Mercato says visibility and presentation are key factors to highlight on ecommerce platforms to drive impulse sales of prepared foods online. with visibility into store operations with userfriendly products that help grow sales, cut costs, and improve operational efficiencies. " Encouraging impulse sales online A lot of instore deli-prepared sales are driven by impulse purchases. Without a customer being able to walk past the deli department and be lured in by the smell of freshly made foods or the enticing looks of the latest prepared items, retailers may question how to bag those sales when a customer is shopping online. That's where visibility and presentation come in handy, noted Munuswamy. Reminding customers that they can answer the ever-present what's-for-dinner question when they make their online order is key. " People know you have grocery items, so you have to put your deliprepared items front and center on the site, " she said. " Make sure that the images are representing what the customer is going to be getting. The image is key to get folks enticed and to get their mouths watering. " Retailers should also take advantage of social media and remind customers they can order dinner for pickup or delivery with the click of a button. Special online promotions for prepared-items and crossmerchandising suggestions are also helpful techniques in driving online sales. It can also be effective to push online ads for promotional items as the shopper checks out online. Think of it as the endcap a shopper sees as they get to the checkout line when they shop in-store. On the order fulfilment side, Paro suggested using communication tools with shoppers to help encourage last-minute purchases. ShopperKit's SMS chat platform was initially built to help order pickers communicate with shoppers about item substitutions. The company quickly found that orders in which the item picker communicated with the online shopper saw a 2-3% increase in basket size because it allowed for customers to add on items they forgot at the time of checkout. " What we're seeing is that it's also a really good channel for getting what we like to call impulse-by-proxy purchases, " Paro said. " If you're having an experience with your shopper, there's an opportunity DOING OUR PART to keep the INDUSTRY CONNECTED Follow us on KRISTINA BLOKHIN - STOCK.ADOBE.COM Deli: Online orderinghttps://www.linkedin.com/showcase/supermarketperimeter/ https://twitter.com/smperimeter https://www.facebook.com/SMPerimeter/