For those of you that missed it, Shopify released a new feature for users at UNITE 2019. Recently available for Shopify users here in South Africa, we have been test driving it these past few weeks.

Within the typical Shopify checkout, you now have tabs for “Ship” and “Pick up” with the pick up tab showing a list of locations along with possibly a search field above it.

There was then a tie in to the POS app, which will enable staff at locations to see and fulfil orders from the app. We are planning on giving an extensive review of this on the new POS PRO platform in the coming weeks.

Whilst some readers might think this was already possible through third party applications, none of them have really been as simplistic and intuitive as the new Shopify feature. Furthermore these options are either:

1. Often very expensive and tied to a wider Click and Collect network.
2. The integration with the checkout wasn’t great, often relying on JS on the cart page or cart drawer. Meaning that if you wanted to direct customers straight into the checkout flow, they would skip the option.
3. Shoe horning one of your store’s address into the delivery address field, always felt like a hack which will pollute any future reporting on where people ship products to.
4. Issues with a free “in store pickup” delivery option appearing when customers used express checkouts like Apple Pay (where cheapest shipping is selected by default) or PayPal, which either caused confusion or customers getting free shipping when they shouldn’t.

Whilst this might turn out to be another hook to get merchants to use both POS from Shopify, it’s likely to be a much better experience for customers and staff than the current options for this feature.

Shopify Local Delivery App

We saw this addition to the Shopify suite of apps and decided to implement and try it out with a client who had the ability to offer local delivery within a 20km radius of his warehouse. The application allows dispatch or admin users to create a delivery list for drivers within select routes to optimize time and efficiency.

Whilst our experience with the app has thus far been limited, the eco system has been something we swear by.

Let us know if you have used the feature, what are your thoughts?

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