Planning to invest in Frozen food eCommerce business: We can help you get started
Connect With usThe market of frozen food was not steady a few years back. Later, its popularity increased especially in the urban areas. This was because people were happy to have easy to consume sand ready to eat food available at their doorstep.
Based on the kind of food they provided, it meant different for different people, it was a convenient alternative of fresh foods for some while for others it was an option for instant meal.
Frozen food comprises of ready-to eat meals as well as cleaned and well packed fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish products. It also comprises of dairy products, ready-to-eat meals, cakes, chocolates, pizza breads, and much more! By 2025, the frozen food market is expected to reach 312.3 billion which means a CAGR of 5.0% from 2020.
Later, online frozen food business has flourished very well especially in the days of pandemic as shopping at stores have become all the more complicated and unsafe. A good number of frozen food eCommerce stores have done well in the year 2020 and one such store has been explained below:
ConAgra, one of the leading food companies based in America, specialized in packaged foods saw surge in their eCommerce sales by 89.7% in the last quarter that ended on 31st May, 2020. The main reason for such a surge was the convenience people found in buying online and getting them delivered at home or in choosing click-and-collect to take from store later. There was a surge of 26.2% in case of frozen food products.
If you are interested in creating an eCommerce store for your frozen food business then there are a few things which you should know. Preparing yourself well will save you from any hiccups. They are as mentioned below:
Research the market well
If we talk about frozen foods and research its market based on psychographic segmentation, you will notice that people of all groups and gender consume frozen foods that are organic or not. Generally, frozen food constitutes of vegetables, fruits, chickens, meats, fish, dairy products, cakes, candies, etc. This means you need to research the market based on the demographic factors before you introduce any. You need to know what people consume in your chosen target market. Based on their likes and dislikes, you will be able to choose your products for the market.
Say, for example, there are some groups of people who don’t eat pork or dog meat. This means you need to aware of your target market as your customers will not welcome your brand if you sell things that are not welcome in the community or in the target market.
Know your competitors
The level of competition that your online frozen food store will face in the digital market is far more than what you will face at in-store. When it comes to in-store, you will only have to compete with other local stores who sell similar products. Things are quite different in case of an online store as you will be competing with whole range of supermarkets, grocery stores and others who are selling similar products in your target market. If you manage to promote your brand and its products well, you will be able to find your own place.
However, it is important for you to know whom you are competing against. Take some time to know which brands are doing well in the market or the ones which people love shopping at. Some brands are in the market for a long time and you can follow and research them to know how they have achieved a position for themselves in the market.
Establish your niche
This is important. What you plan to sell on the online platform can depend on many factors. You need to be clear about what your target market likes so that you don’t end up with something that fails to interest the customers. You should also think about the feasible items that you think you can handle well when delivering to the customers who are overseas. In case you are selling items that you prepare at store then it would be better you take your popular ones to the online business first. In case you get your products from the suppliers, better be sure you find reliable ones as you will not get many chances to impress your customers.
Look for untapped market areas
Not all products are sold across the globe. This means chances are high that you will find some markets where you can try out your exclusive products. So, do your part of research for untapped markets. In case you manage to find any, you will be able to make good profits while maintaining market monopoly. Being first in the market with new products will always give you an edge in competition.
Possible challenges you may face in frozen food business
Apart from the requirements mentioned above, there are a few things which you should also consider when you are planning to start your eCommerce business related to frozen food. One of them is the challenges you may face when shipping products from your store or warehouse to your customer.
Shipping frozen food items comes with certain challenges. Frozen foods can last long compared to their fresh counterparts; however, it still has limited shelf-life and that gets reduced if they are not taken care properly during the transit. Some of the challenges that you may face as a business dealing with frozen food items are extreme temperature conditions, humidity, and spoilage.
If the food items are not properly packaged then extreme temperature can affect them. Moreover, loosely packed items can get destroyed during the transit. Another important thing to take care of is that items are well packed and there should not be any moisture content. Humidity in the items can lead to moulds or fungus growth, destroying the whole product just in some time.
Such issues can be resolved to a greater extend by taking care of a few things like using proper boxes for product packing, making use of refrigerated-vehicles to move products from the warehouse to another/ports/customer, refrigerating items properly before they are moved, etc. Again, you will have to find right delivery partner who can deal with such products and have special vehicles, if needed to move the frozen items. Such a vehicle can be a cold carrier, isothermal carrier, heat carrier, and refrigerator.
