experience in successfully implementing complex grocery eCommerce systems like An Nam Gourmet, SECOMM understands grocery businesses’ obstacles. Contact SECOMM now for a free consultation on detailed eCommerce system development solutions!

With the boom in recent years, ecommerce is a potential business form pursued by many businesses, especially egrocery stores. According to Statista, the grocery ecommerce market in the United States is likely to exceed $24 billion by 2023.

Realizing the potential of the egrocery market, several businesses have deployed grocery ecommerce websites early and experienced breakthrough growth, such as Grofers (Blinkit) and BigBasket in India, Bach Hoa Xanh, An Nam Gourmet, Farmer’s Market, WinMart, and Organica in Vietnam.

The common thing that makes the success of the above brands lies in the ecommerce platform. Therefore, to develop and operate an effective ecommerce website, the role of platforms is enormous.

So which ecommerce platforms are suitable for the grocery industry?

Platform selection criteria

User interface and administration interface

For the website interface, in addition to meeting basic needs such as UI/UX standards and showing the brand’s characteristics and the eGrocery industry, businesses also need to focus on the presented product images. Therefore, on the website, everything needs to be synchronized and precise.

The administrator interface (admin) must be easy to use, navigate, control, and manage all data in the system.

Functional system

With eGrocery, the system of ecommerce features needs to be diverse from basic to advanced, solving complex characteristics of the grocery industry such as products with multiple units, weight difference, and price volatility, export-import complex warehouse, and synchronized data throughout the system.

Some functions required in a grocery ecommerce website system such as:

• Primary functions: Meet the most basic needs when operating an ecommerce system, such as order management, checkout, payment, shipping, etc
• Advanced Functions: Functions that enhance the consumer experience and accelerate the shopping process such as order tracking, abandoned cart recovery, similar product recommendations, product search fast products, multi-layered product portfolio, etc
• Specific functions: Functions that help to thoroughly solve the difficulties of implementing specialized grocery ecommerce, meeting the needs of customer segments and businesses such as fast delivery, choice of time delivery point, etc

Integration capabilities

To have a seamless online volatility store system with multiple sales channels, businesses must integrate their ecommerce website with other payment services, shipping services, management software, analysis, report, and distribution systems:

• Payment: Integrate various payment methods from domestic cards to international cards, such as payment gateways (Paypal, Stripe, OnePay), e-wallets (Momo, ZaloPay), etc.
•  Shipping: Integrate with international shipping providers like DHL Express, Fedex, Ups, USPS, and popular shipping providers in Vietnam like Fast Delivery, Economy Delivery, Ninja Van, etc. With order tracking applications to help process and operate the delivery processes
• Management software: Easily integrate CRM, ERP, and POS software to get a seamless connection on all supply channels from offline to online
• Analysis and reporting: Integrate analysis and reporting software such as Business Intelligent, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, etc.

This integration helps businesses overcome the limitations of the “rice-powered” process, increase the automation of the system, limit business mistakes, and ensure high accuracy and performance.

Ability to extension

To accompany businesses to develop over time, from startups, and SMEs (small and medium enterprises), to large corporations, from B2B, B2C, and D2C business models to B2B2C, commerce electronics platforms must be highly scalable. High scalability helps meet all future business growth needs, such as multi-site, multi-country, and multi-currency, all manageable on “one screen.” Not only that, but highly scalable platforms also support businesses to operate the system stably regardless of the traffic in promotion campaigns.

Evaluate 5 ecommerce platforms for egrocery business based on each criterion

Ziel Commerce

Ziel Commerce is a readymade grocery ecommerce platform with all the features designed to support an online grocery store business.

Website interface

Ziel Commerce provides a repository of themes specifically for the grocery industry, allowing businesses to customize according to their needs, helping to both reflect the characteristics of the industry and position the brand image.

Remarkably, the interface for administrators is also invested by the founders to make it most accessible for businesses to use. But currently, Ziel Commerce is not popular in the Vietnamese market, so there is no Vietnamese version for businesses.

Functional system

As a platform designed specifically for the eGrocery industry, Ziel Commerce can meet all the most specialized needs of businesses, including fundamental to advanced functionality systems and existing industry-specific solutions.

Integration capabilities

Ziel Commerce has a significant drawback in integrating the website system. In addition, this platform only supports add-ons available in its ecosystem, so businesses will not be able to link with the ERP, POS, CRM, BI, etc., systems in use. Therefore, when using Ziel Commerce, companies need to transfer all existing data to the server of this platform.

Ability of extension

Although it does not own the source code, Ziel Commerce is still a highly appreciated platform for its scalability compared to SaaS platforms. Ziel Commerce supports businesses to expand their ecommerce website system from one to many stores/websites, multi-language, multi-currency without many obstacles. However, in the long run, Ziel Commerce cannot support businesses to expand or develop new functions because firms cannot affect the source code; if it affects it, it will cause instability for the commercial website system. 

