How Kroger Masters the Online Grocery Space

In the competitive world of digital marketing, understanding how top brands achieve success can provide invaluable lessons for your own strategies. Kroger, a leading grocery retailer in the US, has made significant strides in its digital marketing efforts.

This blog answers:

• How the grocery segment in the US is performing
• How Kroger effectively targets shoppers

Navigating the competitive landscape

The grocery segment in the US experienced impressive year-over-year (YoY) growth from February 2023 to January 2024, increasing by 4.33% from the previous year and peaking at 6% during the December holiday season.

Among the top players, Kroger has posted the second-largest yearly increase, demonstrating its robust digital presence. Kroger has seen significant digital growth in 2023, tripling the overall digital growth of the grocery sector in the US. Notably, Kroger’s audience shows remarkable loyalty, with users visiting the site an average of 2.87 times per month. This growth underscores the importance of leveraging digital trends to maintain a competitive edge.

Overall, Kroger tops the brick-and-click subgroup, nearly doubling the 2.5% monthly change in traffic, but delivery sites continue to attract a wider audience.

However, competitor grocery retailers like Publix and Safeway have outpaced this growth, growing 3-4 times the average. Meanwhile, the shift to mobile dominance continues, with 2% more consumers switching to mobile devices over the course of 2023.

Clicking with consumers

Search engines accounted for roughly 40% of all traffic to grocery websites in January 2024, with a staggering 78% of that traffic coming from mobile devices. Over the past 12 months, this traffic has been dominated by organic clicks on mobile devices.

Once on-site, grocery delivery services like Doordash and Instacart show advantages over the “brick & click” players, generating the highest time on site, pages per visit, and total page views. Understanding how these websites keep shoppers on-site is vital for conversion.

Doordash saw the highest visit duration of 7:34 and the highest number of page views. Instacart had the most pages per visit at 6.79.

Understanding these metrics is crucial for optimizing user experience and conversion rates, as they indicate how to keep consumers engaged once they arrive on-site.

Mobile’s the main traffic driver

When analyzing individual pages on Kroger.com, we see a significant portion (over 30%) of mobile traffic is driven by discounts, indicating consumers are browsing for deals.

In fact, 12 (or 23%) of the top 50 pages are related to sales and discounts. This trend underscores the importance of strategically placing discounts and promotions to capture consumer interest and drive engagement. Consumers are highly receptive to discount advertising, making it a key strategy for increasing traffic and sales.

In comparison, on desktop, there are also coupon-based searches in the top 10, but fewer. In total, there are only 6 such pages in the top 50, but there is much more representation for other user-based landing pages such as kroger.com/signin and kroger.com/scheduling. For publix.com, the trend of coupons was equally less prominent on both desktop and mobile web, with 4 pages on desktop and 4 on mobile web.

Advertising opportunities abound

Understanding how consumers find Kroger’s online offering allows the retailer to explore potential advertising opportunities. For instance, 24% of Kroger.com visitors also frequent banking, news, tech, and video game sites within the same day. This interesting cross-visitation data reveals potential (and unlikely) cross-promotion opportunities, allowing marketers to reach their audience more effectively based on their diverse interests, as well as identify where to place promotions and which affiliates to team up with.

Furthermore, the highlighted websites below – such as iSpy, an open-source video surveillance app – have increased their cross-visitation figures to kroger.com by more than 500% in January. This indicates that Kroger is tapping into audiences based on their overall web preferences and not just within grocery stores or related sites.

Driving online growth in any industry

This post has explored how Kroger leverages digital insights to drive online growth in a highly competitive landscape. By understanding consumer behavior, optimizing for mobile, and strategically placing discounts, brands can enhance their digital presence and engagement.

Similarweb Search Intelligence provides the data and tools needed to uncover fresh insights and apply them to your own strategies, ensuring you stay competitive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

For more marketing insights and a comprehensive understanding of your competitive landscape, book a demo with one of our data experts.

Article based on insights by Theo Tomich, a Customer Success Manager at Similarweb.

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

The Similarweb Insights & Communications team is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

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Methodology

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