In ecommerce, there’s often a major gap between engagement and purchase. A customer may see a post or ad about a product they love, but abandon the purchasing process due to a long journey or plenty of friction.
To address this issue, a major grocery retailer has partnered with a technology that lets customers add products to online shopping carts right from digital touchpoints, dramatically reducing friction in the shopping journey.
Ahold Delhaize USA Partnering With SmartCommerce
Ahold Delhaize USA has officially partnered with SmartCommerce to use its Click2Cart technology across five grocery chains in the USA. This includes Stop & Shop, Giant Food, Hannaford, The GIANT Company, and Food Lion.
Customers shopping online at these stores will be able to add products to their online baskets directly from digital touchpoints like social media posts, digital ads, and brand-owned channels. The aim of this move is to shorten the time required to complete a transaction after a customer views a product online, while also connecting off-site engagement with store fulfillment.
Abandoned carts are a major issue in ecommerce, as the cart abandonment rate sits at over 70% in the industry. This solution and partnership seeks to help reduce the rate of abandonment by simplifying the process of going from discovery to purchase with as little friction as possible.
SmartCommerce also uses machine learning to improve banner selection according to product availability, and can handle substitutions when needed.
Speaking about the partnership, the Chief Commercial and Digital Officer for Ahold Delhaize USA, Keith Nicks, said that “this collaboration creates a simpler, more connected experience, helping customers go from discovery to cart in just a few clicks from the digital channels they use every day.”
The founder and Chief Brand Officer of SmartCommerce, Jennifer Silverberg, added that “This partnership is about closing the gap between demand and purchase. Brands are investing heavily to drive interest, and Ahold Delhaize USA is creating a more seamless path to turn that intent into real carts.”
The Benefits of Click2Cart for Ecommerce
Beyond the food space, solutions like Click2Cart can help a variety of ecommerce brands improve conversion rates and help ensure that consumer interest turns into sales more frequently.
First, it helps turn your company’s basic social posts into immediate purchase opportunities for customers. This is incredibly important as social commerce grows and more people become comfortable and familiar with shopping on social media.
In a similar vein, clickable visual ads are becoming more popular across the ecommerce space, including eBay introducing video ads in promoted listings. Instead of someone having to see your ad and then locate your product or navigate through several links to finally get to the checkout, they can immediately add it to the cart with a solution like Click2Cart.
By being able to add a single-click link to these posts and ads, this dramatically shortens the path to purchase. The more barriers that exist within a transaction (clicking multiple links, signing into an account, navigating a product catalog, etc), the less likely someone is to click through them all and follow a purchase through until the end.
The Benefits of Click2Cart for Brands
Click2Cart also offers actionable performance insights, such as which retailers are converting for you and how your campaigns perform across different commerce channels. This helps companies know where to focus their investments and attention.
So, in addition to being great for customers to speed up the purchase process, solutions like this are also a data play for brands and can help them see which posts and ads perform the best, and which channels provide the best ROI.
Because Click2Cart also uses real-time inventory tracking to know if items are in stock across retailers, brands won’t need to worry about losing a sale by a customer clicking an ad that leads to an out-of-stock product.
With all the growth in this space, it’s clear that companies and platforms know the importance of capitalizing on attention when you get it, and reducing the amount of time and effort it takes for a customer to go from an ad or social post to purchase.