→ Rating: 3/4

Ziel Commerce provides an almost comprehensive online grocery store website building solution for businesses, from website interface and functional system to scalability. However, the implementation cost is relatively high, about $50,000/project in 6 months. Therefore, Ziel Commerce is only popular with retail chains, has high functional demand, and operates mainly abroad. However, when using Ziel Commerce, businesses should consider adding the platform’s integration, limiting instability in the operation when 3rd party systems are not compatible with the platform.

Shopify

Shopify is a SaaS ecommerce platform favored by the international ecommerce business community because of its fast implementation time and reasonable starting cost.

Website interface

Shopify provides a variety of interfaces, including grocery industry and UI/UX standards, but cannot be edited according to the characteristics of the business.

Functional system

Shopify’s functional system is relatively complete, meeting the basic needs of businesses. But to use advanced functions, companies have to pay a certain amount of money every month, leading to an increased cost of using the functional system. In addition, even Shopify can barely provide eGrocery industry-specific resolution functions.

Integration capabilities

Because it is a SaaS platform, businesses cannot affect the source code, and it is not easy to integrate with many 3rd parties. Companies can only integrate utilities provided by Shopify or a platform partner.

Some utilities that companies can integrate with Shopify include:

• Payment: Paypal, Stripe, SagePay, AliPay Global, etc
• Shipping: DHL Express, USPS, UPS, etc
• Administration: Microsoft Dynamic 365 (ERP), Oracle NetSuite (ERP), Acumatica (ERP), etc
• Marketing: Google Tools, MailChimp, Facebook Pixel, etc

Ability of extension

Similar to the ability to integrate, the scalability on Shopify is not high because businesses cannot influence the source code to edit and upgrade the website. Therefore, online grocery businesses can only use Shopify for the first time.

→ Rating: 2/4

Shopify is only suitable for businesses new to the ecommerce market, startups, or SMEs (small and medium enterprises) because of the reasonable development cost and time to deploy an online grocery store business website.

Haravan

Founded in 2014, Haravan is an ecommerce platform based on Shopify. Currently, Haravan is a popular platform in the Vietnamese market with more than 50,000 business people and trusted brands.

Website interface

Haravan has many standard UI/UX interfaces suitable for the grocery industry, including free and paid. At the same time, the interface for administrators supports Vietnamese and is easy to use, so businesses do not face many difficulties when using it.

Functional system

Haravan provides many utilities – functions for online grocery stores in Vietnam.

In addition, similar to Shopify, to use more advanced functions, businesses have to pay a monthly application fee of about 100,000 VND/month/app.

However, businesses can’t find parts that deal with the grocery’s specifics in Haravan’s app store and can’t develop in terms of specific functions. Enterprises can only use the functions included in the package and app store.

Integration capabilities

For integration capabilities, Haravan can integrate with Haravan’s partners such as transportation (Economic Delivery, Fast Delivery, Ahamove, GrabExpress, etc.), payment (Ngan Luong, VNPAY, Napas, PayPal, etc.), etc.).

It is difficult for businesses to integrate for 3rd party utilities outside Haravan’s ecosystem on their ecommerce website.

Ability of extension

As for the extension of the ecommerce website system, Haravan can only support the multi-language – currency but cannot expand from one to many websites/stores. It is challenging to manage all the data on a foundation.

As the business gradually grows and expands, Haravan will no longer be functional enough to maintain an online grocery store business. As a result, companies are forced to switch to more specialized platforms such as Magento, WooCommerce, and OpenCart. But, of course, switching platforms will create many other problems such as costs, time, personnel, etc.

→ Rating: 2/4

Similar to Shopify, Haravan is only suitable for businesses new to the ecommerce market, startups, and SMEs. But Shopify can support online grocery business globally, and Haravan only stops at the Vietnamese market.

Woocommerce

WooCommerce is an open-source platform in the form of a WordPress plugin, allowing businesses to use it completely free.

Website interface

WooCommerce and the community provide businesses with various themes designed for the grocery industry. At the same time, this platform also allows influencing the source code to customize according to needs, helping businesses quickly convey brand messages and images.

Since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, the admin will continue to manage the website on the WordPress interface itself. This makes it easy for businesses using WordPress to adapt, use, and navigate on the WooCommerce dashboard.

Functional system

WooCommerce supports a variety of features, from basic to advanced. However, this platform has some limitations on features specific to the grocery industry because interfering with developing these functions will easily cause instability for the website system.

Integration capabilities

Thanks to the advantages of the open source platform, WooCommerce has flexible customization capabilities and supports integration with many 3rd party utilities.

