What Is Click & Collect and How to Build One for Your Business

Few things have improved the retail customer experience in recent years quite like Click & Collect. It has arrived with real force, reshaping how businesses that sell online handle distribution, cutting their costs while lifting their sales at the same time.

One of its biggest advantages is that it lets customers pick up their purchases whenever they want. And when the system sits inside one of the brand's physical stores, it drives foot traffic, which often translates into more sales.

Click & Collect: a definition

To get a sense of the scale, a few figures. According to Statista, the U.S. Click & Collect market was projected to exceed 140 billion dollars in 2024, a figure that doubled in the first year of the pandemic, and these sales are expected to keep growing at an annual rate of more than 15%.

Click & Collect units are systems built for picking up products that a customer has bought online. They take the form of lockers and are opened with a code. The clever part is that customers can come by whenever they like: instead of having the order delivered to their home, they manage the pickup on their own terms. It is a trend that makes sense, because most people spend their day away from home and prefer to decide where and when to collect their orders.

How a Click & Collect works

It is very simple. If your business offers online ordering, the customer can place an order from wherever they are; during checkout they choose Click & Collect pickup and select one of the available collection points; and once payment goes through, they receive a code that opens the locker so they can pick up their order on their own.

The advantages of having a Click & Collect

Lower costs, with savings on shipping for both customer and company, and fewer failed deliveries from no-shows. A better customer experience, thanks to the flexibility and speed. And higher sales, because the easier we make things for the consumer, the more chances we have to sell. It brings real benefits both for logistics control and for its impact on sales.

How to add a Click & Collect system to your business

There are two options: buy one through a vendor or build your own. Either way, you need a physical space to place the lockers, whether that is the brand's own store or an outside location (think of Amazon's Click & Collect points in shopping centres), a solid connection to your distribution systems, defined processes for loading the products and training the staff, and automated email notifications to round out the experience.

If you install one through a vendor, you are signing up for a standard solution with plenty of limitations: you will have to adapt to their processes, and conflicts with your own internal policies can arise. The more customised the system is, the less friction there will be between your staff and your processes.

Building a custom Click & Collect

The alternative is to build a custom one, which removes friction and aligns every element with the company. At Neurafy we build fully customised Click & Collect systems from the ground up, covering exterior design, connectivity, usability, functionality and sensors. It is the approach that delivers the best results. We will support you in the design, development and rollout of your Click & Collect, whatever your business model looks like.