Choose your eCommerce platform
To make all this happen, you will need to build an eCommerce store that will let you get the exact benefit you expect from such an online business. In case yours is a startup with low budget then you should thing about choosing BigCommerce or Shopify. You should be choosing WooCommerce or Shopware or Magento if yours is a small or mid-sized business. In case yours is an enterprise then you can choose options like Magento Cloud Commerce, SAP Hybris and Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
Blog & recipes
It is important that you consider having blogs & recipes section in your online frozen food store. This will help the business in a different way. Think about a situation where a person who has no much knowledge of cooking (just some basics), has access to your online store. He or she would love to buy some of your products and try. However, lack of culinary skills is stopping them from shopping. Again, think about another situation where a person would love to know more about what they are shopping and eating.
In both cases, a little help can do wonders. Simple and easy to follow recipes with step-by-step guide can turn anyone holding a spatula to a chef! Moreover, they will be able to stay aware of what they are eating like its contents, benefits, etc.
Just check out this Blog & Recipes section in Love What You Eat. The readers can even follow the tags mentioned on the right-side to choose what they want to read and follow. Sounds interesting, right?
https://lovewhatyoueat.co.uk/blog
Take eye grabbing pictures
With frozen food products including a wide range of ready-to-eat items, investing in eye grabbing photography is a smart move. You can either hire a professional for the work or opt for DIY photoshoots. People don’t want to see ‘just-for-sake’ pictures, rather they want to have photos that are true-to-life in terms of colour, light, and texture.
For example, the below photo of Hot Steamed Puddings at Love What You Eat will give you a feeling of chocolate melting in your mouth.
https://lovewhatyoueat.co.uk/desserts/hot-steamed-puddings
Similarly, how can you resist the place of kebabs from UK Frozen Food
http://www.ukfrozenfood.com/product-category/frozen-food/kebabs/
In short, these pictures are playing with the mind of customers and asking them to buy those delicious plate of kebabs!
Trust me it works well when they are hungry ?.
Categorize products
Another important area to focus on is to categorize your products in a manner that the shoppers should not have a hard time finding what they are looking for. You can categorize and sub-categorize (if needed) the products to smoothen the navigation for the users.
Here in the case of UK Frozen Food, you can see the product categories added vertically on the left-hand side. Later the products have been categories to the next-level based on the chosen option.
Below, you will find how the product category of ‘Burgers’ have been further classified into its sub-categories in the same store.
In case of Frozen Halal, you can see the first category containing all items, then the ones for the freezer followed by items to be placed in the refrigerator and cupboard. This will make it easy for the shoppers to choose the products seamlessly and navigate further.
Product description
It is important that you add proper product description. Product description can include the content of the pack along with the quantity of each ingredient in it. It should also direct the user on how to consume the product after taking it from the freezer.
You can check the same in the example mentioned below for Iceland UK store.
https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-beef-lasagne-500g/83842.html#start=1
Apart from that, this section should also mention allergens that may be present in the item. This will let the user make informed shopping decision. The same has been listed in the above example as well as in the below example:
https://lovewhatyoueat.co.uk/ready-to-go/prepared-meals/luxury-chicken-kiev
Offer ready-to-eat combos
In this fast-moving world people have very less time to invest in kitchen and prepare meals for themselves or for the family. Daily cooking is a big NO-NO for many and these ready-to-eat meals serves the exact purpose. Such products can be bought and stored in freezer and cooked well when consuming.
Here at Love What you Eat, you will see such a set of ready-to-eat combos available in varieties. One of them has been shown below for you to see. Here items in the combo have been shown through pictures on the left-side while right side describes the product combo beautifully. Again, it also lets the buyer know that food can be consumed by 2 people.
https://lovewhatyoueat.co.uk/ready-to-go/meal-kits/date-night-meal-fish-feast
Showcase Bestsellers
Every store has its set of some best-selling products and things are not much different in case of frozen foods. There may be few dishes or items that people purchase from your in-store repeatedly. You can take the chance to showcase your classic products in the Bestsellers category on the online store. People who are looking for your best dishes or special dishes will waste no time in selecting couple of them! This saves their shopping time while increasing your conversion rate.
