Shipt updates in-app features before holiday shopping rush

Dive Brief:

Shipt is rolling out several new product features and app updates aimed at improving the shopping experience for workers, customers and retailers, according to a Thursday press release.
The enhancements bring new gig shopper tools, a remodeled customer experience and updated features for retailers to the e-commerce company’s platform.
These upgrades come as holiday shopping begins to pick up and more third party delivery companies ramp up their website and app capabilities.

Dive Insight:

The new in-app and online tools are meant to streamline the online shopping and delivery process for Shipt’s delivery workers — or “shoppers” as the company refers to them — as well as customers and retailers, with each group receiving a few new enhancements.

Shipt’s retailer tools are aimed at making the pickup process smoother for orders that rely on Shipt Driven, the company’s last-mile delivery tool. The three enhancements include package scanning at pickup, making the shopper’s name available to retailers on orders and letting retailers give more feedback on order sizes to help Shipt ensure it will fit in a shopper’s vehicle.

Two customer-oriented updates are meant to improve shopping at multiple retailers. Universal search lets customers search for products and browse results across multiple retailers that carry the product, the announcement noted. The homepage refresh allows customers to see all stores in their area while also showing more discounts, making it simpler to access numerous carts being built at once and “bumping up inspirational shopping content,” the announcement stated.

When testing these in-app redesigns, Ship reported seeing an uptick in amount of customers adding products to their cart as well as completing orders with more than one retailer.

The three new in-app shopper improvements, meanwhile, address shopper feedback the company has received. These updates include the ability to drop orders anytime — allowing for more shopper flexibility and easier support troubleshooting — an in-app chat center where shoppers can communicate more directly with customers, rather than communicating through SMS. In addition, an automatic rating forgiveness feature will be introduced at a later date, though it was not specified when.

Shipt’s new features follow similar updates from competitors Instacart and Uber. Last week, Instacart announced updates for workers, including new return and reimbursement processes, based on feedback the company received.