Gopuff debuted an updated website Thursday designed to offer transparency and personalization to help the instant delivery retailer stand out from the competition.
The company, which delivers items from groceries to medicine in windows as short as 15 minutes, makes the majority of its sales through its mobile app, according to co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola. Its website has “been an afterthought” in the past, he said.
That is now changing. The company has been working on its upgraded site experience since January, according to Gola. Gola and his team interviewed customers to determine where they experienced friction on Gopuff’s desktop and mobile websites.
The key takeaway was that the company could take advantage of the difference between a mobile app and a website to deliver a more personalized experience and give customers insight into the status of their order from the moment it gets packed through the handoff.
“When you order from a lot of other websites or other apps, you place the order, and then it's like a mystery,” Gola told CX Dive. “All of a sudden, they're on the way, all of a sudden the driver is almost there.”
Gopuff wants to take advantage of its vertical integration — the company owns its own warehouses and products, rather than sends drivers to purchase them from other retailers — to build trust with customers through reliability.
Features from the updated site will be integrated into Gopuff’s app in the future.
Websites encourage discovery
Consumers browse desktop sites and mobile devices in different ways, which created an opportunity for Gopuff to rethink its website presentation.
“If you're on a desktop, what a lot of our customers are telling us is, ‘I use a website because I want to see, explore and discover other products and other categories you guys have,’” Gola said. “‘I want to learn more about the products, which is easier to do on the website.’ So we wanted to make it more user friendly for those types of user experiences.”
Visitors to the new site will see a combination of personalized recommendations, suggestions based on what’s popular in their area and a live heatmap of other customers placing orders in their city. Navigation has been revamped as well to make it easier to browse across categories.
At the same time, speed is one of Gopuff’s selling points, so the site was designed with the instant delivery model in mind, according to Gola. Gopuff’s AI-powered search lets customers input queries in any language and uses predictive results to better tailor what it finds to the shopper.
“Everything you see in the website is still built for speed,” Gola said. “That's absolutely the Gopuff use case — I just want it quickly. It's just more personalized, and it's easier to navigate and easier to shop.”
Transparency builds trust
A transparent last-mile experience can make the delivery process more pleasant and build trust in other elements of the retailer-customer relationship, according to Gola.
Gopuff aims to maximize its transparency by offering details like the name of the employee preparing the order and the make of the vehicle making the handoff. Customers can follow along the entire delivery process with real-time packing updates.
In-depth tracking options could be a boon for the instant delivery retailer. About two-thirds of consumers say real-time package tracking would make them more likely to purchase from a brand, according to an InsureShield Shipping Insurance report.
The new features build on the existing system of push notifications and live text messages on the order status page, according to Gola. Additionally, Gopuff updated its map view, which follows the order as it makes its way to the customer’s house, and introduced a countdown to delivery that starts when the driver picks up the order from the warehouse.
“It's very interactive around what's actually happening throughout your order experience,” Gola said.
Gopuff aims to pair its transparent order fulfillment capabilities with reliability — the company makes 99.5% of orders without substitutions or out-of-stocks, according to Gola.
Reliability drives repeat business
Transparency and personalization help, but what really matters when a customer places an online order is that the promised goods arrive within the promised delivery window, according to Shep Hyken, a customer service and experience expert and author.
“The customer doesn't care about the last mile,” Hyken told CX Dive. “They only care about when that doorbell rings, when there's a knock on the door, when it's put on the porch or when it's handed to the doorman to save for you if you.”
Companies that are confident in their capabilities can take advantage of the perks of offering high transparency, according to Hyken. The more information people have about their delivery, the more in control they feel and the more they trust the brand — so long as the brand keeps its delivery promises.
“Trust increases their confidence in the brand,” Hyken said. “Therefore, as long as that brand delivers on what it's been sharing with them, they're likely to do business again with them.”
Gopuff considers reliability to be one of its differentiators, according to Gola. The website’s added transparency is designed to show off how the company fulfills orders from start to finish — which can build trust with other aspects of the business.
“I think what it's showcasing to customers is more transparency, but it's also highlighting the fact that, hey, this is all coming from us, and so they can trust us that they're going to get the best price, they're going to get the best order quality,” Gola said.