Just take the example of this below-mentioned best-selling section at COOK. See how well they have curated the list and added on their site.
https://www.cookfood.net/order
Encourage cross-selling
Don’t we try out cross-selling strategy in-store? Think about the same on your online store too. The only difference here is that there won’t be a salesperson to let the customers know what all they can pick along with the product they took from the shelf. So, showing the products that can supplement or complement their choice can be mentioned when they browse products. You can let them know the best ones that others purchased when browsing the same product as yours.
Here is an example from Thrive Market. It shows the list of suggested products that other customers purchased along with the main product.
https://thrivemarket.com/p/build-your-own-seafood-box
Buy online collect in-store
This is one of the best things you can do to ease the shopping experience of the customers. Any customer who is in the vicinity of the shop or who is planning to pass by can simply place the order online and then collect the product from the store. This actually saves their time at the store while lets the store to offer better customer experience. Again, it also saves time for the shoppers.
https://www.cookfood.net/products/chicken-ham-and-leek-pie/
Include “Notify Me’’ feature for sold out items
After buying a few products from your store, a customer who is looking for a product may find it out of stock. So now he has two options – buy it from another store or wait till you have them back in your shelves. So, increase the chance of your customer choosing the second option by adding in “Notify Me” feature when a product goes out of stock. So, whenever the product comes in stock again, an alert message will be sent to customer. This way they may be ready to wait to find the product again in the list and buy later. This means more sale for your business!
For example, you can see how in case of Nature’s Basket they have placed the ‘Notify Me’ feature in the product page to help customers shop later.
https://www.naturesbasket.co.in/Online-grocery-shopping/Snacks-Beverages/Frozen-Snacks/58_0_0
Encourage feedbacks and reviews
It is important your customers like what you sell. However, by knowing more people about your liking you will be able to help business get a better name in the market. This is the reason why online stores encourages its customers to give feedback and reviews about the food products they buy from the store. This will let other shoppers have better idea about the food item.
On the store Iceland, you will see that product page of every product contains feedback and reviews from the customers. This makes it easy for shoppers to decide what they would like to shop or not.
https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-28-%28approx.%29-breaded-fish-fingers-700g/77622.html#start=1
Offers and discounts
In order attract customers and encourage them to shop more, businesses offer discounts and coupons from time to time. Being in frozen food business you too can try your luck to boost sales through offers and discounts. It can be in many forms.
Like BOGO offer at Surya Frozen Online…
https://suryafrozenonline.com/frozen/humza/veg-samosa-(50-pieces)-871-21909
Or like the 10% discount offer at COOK for new parents!
https://www.cookfood.net/register?redirect=/newmum&style=newparents
Email subscription
One of the best ways to stay with your customers is through email subscription. This marketing strategy will help you offer exclusive offers to your customers direct into their inboxes. Regular emails of this kind mean your brand will be always on their mind.
Let’s see what all the email subscription offer of COOK contains!
So, don’t forget to come up with your own sign-up plan and keep your audience engaged even when they are not shopping from you.
Refer A Friend
You can increase sales for your online store and encourage more sales from your customers by choosing to add refer a friend option. This will encourage your shoppers to spread the word about your business on your behalf.
You can see how Iceland UK lets its users to encourage their friends and family to shop at their store and in return offers better deals on their shopping.
https://www.iceland.co.uk/refer-a-friend?situation=footer
Get social
Social media is an open platform that businesses can choose to go ahead and try to reach their existing customers and potential customers with ease. Apart from just letting the visitors know about your latest deals, new product additions, seasonal offers, festive deals, etc. it can act as an ideal platform to connect with them, talk to them and also answer their queries if they have some. This can be one of the best ways to connect with each visitor personally, know what they need and what they expect you to offer.
Find right delivery partner
If you are delivering the frozen products outside your jurisdiction or say a different country, you need to be aware of the import restrictions they have. This can lead to red tape issues and you may not have any plans to get entangled with laws. Moreover, you don’t want to end up with bad customer experience. In case you get frequent orders from such places, it would be better that you partner with third-party warehouse. This way you can ship frozen food items in bulk quantities to such warehouses and deliver them to the customers as the orders come up.
These are some of the basic things you should consider when you are planning to come up with an online store for your frozen food business. Remember that you will be able to build a strong online presence for your business if you manage to plan well by investing your time and resources in the right way.
If you want to build your store and launch in the market at the right moment, we can help you get there and make your journey smoother.
