For merchants with both online and brick-and-mortar stores, offering delivery methods like buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) and curbside pickup help create a cohesive online–to–in-store shopping experience.
It also encourages online shoppers to visit their retail stores, resulting in higher store foot traffic and more opportunities to connect with shoppers and make sales.
For consumers, in-store pickup is attractive because it helps them get orders faster while avoiding shipping fees. For merchants, leveraging their physical stores as fulfillment centers for online orders helps speed up fulfillment times and increase customer satisfaction while lowering shipping costs on local deliveries.
But merchants who have yet to start offering flexible delivery options like BOPIS cite logistics and poor integrations between their ecommerce platform and point-of-sale (POS) system as their biggest challenge.
How do you ensure online shoppers can only select in-store pickup as a delivery method for products you have on hand? How do you fulfill online orders from your POS system? That’s where in-store pickup comes in handy.
In-store pickup is the easiest way for Shopify merchants to offer in-store pickup as a delivery option at checkout, while ensuring they have inventory on hand to fulfill the order and that retail teams can easily prepare and notify customers when their order is ready for pickup.
What is in-store pickup?
In-store pickup is a delivery method that lets local shoppers pick up their online orders at your retail store. In-store pickup makes it easy for merchants to offer fulfillment options like click-and-collect, BOPIS, and curbside pickup, and manage those orders across multiple store locations from one system.
For store owners, in-store pickup gives them total control over in-store pickup availability and workflows. They can specify which stores offer in-store pickup, set pickup times, and draft pickup instructions that are automatically sent to shoppers after they place their online order.
For retail staff, in-store pickup lets them easily view and prepare orders in the POS system, send notifications to customers once their order is ready for pickup, and mark orders as fulfilled after the customer picks up their purchase.
Rather than having visibility on all online orders, retail staff can only view online orders where in-store pickup was selected as the delivery method and the store they work at was selected as the pickup location.
All that makes for a streamlined ordering process that unifies your online and physical stores without adding layers of operational complexity.
When is pickup in store available to customers at checkout?
While pickup in store is what enables merchants to offer click-and-collect, curbside pickup, and in-store pickup. By default, a store will only show up as a pickup option if all items in a cart are in stock at a given pickup location during checkout. Otherwise, the store will not be displayed as an optional pickup location. This ensures the merchant has the ability to fulfill the pickup order with the stock currently available at the store.
However, some merchants wish to offer pickup in store for items that are not locally stocked at the pickup location due to reasons such as limited retail space and or products being temporarily out of stock.
For this, merchants can use a concept known as ship to store fulfillment, by enabling Store transfers in the Shopify admin. This allows merchants to offer in-store pickup for items that are not in stock at the pickup location by shipping or transferring the items from another store or fulfillment center to the pickup location.
📌 GET STARTED: With Shopify, you can show in-store pickup availability to online shoppers in a few clicks. To start setting stores as pickup locations, head over to your Shopify admin.
What are the benefits of in-store pickup?
In-store pickup helps increase sales and revenue while delivering on consumers’ expectation for fast, free, convenient shipping.
Let’s dive into the benefits in-store pickup offers both you and your customers:
How in-store pickup benefits merchants
Drive foot traffic to stores
When online shoppers visit your store to pick up their order, that’s an additional interaction with your brand that wouldn’t happen if they opted for ship-to-home delivery.
In-store pickup is an accessible way to lift store foot traffic. Store associates have the opportunity to build rapport with the customer in-person, solve shoppers’ needs, and close additional sales.
Increase online conversion rates
Delivery times are an increasingly important factor shoppers consider before buying something online. In fact, a UPS report says 46% of online shoppers abandon their cart because shipping times are too long.
But in-store pickup orders being fulfilled faster than ship-to-customer delivery can help remove barriers to purchase and increase your online store’s conversion rate.
Not only are online shoppers who choose in-store pickup 13% more likely to convert into a sale, they also spend 23% more than customers who opt for traditional shipping.
Save on shipping costs
On average, last-mile delivery represents 53% of a merchant’s total cost to ship an item. Turning your physical stores into in-store pickup centers can save you costs to fulfill local orders while matching customers’ expectations for same- or next-day delivery.
Spend less on return shipping
The National Retail Federation reports that almost 11% of all retail dollars spent in 2020 resulted in a return—that’s nearly $428 billion spent on paying for return shipping.
Half of US adults say that having to pay for return shipping would prevent them from making a purchase online. While absorbing the cost of return shipping is a great way to increase online sales, encouraging local customers to drop off returned items at your store is an effective way to lower how much you spend on return shipping for local orders.
How in-store pickup benefits customers
Nearly 60% of consumers plan to continue using in-store pickup as a delivery option following its initial surge in popularity in 2020. This high adoption rate is due to the convenience of receiving orders faster without having to pay a premium.
Save on shipping rates
Deloitte’s Global State of the Consumer Tracker had shoppers rank the reasons why they enjoyed in-store pickup. From April 2020 to March 2021, the study tracked any ranking changes.
