Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
To better serve the growing segment of online shoppers who don’t want to wait for delivery and want to avoid paying shipping costs, e-commerce platform provider BigCommerce Pty. Ltd. has added buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) capabilities.
The move is being spurred in part by the continued growth of BOPIS volume even as the Covid-19 pandemic, which helped fuel a rise in BOPIS sales, winds down. BOPIS volume in the United States is growing about 10% annually and is projected to surpass $131 billion in 2026, according to market research firm eMarketer.
BigCommerce said merchants will have access to a set of new and updated application programming interfaces that will enable them to create custom experiences tailored to customer preferences. Examples include creation of a pickup location widget that displays the nearest store location based on Zip Code. The feature allows a shopper to select the distance she is willing to travel to pick up a purchase and shows inventory available by location, according to a BigCommerce spokesperson.
Another way merchants can customize BOPIS for shoppers is to set a home store by using their Zip Code and showing a map. “That information would carry through to the product details page and pull up inventory available at [the home] store as soon as [the shopper] selects her size and confirms when the product could be ready for pickup,” the BigCommerce spokesperson says by email.
In addition to enabling a customized checkout experience, merchants will be able to offer multiple BOPIS options such as in-store pick up, curbside, and direct, in which orders are delivered to the customer in the merchant’s parking lot.
Merchants will be able to fulfill BOPIS orders across multiple locations, according to BigCommerce, such as a warehouse, physical storefront, or third-party fulfillment center. “Now, merchants can implement BOPIS as part of their fulfillment strategy across these multiple locations to help increase online conversions and in-store purchases,” says the BigCommerce spokesperson.
Other updates to the BigCommerce’s BOPIS APIs include a server-to-server checkout API that enables checkout on a remote server; updated APIs for the storefront, the merchant’s catalog, and ordering; and an API as well as a software development kit for checkout.
“To stay competitive and grow, brands need to meet their customers where they are and make it easy for them to purchase and pick up their items,” Meghan Stabler, senior vice president of marketing at BigCommerce, says in a prepared statement.
