The future of Retail is about forgetting, in a good way.
If you’re inside a physical store you should be enabled to forget about the possible limitations reality imposes on the shopping experience (waste of time, wrestling among shelves, stock, overcrowding, lines at the register, etc.).
If you’re buying online you should forget an entirely different set of possible limitations (evaluating without touching, item browsing and presentation, checkout frictions, etc.).
A few days ago a User of our mobile App took the time to tell us how happy he was of having registered his Milkman Address on his Paypal account, instead of his home address.
It was that kind of revealing moment that makes a day shine brighter.
Everyone knows that a frictionless checkout, when it comes to eCommerce, is priceless. You simply sell more. That day we found out that we’re not only a Saas & Last-Mile startup, but we’re also a wingman for those Online Retail-Tech players who strive to improve the shopping experience.
The Milkman Address is the foundation of our mobile App (free for iOS and Android). It represents a physical space inside our warehouse where parcels for the App-User are stocked, waiting for him to commit an appointment-driven delivery.
Shoppers buy on any eCommerce site and have their gifts delivered to their Milkman Address. When those items enter our warehouse, we alert the Users through a push/SMS. They’re then free to schedule a delivery at their preferred address by choosing the day and time window (up to one hour). ETA’s are constant throughout the process and it’s possible to freely reschedule up to the last minute.
Think about it: by adding the Milkman Address to Paypal’s Express Checkout (Paypal is used by 67.5% of the 965 biggest online merchants) this particular shopper entirely bypassed checkout itself. He just had to choose what to buy.
All his payments and shipping details were already securely registered on Paypal. No unwelcome input of data, no worries about shipping options and times. It went from the Store to the moment in which he chose the day and hour of delivery in one single, invisible, step. And the best part is that, during this seamless trip, he never relinquished control: he simply choose before and once-and-for-all what was best for him.
This kind of synergy brings a true productive disruption to the world of Online Retail, seamlessly going along the amazing upwards trajectory that is propelling online shopping front and centre in our lives.