While being “cheaper than delivery” was initially ranked fourth, it climbed to first in less than a year. The main reason shoppers love in-store pickup today is because it helps them save on delivery costs.
Get orders faster
Of all the factors ranked in Deloitte’s report, the one that saw the biggest jump was “faster than standard delivery.” While shoppers ranked it last initially, it climbed to second in less than 12 months.
Today’s consumer expects to get their orders quick and cheap, and in-store pickup helps merchants make that happen by using their existing network of retail stores.
How in-store pickup works
Let’s go over how in-store pickup works in four simple steps.
📌 GET STARTED: If you use Shopify to sell online and in-person, in-store pickup is an option you can enable from the Shopify admin. Once enabled, online shoppers can select store pickup as a delivery option at checkout.
Customer chooses in-store pickup as the delivery method
Once an online shopper finds a product they like, they can choose in-store pickup as their delivery option at checkout. For the customer to be able to select a location, the location must have inventory of the product they’re purchasing on hand.
💡 PRO TIP: If you enable in-store pickup for more than one store, customers will be able to choose to pick up their order from the location most convenient to them.
Merchant prepares the order and sends a pickup notification
After the customer places their order, retail staff receive a push notification in their POS system alerting them that they’ve received a new in-store pickup order that needs to be prepared.
Once all items included in the order are set aside for the customer, the store associate sends the customer a pickup notification to let them know their order is ready. The notification email can also include useful details like the store’s address and at what time they can come pick up their order.
Customer picks up their order
Since the order was already paid for online, all shoppers need to do when they arrive in-store is show their order confirmation email to a store associate, who then verifies the order in the POS system.
Merchant sends pickup confirmation
Once the shopper picks up their order, the store associate just has to mark the order as picked up and send the customer a pickup confirmation, either via email or text message.
After the pickup confirmation is sent, the in-store pickup order is marked as fulfilled in the POS system.
Tips for offering in-store pickup
Now that you understand how in-store pickup works, let’s go over a few tips to make it a great experience for both your customers and your retail staff.
Show pickup availability to online shoppers
With pickup availability, Shopify merchants can show shoppers when a product is available for pickup at a nearby store location, right from the product page.
This signals to customers that they can save on shipping costs ( in-store pickup is free) while getting their order faster. Knowing both shipping cost and speed are the two most important variables shoppers consider before making a purchase, enabling in-store pickup availability can help lift your online store’s conversion rate.
📌 GET STARTED: To show pickup availability on your product pages, follow these steps.
Include expected pickup times
One of the key benefits of BOPIS is getting your order faster. When you’re setting up in-store pickup for your Shopify store, don’t forget to include expected pickup times (“Usually ready in 24 hours,” for example) so that customers know the approximate time frame their order will be ready.
Ensure your store location names are easy to understand
Before launching in-store pickup, update your store location names so customers can easily understand where to go to pick up their order.
We recommend including the following in each of your store names:
- City
- State or province
- Street address
- ZIP or postal code
- Neighborhood
Enable in-store pickup order notifications
To ensure store associates get click-and-collect orders ready for pickup quickly, enable push notifications in your POS system. With notifications enabled, store associates receive alerts for every new in-store pickup order where their store is selected as the pickup location. This helps them get orders ready and in the hands of customers faster.
📌 GET STARTED: To enable in-store pickup order notifications in Shopify POS, follow these steps.
Add a in-store pickup tile to your POS smart grid
To speed up service once those shoppers show up at your store to pick up their order, consider using the Shopify POS smart grid.
Rather than manually searching for orders, adding a in-store pickup tile to your smart grid helps store associates find, prepare, and complete online orders marked for in-store pickup from the POS home screen.
Customize your pickup notifications emails
Pickup notifications are an important part of a customer’s click-and-collect experience. They want to know exactly what’s happening with their order, what to expect, and what they need to do next.
Customizing the pickup notifications customers receive is the best place to share instructions for when and where they should pick up their order, safety guidelines they need to follow at your store, and even promote other products they may enjoy.
📌 GET STARTED: To customize pickup notifications for click-and-collect orders, follow these steps.
How to set up in-store pickup in Shopify POS
Now that you know what in-store pickup is and how it helps unify your online and physical stores with click-and-collect order fulfillment, it's time to set it up for your Shopify store. Read this Help Center article for a step-by-step walkthrough, or watch the tutorial video below.
How to fulfill in-store pickup orders
For a visual walkthrough of how to fulfill in-store pickup orders in Shopify POS, watch this tutorial video.
Use in-store pickup to deliver ultimate convenience to shoppers
One of the main challenges retailers face is unifying their online and in-person channels and letting shoppers use whichever mix is most convenient to them—but merchants who deliver on that expectation of multichannel convenience stand to reap the benefits.
While delivery options like BOPIS and curbside pickup were popularized during the pandemic restrictions, they’re two fulfillment options that are expected to increase in popularity because of how convenient they are.
in-store pickup helps your online and retail stores complement one another and leverage each other’s strengths, resulting in a unified shopping experience for your customers and a straightforward fulfillment process for your retail teams.
