If you’re launching your online store on WooCommerce or extending your current e-commerce business, shipping and order fulfillment can be a time-wasting task. The demand for processing, packaging and mailing orders quickly increases when your sales grow. It’s a nice problem to face, and there are simple solutions. For example, you can bring your customers more options and streamline your business by allowing in-store or local pickup of their orders.
Local pickup is the most convenient way for WooCommerce merchants to provide in-store pickup as a delivery option at checkout, while making sure they have inventory on hand to complete the order and that retail teams can get prepared and inform customers of the time to pick their order.
Read on this article to find out how to set up local pickup on WoCommerce stores with detailed steps.
What is Local Pickup?
Local pickup is a delivery method that allows local customers to pick up their online orders at your retail store. Local pickup may help store owners provide fulfillment options like click-and-collect, buy online – pickup in-store, and curbside pickup and control those orders across various store locations from a single system.
- For merchants, local pickup lets them manage in-store pickup availability and workflows. They can track which stores support in-store pickup, determine pickup times, and create pickup instructions that are automatically sent to customers after they place their online order.
- For retail staff, local pickup helps them easily monitor and prepare orders in the POS system, sends notifications to shoppers when their order is ready for pickup, and tick orders as completed after the shoppers pick up their items.
Instead of having visibility on all online orders, retail staff can only view online orders where the local pickup was chosen as the delivery method, and the store they work at was chosen as the pickup location.
All that makes for a simplified ordering process that combines your online and physical stores without adding layers of operational complexity.
Why Should You Set Up Local Pickup for WooCommerce?
Local Pickup Benefits Merchants
- Bring foot traffic to stores
As online customers visit your store to pick up their order, that will be an extra interaction with your brand, which wouldn’t occur if they choose ship-to-home delivery.Local pickup will help you drive store foot traffic. Store associates have the chance to reinforce the relationship with the customer in person, address customers’ needs, and close additional sales. - Boost online conversion rates
Delivery time is an essential factor that customers consider before shopping online. According to a UPS report, 46% of online buyers leave their cart behind since shipping times are too long.However, in-store pickup orders being completed quicker than ship-to-customer delivery can discard barriers to shopping and grow your WooCommerce store’s conversion rate. - Save shipping costs
Last-mile delivery means 53% of a merchant’s total cost to deliver a product. Converting your physical stores into in-store pickup centers can save you money to complete local orders while meeting shoppers’ expectations for the same – or next-day delivery. - Spend less on return shipping
According to the National Retail Federation, nearly 11% of all retail dollar spent in 2020 led to return – that’s almost $428 billion spent on paying for return delivery.About 50% of US adults admit that paying for return shipping would stop them from making an online purchase. Although reducing the cost of return shipping can increase online sales, it’s a good idea to convince local shoppers to pick up returned items at your store, which may lower your spending on return shipping for local orders.
Local Pickup Benefits Customers
- Save shipping rates
In Deloitte’s Global State of the Consumer Tracker, customers were asked to rank the reason why they loved in-store pickup. While being “cheaper than delivery” was firstly ranked fourth, it became the first reason in less than a year. The primary reason buyers enjoyed local pickup today is because it can save shipping costs.
Source: Deloitte
- Get orders fasterOf all the factors ranked in Deloitte’s report, “faster than standard delivery” was the one that witnessed the biggest change. Though customers initially ranked it last, it became the second reason in less than 12 months.Today’s shoppers expect to receive their order fast and cheap, and local pickup makes that happen by leveraging their current network of retail stores.
How to Set Up Local Pickup for Your WooCommerce Store?
There are three steps to set up WooCommerce Local Pickup. Let’s figure them out!
Step #1. Open Shipping
Sign in to your WordPress account and navigate to the dashboard. There, open WooCommerce and scroll down to Settings, then click on it.
At the top bar on the screen, click on Shipping.
Step #2. Add Shipping Method
In Shipping, navigate to Shipping Zones and choose Edit below the name of the shipping zone you want to change.
The information about that shipping zone, such as zone name, zone regions, and shipping methods, will be shown on the screen. Click on the Add shipping method button.
Step #3. Choose Local Pickup
You can choose among three options: Flat Rate, Free Shipping, and Local Pickup. Select Local Pickup and click on Add shipping method. Now the local pickup shipping option is supported in your store.
Note: After selecting the shipping method, customers can choose the pickup location at WooCommerce checkout. They can either submit addresses manually or search for a nearby pickup place on Google Maps.
On the Checkout page, the Local Pickup option will appear, as shown in the image below, where the user can choose their preferred location from a dropdown menu, as well as the date and time slot that works best for them.
WooCommerce Local Pickup by Techspawn Solutions
Techspawn Local Pickup plugin for WooCommerce will help your customer pick up their orders in-store without any problem. This plugin is especially useful for retailers with various locations, distribution centers, or pickup sites.
Some main features of the WooCommerce Local Pickup Solution include:
- Fine-tune product pickup availability
- Support scheduled pickups
- Support various time slots for each day
- Support dates/days of appointment
- Support paying at stores/ pickup locations
- Support defining the exact pickup location
- Limit a pickup site’s products and categories
This Local Pickup plugin is advantageous to both store owners and customers, helping you boost your business performance as well as satisfying your beloved shoppers. The more content customers feel about your service, the more willing they will pay for your products.
Use Local Pickup to Bring Utmost Convenience to Buyers
One of the significant challenges retailers encounter is consolidating their online and offline channels and letting customers use whichever combination is the best for them – but merchants who bring that expectation of multichannel convenience stand to enjoy the considerable benefits.
Local pickup makes your online and physical stores complement each other and utilize each other’s advantages, leading to a unified buying experience for your shoppers and a seamless fulfillment process for your retail teams.
