The Co-op plans to expand the same-day delivery service it offers from selected city centre stores to 650 branches by the end of this year.
The retailer started using Digital Goodie’s connected commerce platform to offer online shopping with same-day deliveries to west London customers in March 2019. It started with a proof of concept service that it now plans to expand at speed over the course of this year, using headless commerce to do so.
The Co-op aims to make ordering food online as convenient as ordering takeaway food, with deliveries in as little as two hours from ordering. It is using headless ecommerce to enable that. The Co-op uses the Digital Goodie connected commerce platform on a software-as-a-service basis, taking full control of its own end-to-end user experience that it builds on top of underlying business logic layers, including commerce, order management and in-store picking systems.
“Convenience lies at the heart of our offering and as part of this, we have major online expansion plans which will make it easier than ever for customers to shop with us,” said Chris Conway, head of food digital at the Co-op. “Such growth can only be facilitated with a digital partner that offers modern and agile technology and we’re delighted to continue our work with the Digital Goodie team who are intrinsic in bringing these plans to life.”
The Co-op’s digital team started to design and build its own storefront on top of the Digital Goodie platform soon after the first online store demonstrated the proof of concept in March. That storefront went live in August and by the end of November all traffic had been diverted to the Co-op’s own site.
The service currently offers free delivery to shoppers who spend at least £15 in parts of London, Bristol, Brighton, Manchester, Southampton and Bournemouth, and it is scheduled to be delivered soon in more parts of Manchester, as well as Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham and Birmingham.
In the near future, the Co-op team plans to add native mobile apps.
Moris Chemtov, global chief executive of Finnish business Digital Goodie, said: “When we started our journey with Co-op we were impressed on how focused they are on digitalisation, and how agile they are in their approach.
“The speed by which they were able to design and build their own storefront is a testament to these traits. However, it is also a testament to the robustness and completeness of Digital Goodie’s headless commerce platform. We are proud to be the first platform vendor to truly bring headless commerce to the grocery industry, and look forward to many more wins in the upcoming months”
Digital Goodie’s customers also include retailers in Scandinavia, the Baltics and the UK. It built the digital shopping experience for Finland’s largest retailer S Group.
Image: InternetRetailing Media/Paul Skeldon