In payment, businesses can use amount plugins such as Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Square to their ecommerce website system with high security and safety. In addition, companies can integrate with many shipping providers such as Fedex, Ups, USPS, and DHL Express. The WooCommerce platform also allows businesses to integrate with management software such as Odoo, Square POS, WP ERP, and Marketing software such as Google Listings, Google Ads, and Facebook Pixel to support businesses in effective business management. More fruitful.

Ability of extension

Contrary to the integration capabilities, the extensibility of WooCommerce is not appreciated. Because the system is easily overloaded with plugin themes, and the number of products does not exceed 2000 SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit). Therefore, businesses wishing to expand their website system need to consider when using this platform in the long run.

→ Rating: 3/4

WooCommerce is the right platform for grocery businesses that use WordPress and are looking to develop an ecommerce system. But when using WooCommerce, companies should consider the limitations of integration, extensibility, and customizability of specific features.

Magento

Magento is a popular open source commerce platform in ecommerce, with nearly 200,000 websites in use. Currently, Magento has 2 versions: Magento Open Source (free) and Magento Commerce (paid).

Website interface

Although Magento does not own a rich theme store like other ecommerce platforms, businesses can look to the developer community, market (Envato), or design their own. Having many options when designing the interface helps Magento websites to have their uniqueness, avoid overlapping the interface with many different websites and bring a higher shopping experience.

Previously, the admin interface on Magento 1 was often considered difficult to use and took a long time to adapt. As a result, Magento publishers developed Magento 2 with a more intuitive and easy-to-navigate dashboard to overcome this problem.

Functional system

The Magento platform has a highly diverse system of features from basic and advanced to industry-specific to help grocery businesses quickly build and develop a sustainable system.

A basic functional system, including catalog management, product management, customer management, report analysis, etc., helps meet the basic needs of a convenient online grocery store business.

In particular, Magento also has many advanced functions for ecommerce, such as multi-language support, multi-currency, multi-store, PWA, MSI, ElasticSearch, etc. Shopping happens faster.

Magento does not have built-in features only for the grocery industry regarding specific features. Still, businesses can quickly build a system of particular features such as category classification, quick search, and delivery time selection thanks to flexible customization on open source code.

Integration capabilities

Thanks to the advantages of the open source platform, the Magento website can be easily integrated with any 3rd party utilities, from payment, shipping, and business administration.

Regarding payment, Magento easily connects with today’s popular payment methods such as card payments (domestic cards, VISA, Mastercard), e-wallets (MOMO, Zalopay), and payment gateways (OnePay, VNPay, etc.) PayPal) or COD, which helps to diversify payment methods.

Magento can integrate with shipping providers such as Fast Delivery, Economy Delivery, Viettel Post, and order tracking applications.

Magento can be integrated into back-office management software (ERP, CRM, POS) such as SAP, Salesforce, and Oracle to help operate all resources and processes seamlessly in the enterprise.

In addition, Magento also supports integration with business analysis tools such as Power BI, Tableau, and Looker and analysis and reporting utilities such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Facebook Pixels to exploit all data from the system. As a result, Magento plans to improve its business strategy.

Ability of extension

Magento allows businesses to expand from one website to many different websites on the same system to meet the needs of business development. In addition, with the available support for language and currency conversion from Magento, businesses can build a grocery ecommerce system with content suitable for a diverse audience of customers around the globe.

In addition, open source customization enables Magento developers to build functional solutions specific to the grocery industry. This advantage makes Magento expand the system of capabilities according to each business size, from small businesses to large-scale corporations.

→ Rating: 4/4

Because Magento possesses many outstanding advantages, from website interface and functional system to the ability to integrate and expand, Magento is suitable for a variety of grocery business models from B2B, B2C to B2B2C, a multiform of enterprise-scale such as startup, SME, enterprise (large corporation). However, the time to deploy ecommerce on Magento is usually long – from 6 months to 1 year, with high construction costs of about 50,000 – 100,000 USD/project. At the same time, businesses also need to have a professional team or cooperate with experienced units to develop an effective grocery ecommerce system. Therefore, Magento is popularly used in the community of large-scale businesses that need many functions to increase user experience.

Choosing the right platform is the first and most significant step when building a grocery ecommerce website. Selecting the right ecommerce platform will help businesses save budget and time in building a website while increasing competitive advantage and sustainable growth. On the contrary, choosing the wrong forum will cost businesses a lot of time and budget to deploy and switch platforms. Therefore, companies need to consider the goals and problems in the current model to choose the most suitable platform.

With experience in successfully implementing complex grocery ecommerce systems like An Nam Gourmet, SECOMM understands grocery businesses’ obstacles.

Contact SECOMM now for a free consultation on detailed ecommerce system development solutions!