Set up click and collect for your shop
Plenty of your customers are five minutes down the road. Making them pay postage, or drive over hoping the thing's in stock, loses sales you should be winning easily.
Where it hurts
Local shops sit in an awkward gap. A full delivery setup is overkill when half your buyers could walk in, but with no online option they either phone to check and reserve (which ties up your day) or just go somewhere with a proper website.
Click and collect fixes it, but bolted on badly it causes its own mess. Orders come in for slots you can't cover, or for stock that's actually sitting in the other shop, or with no clear way to tell the customer their bag is ready.
Done properly it's one of the best things a local business can add. It brings people through the door, where they usually buy something else while they're there.
What I'd build
I'd add click and collect to whatever you're already on (WooCommerce, Shopify and Squarespace all support it), with collection times you actually control and clear ready-to-collect notifications by email or text. Payment is taken online through Stripe so there's nothing to sort at the counter. If you run more than one location, customers pick which shop, and staff see a simple list of what's due for collection and when.
What changes
- Local customers order online and skip the postage
- You capture sales that used to walk to a competitor
- Staff get a clear list of orders to pick and hand over
- Customers get told automatically when their order is ready
Related fixes
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