Online delivery slot-droughts provide a welcome ‘high’ for local high streets
Shoppers desperate to stock up their shelves amid ongoing online delivery slot chaos are providing a much-needed boost for the nation’s local high streets, it has emerged.
New data reveals shoppers quickly adapted and began searching online for groceries to buy locally after the government advised against booking online delivery slots, amid fears the vulnerable would wait weeks for vital supplies.
The trend was identified by NearSt, analysing local product search data for England, Scotland and Wales between 1 March 2020 and 10 January 2021 through its platform.
It is a measure of people looking to find products in local shops that are showing stock in-store in places like Google.
NearSt, estimates up to 6.3 million Britons boomeranged back to local high streets during March, June and November last year and January 2021 during periods when delivery shortages were at a high.
Within a couple of hours of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s speech to the nation on Monday January 4th shoppers reported problems with Sainsbury’s and Tesco. This continued until 7th as reports of a month long wait for a delivery slot on Ocado emerged.
That sparked an 20% surge of shoppers searching online for goods locally and heading to their closest high street store to search for kitchen cupboard essentials.
Among the most popular search categories were tea and infusions, sweets and chocolate, pasta and noodles, bread, buns and flour and the specific product searches were for Pukka Cleanse Tea, Pukka Night-Time Tea and soda crystals.
The biggest hike in searches was between 13 and 31 March 2020 when the implementation of the first lockdown in March and the alarming trend of ‘panic-buying’ proved to be a trigger for the first collapse in store’s online delivery systems.
Local stores who’ve been fighting an uphill battle against online behemoths, benefitted from a staggering 180% rise in the number of people checking for product availability in physical stores close by.
Beer, wine and gin were common searches along with flour and baking soda cementing that Brits embarked on a nationwide bake-off to keep their spirits up.
Co-founder NearSt Nick Brackenbury said: “Securing a coveted delivery slot at times as the pandemic has unfolded has been as competitive as clinching that coveted Glastonbury ticket in a pre-Covid world.
“Millions of consumers have shifted their behaviour online in the past twelve months, driving a spike in ecommerce sales.
“But it’s easy to confuse behaviours moving online with actual purchases moving online.
“While online shopping has soared throughout 2020, many are overlooking the more dramatic growth in local search, which is really encouraging news for high streets.
“As we actively seek to reduce unnecessary outings and browsing time in shops to mitigate the risk of catching Covid, coupled with our insatiable appetite to ‘have things now’ mean the demand to find and confirm things are in shops locally has swelled significantly as a result.”
The company founded in 2015 by Max Kreijn and Nick Brackenbury, allows people searching for products online to see where they are stocked in nearby shops – making it as convenient to shop on your local high street as it is on Amazon. Shops install software that connects to their point of sale or inventory system so that stock shows up in Google search results.
Each month the NearLIVE platform captures over three billion local data points covering almost every corner of retail.
As the delivery-slot-droughts scuppered online grocery orders millions of consumers changed their online search habits and instead began Googling the same items ‘near me’ to check on stock of local convenience stores.
The data provides fascinating insight on which products we turned to for comfort as the harsh realities of the prolonged pandemic started to hit home.
NearSt’s data shows during that first delivery slot drought between March 13th and the 31st we sought solace in beer, spirits, sweets, chocolate and tea.
Flour, wine, non-dairy milk, pasta and noodles, yeast and herbs and spices also made the top ten search categories throughout that period.
More specifically in terms of actual products searched to purchase locally Delirium Tremens, a Belgian ale, topped the list.
The East London Liquor Co’s British Wheat Vodka was also popular as was Lucky Saint’s 0.5% Unfiltered Lager.
The second delivery slot drought on June 20 was exacerbated by a glitch in Tesco’s online delivery system which caused nationwide chaos and resulted in more people heading for the high street.
NearSt witnessed an 34% uplift in online searches for products available locally between the 20th and the 22nd of June and their data provides another window into our emotional state amid the pandemic as beer completely vanished off our shopping lists to be replaced by a boom in local searches for something stronger – whisky.
On this occasion we also turned to traditional comforts such as tea, sweets and chocolate. But flour also made the list hinting at a baking blitz.
Product-wise the top searches were for Lagavulin 16-year-old whisky followed by bicarbonate of soda, gluten free plain white flour and Pukka Womankind Tea.
