How to Get Your FMCG Brand or Retailer Q-commerce Ready

The established players in the FMCG world have been through a lot of change. Technology has been disrupting every industry, including retail, for decades, and this is accelerating faster than ever as we move into a digital future. 

Brands that relied on TV advertising, supermarket placement, and consumer apathy have had to deal with the proliferation of online shopping, disruptive competitors, and entirely new business models, among other novelties.

The latest revolution in retail is quick commerce, also known as Q-commerce, where customers order items online for delivery in as little as 30 minutes. This mind-blowing innovation goes against how things have always been for traditional retailers. So, how does an FMCG brand adapt and create a quick commerce culture? Here are 6 steps to do so!

Go Where Your Customers Are

The supermarket is far from dead. It will continue to be a major part of the retail landscape. However, the trend for online delivery is growing. FMCG products need to be where the consumers are; increasingly, they use apps and marketplaces to find products online. 

FMCG brands must adopt an omnichannel approach to reach the modern consumer. That means giving customers a consistent experience however they interact with your brand—online, in-store, and in direct communications.  

Offering a seamless, connected customer experience allows you to engage customers with the right messaging and transfer them between channels without losing them along the way.

Be available online on multiple platforms, but don’t neglect traditional channels. Customers might first find your product on a supermarket shelf only to make a purchase on a Q-commerce platform when they need it quickly. Traditional channels can lead customers to use more tech-enabled modern platforms in the future.

Increase Digital Touchpoints

Creating an omnichannel strategy ready for Q-commerce means harnessing technology to track customers' journeys, move them between different channels, and ensure a consistent experience online and offline.  

Tools like online ordering platforms, payment systems, and integrations to tie all the platforms together are essential in creating a seamless transition between different channels. Ultimately, you want the customer to feel like there was no transition—their experience should be one smooth transaction with a single brand. 

Create a Frictionless Purchase Journey

The appeal of Q-commerce comes from the instant gratification it offers customers. The convenience of ordering an item as soon as they need it and receiving it within minutes is a huge draw.

So, you don’t want to ruin that experience by creating a barrier later in the journey. For example, if a menu hasn’t been updated to reflect that a product is unavailable, or if the payment processing is too slow or doesn’t work.  

The process must be smooth and easy when a customer uses Q-commerce for a quick, pain-free shopping experience. Otherwise, they will go elsewhere and be lost to another brand.

The popularity of Amazon’s “One-Click” purchasing and the success of its “Just Walk Out” concept stores shows the desire for the most convenient frictionless shopping experience. 

To prepare for Q-commerce, brands should make it easy to purchase. A better experience improves brand relationships and leads to regular repeat purchases. 

Practice Algorithm Awareness

When relying on Q-commerce platforms to shift your goods, you need to know how they promote and show products to customers. This means understanding the platforms' algorithms and optimizing your product’s performance. 

You can start by following the general principles of how to rank better on delivery platforms, such as speeding up delivery times, improving user ratings, and making efforts to get featured by the apps. 

Business intelligence tools are another key part of analyzing performance and making improvements. If you really want to succeed on these platforms, you will have to dig deep into how each platform's algorithms work and figure out a strategy to get the best positioning on each feed.

Quality is Paramount in Q-commerce

There’s nowhere to hide with online reviews. A customer’s first thought about what they receive is in the open.

Customers seek products they can rely on rather than new items. Therefore, to encourage repeat orders with Q-commerce, keep that in mind. Customers want to quickly reorder items when they need them.

The quality requirement also applies to the customer experience. When customers order a product for immediate delivery, they will be even more disappointed if it arrives late or if a mistake is made with the order—a missing item or unacceptable substitution, for example. 

To minimize errors and ensure a smooth delivery operation, you need to make sure your delivery processes and technology are up to the task of speedy, on-demand delivery. 

Deliverect’s menu management tools allow you to update menus in real-time to ensure accurate product availability. To minimize the disappointment of a customer making an order and then finding that the product is not, in fact, available. 

Optimize Operations

You are operating in a digital space as a grocery store, supermarket, convenience store, or FMCG brand going directly to consumers. The on-demand nature of Q-commerce means that the priorities are different from those of traditional retail. 

The focus will now be speed and convenience over everything to ensure customers keep coming back for more. That means optimizing operations to the point where you can guarantee delivery in no more than an hour.

Among many methods to optimize, tools like Deliverect’s order aggregation, menu management, and reporting dashboard can revolutionize your operations. 

Orders from multiple platforms are automatically sent to your POS system in a consistent format. The menu management tools allow you to create one menu and keep it updated for all your delivery partners from one dashboard.

Deliverect’s built-in business intelligence platform then takes all the data from the system and gives you actionable insights and reports so you know exactly how your operations are performing and where to improve. 

Get Q-commerce Ready

Q-commerce is here and looks set to increase its proliferation only in the future. And who knows what future technological advances will bring into the world of e-commerce? For FMCG brands and retailers, being ready for anything is a must. 

The first step is creating a culture for Q-commerce and preparing for the rigors of on-demand delivery. That way, you can be ready for whatever the future throws at you. The tips above will help you prepare your organization for the future and put the right tech in place to cope with the next wave of e-commerce models. 

Deliverect has worked hard to build tools that work seamlessly together while also integrating with the major players in delivery and ordering tech to ensure that whatever the future brings, you have the right technology and company culture to deal with it.

To learn more about how Deliverect can help your brand or store cope with the Q-commerce revolution, request a demo with our expert team today.