For today’s retailers, operating an omnichannel approach to attract customers is critical. A recent study by Forrester found that 50% of all shoppers expect to be able to either buy or reserve a product online to then collect in-store.
NearSt's Product Reservations feature allows customers to reserve products online and then pay and collect in-store.
How it works
When this feature is activated, shoppers can go to a NearSt product page when browsing across channels.
On this product page, the shopper can complete a short reservation form and immediately receive a confirmation email. You will receive the reservation request by email and then all that you need to do is to confirm it in the dashboard and prepare the product for collection!
Order management
You will receive an email notification when a local shopper completes the reservation form and orders will be displayed in the dashboard, grouped by date and status. You can easily accept or cancel pending reservations and mark orders as “collected”.
Both the customer and your team will have each other's contact information so you can contact each other directly if needed.
Requirements & availability
This feature is available to all NearSt Lite, Standard and Advanced plans.
The key eligibility requirement is the ability to manage the end-to-end client experience in-store:
You and your team are responsible for checking the contact email to see pending reservations
The responsibility for confirming reservation requests would sit with you and your team
Finally, you and your team would be responsible for any direct communication with the client - if needed (e.g. item not found, item out of stock)
Enabling product reservations
Log in to the NearSt dashboard and go to the Product Reservations channel.
From this page, add one or more reservation email addresses, which will be used for email notifications of pending orders. Please ensure that everyone within your team can access this inbox.
Our system will automatically start adding reservation links to all applicable channels. This can take up to 48 hours.
You can now receive reservations and manage your orders through the NearSt dashboard.
FAQs
Are there any transaction fees?
Nope, none! You won’t incur any additional costs.
What happens if I don't confirm the reservation? Is it automatically cancelled?
No - you are responsible for communicating directly with the customer if they can’t fulfil the order.
Are analytics available for this?
Yes! You will be able to see insights for your NearSt product pages on the dashboard. These include product page views, clicks and conversions.
Can I have both this and Local Checkout enabled?
Yes! The experience is seamlessly integrated so you can offer both and manage orders from a single place in your dashboard.