Some marked differences appear on the regional NearSt data including the fact that between June 20 and June 22 those living in Birmingham searched locally for baking soda, vinegar, herbs and spices, onions and salt.
In the capital the most common categories were tea, sweets and chocolate, flour, juice and bread and buns.
And further north in Edinburgh shoppers were desperate to track down whisky, beer, tea and gin.
More home delivery concerns came in November as Ocado delivery slots in south London were booked up for 12 days, once again sparking a dramatic shift in what we considered ‘essential’.
This time sweets and chocolate topped the categories between the 3rd and the 10th, followed by tea, crisps and biscuits to help us stay sane as winter kicked in.
Herbs and spices were also most likely to be replenished during this period along with pasta and noodles, non-dairy milk, cheese, bread, buns and cereals and granola.
In terms of products the top searches were for Pukka Cleanse Tea, 20 Bags, Pukka Night Time Tea and Booja-Booja Award-Winning Chocolate Selection.
At this point in time NearSt noticed a 20% increase in local product searches between 3 and 10th Nov.
Overall throughout the four delivery slot droughts totalling 33 days, beer topped the list of NearSt’s category searches, occurring 59,622 times.
Tea and infusions were the second most locally searched for items with 56,011 separate ‘near me’ clicks on Google.
Sweets and chocolate (52,649) were the third most popular category we went on the hunt for when home delivery was unavailable.
Spirits were fourth, typed in on 34,125 occasions.
‘Flour’ was next on the list, searched locally 19,181 times and non-dairy milk was very much a desired product too (18,800).
Pasta (17,453) and wine were also clearly go-to items with 10,968 searches as were bread and buns (10,091 searches) and herbs and spices (9,383).
“Covid-19 has fundamentally changed the way we all shop.” continued Nick Brackenbury.
“Almost overnight it shifted how we all think about finding products in our local shops.
“One of the most common misconceptions about local search is that people don’t look for things they know their local shops stock.
“In fact, looking at data from convenience stores over the most recent lockdown shows that in practice people are checking for particular varieties of everyday essentials.
“Today we are seeing 4x the volume of local product searches compared to pre-pandemic levels. That is a sustained quadrupling in people going online to find products ‘offline’ in physical shops.
“This emerging consumer behaviour of searching and discovering products online to buy in nearby physical stores presents an exciting new opportunity for businesses.”
Top 10 UK convenience store local category searches between 13 – 31 March 2020
- Beer – 59,622 searches
- Liquor & Spirits – 32,599 searches
- Sweets & Chocolate – 16,322 searches
- Tea & Infusions – 14,478 searches
- Flour – 13,515 searches
- Wine – 10,968 searches
- Non-Dairy Milk – 9,050 searches
- Pasta & Noodles – 8,214 searches
- Herbs and Spices – 6,071 searches
- Yeast – 5,526 searches
ONLINE DELIVERY SLOT DROUGHT 2
Top 10 UK convenience store local category searches from June 20 – 22
- Tea & Infusions – 4762 searches
- Sweets & Chocolate – 3338 searches
- Flour – 2490 searches
- Whisky – 1738 searches
- Cereals & Granola – 1563 searches
- Liqueurs – 1526 searches
- Non-Dairy Milk – 1473 searches
- Bread & Buns – 1376 searches
- Pasta & Noodles – 1327 searches
- Nut Butters – 1230
ONLINE DELIVERY SLOT DROUGHT 3
Top 10 Convenience Store category searches between 3 – 10 November 2020
- Sweets & Chocolate – 24355 searches
- Tea & infusions – 22941 searches
- Crisps – 6085 searches
- Biscuits – 5613
- Herbs and Spices – 5344
- Pasta and Noodles – 5154
- Non-Dairy Milk – 5058
- Cheese – 4713
- Bread & Buns – 4644
- Cereals and Granola – 4446
ONLINE DELIVERY SLOT DROUGHT 4
Top 10 Convenience Store category searches between 4 – 7 January 2021
- Tea & Infusions – 13830 searches
- Sweets and chocolate – 8634 searches
- Pasta and Noodles – 4085 searches
- Bread & Buns – 4071 searches
- Flour – 3716 searches
- Herbs & Spices – 3312 searches
- Soups & Broths – 3304 searches
- Non-Dairy Milk – 3219 searches
- Cheese – 3084 searches
- Chips – 3084 searches