Retailers make shopping lists smarter and achieve 3x higher grocery shopping order values using computer vision technology

| Retail

barcode scanning enabled app for shopping list

By Steve Cunningham, US Sales Director – Retail, Scandit, Inc.

A shopping list is the most effective way to make sure you get everything you need, which is why people have been using them for over 2,000 years. In an incredibly competitive landscape, retailers are turning to technology to deliver frictionless, fantastic store experiences. Swiss grocery retailer Coop enable customers to use their shopping app to make lists, find the items they want and skip queues with self-checkout.  And customers who do this spend up to three times more per shopping visit than customers who don’t. 

Helping customers create a list and do self-checkout makes the shopping experience more efficient, enjoyable and less stressful for time poor consumers. Mobile computer vision enables any retailer to use barcode scanning functionality to help customers – either in an app or in a web browser – ensure they never get home and experience that sinking feeling of having forgotten something from the store. 

Today, let’s focus on how barcode scanning software can help retailers delight customers with digital shopping lists for use in and out of the store. It’s surprisingly easy and affordable to do.

How to create a “digital wish list” without a mobile app

Let’s consider two kinds of shopping lists: the grocery list and what we’ll call the “wish list.”  The grocery list is pretty straightforward as a concept and we’ll get to that soon. The wish list is a list of items that you’d create for a gift registry for say, a wedding or a holiday.  Creating a wish list is different from a weekly shopping list because it is an occasional rather than a routine event, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be more difficult or doesn’t present an opportunity.  In fact, Scandit software solutions make it simple and affordable for retailers to offer a digital wish list to their customers, as an extra service and loyalty builder.  

In many instances, retailers in specialty stores don’t want to spend the time and effort to create a customer-facing shopping app because they fear low adoption. Occasional visitors to a store are not likely to download a barcode scanning-enabled app that they may only use once or twice – but it doesn’t need to be this way. The Barcode Scanner SDK for the Web enables retailers to add barcode scanning directly to the company website, without the need for customers to download an app. So customers then simply access your website via the browser on their smart device and use the built-in camera to scan items directly into a shopping list.  Watch this video to see how it works:

The Barcode Scanner SDK for the Web doesn’t require any set-up or app download by customers, it works with mobile and desktop websites, in both public and internal-only private networks. A customer that wants to build a gift registry (such as a wedding list) can come into a store, use a smartphone to access the store’s e-commerce website and set up a list.  They can browse in-store, identify the items they want to add to the list, and scan items into the website with the smartphone camera. It’s easy, and it can all be done without the assistance of a store employee.

For developers … 

Setting up browser-based barcode scanning could not be simpler.  The functionality can be integrated and configured in 10 lines of code. The Scandit barcode scanning engine handles fast and reliable decoding directly in the browser from the camera video feed. Take a few moments and go through the demo to see how it could benefit your business.

A digital grocery list with a difference – augmented reality (AR)

Secondly, grocery lists are the type of lists we make weekly, or even daily, before heading out to the supermarket or store. Grocers have a great opportunity to use a barcode scanning-enabled, consumer-facing shopping app to offer easy, intuitive shopping list-building functionality. Most people habitually buy their groceries in the same store. A recent Deloitte study reported that consumers often experience more efficiency interacting with familiar physical retailers because they know the signage and layout and can shop in less time. (How frustrating is it when you can’t find what you want in its usual place?!) Customers expect retailers to help save them time. A robust, easy-to-use mobile shopping app that offers the ability to create a “smart” shopping list can help grocers fulfill that expectation. Shopping lists managed from a mobile device can become sharable, reusable, cloud-synced, and can even help consumers find products in a store or compare prices at nearby retail locations. 

The next level of digital grocery list can include augmented reality (AR) to pull in relevant information on the item just scanned and display it on the mobile screen.  For example, when a customer scans a grocery item from their list, they can be informed of discounts, instant coupons, or perhaps suggestions to buy complementary items. The information displayed is whatever the retailer wants to provide, so it could be dietary information (e.g. gluten free, low sugar) product reviews or even videos. Scandit combines computer vision with AR to create this blended physical and digital experience.

Finally, a barcode scanning-enabled app makes it easy to place orders on-the-go when you’re not in the store. Shoppers can scan an item anywhere and add it to a smart list and choose whether to pick it up in the store or have it delivered to another location. 

Integrating the Barcode Scanner SDK into a mobile shopping app gives you the fast, reliable barcode scanning performance required to make customers love your app and want to use it to create and use smart shopping lists.  See the Barcode Scanner SDK in action in this short video: 

Getting started with mobile barcode scanning

Making it possible for customers to create smart shopping lists on your website and use Scandit barcode scanning functionality to facilitate the process really is “low-hanging fruit” for retailers looking to differentiate themselves and build relationships with customers.  Scandit offers a choice of integration points where retailers can bring barcode scanning into the process. There is really no barrier to using it. Take a moment to contact us and see how Scandit mobile computer vision software can help you transform your enterprise with mobile barcode scanning and augmented reality.