How to sell meat and fish online

Meat, fish and poultry can be a tricky sell for mainstream online retailers. The problem isn’t so much that online shoppers don’t buy into these categories - new research from SymphonyIRI suggests meat, fish and poultry make it into 70% of online baskets - but that when they’re shopping via supermarket websites they tend to stick to low-value items.

A few packs of bacon - fine. But spending £20 on a premium piece of meat or fish they can’t see, touch or smell, less so - much to the frustration of retailers that believed they have a lot to offer on the premium front. Yet online meat and fish sales don’t have to be restricted to low-value items. The number of specialist meat and fish online delivery services is growing (see page 21) and they are attracting loyal customers happy to hand over hundreds of pounds a pop for high-end meat and fish.

So how are they doing it and what can they teach the mults about how to optimise their online offers?

The key to selling high-value items online is being “very, very precise about what the customer is getting”, believes Alistair Blair, owner of specialist fish retailer The Fish Society. Shoppers who use his website can specify exactly how big a cut they want - in the case of cod steaks, they can choose from 20g increments - and are given detailed photographs of the fish and seafood available. This level of detail is a must for a website that offers more than 300 lines of fish and seafood, says Blair. “We sell 18 different cuts of turbot alone - we have to show exactly what they are, so our customers can make an informed choice,” he adds.

Bereft of the usual in-store cues, consumers will be looking for other ways to determine the quality of product. Retailers need to clearly display information about provenance in order to engender trust that the product is high quality, says SymphonyIRI retail analyst Tom Grigoleit.

Lucy Mann, business development director at online consultancy Reform Digital, agrees. Whereas provenance information on the websites of the major mults is often very basic - even a £30 pack of steaks can come with little more than, say, ‘UK’ in the way of an origin descriptor - the specialists go to great lengths to showcase the provenance of their produce, she points out.

“What struck me when looking at the specialist websites was how much they reminded me of wine websites,” she says. “If you’re going to buy meat and fish at a certain price, you really want to know about provenance, and the specialists do this extremely well.”

Take Scottish butcher Donald Russell, which has a prominent ‘quality guarantee’ on its website that all of its beef, lamb and pork is reared within the UK and all its game is ‘genuinely wild’, with venison coming from deer that ‘roam freely in the Highlands’. Provenance also features strongly on the website of fellow meat specialist Westin Gourmet, which lists the countries it sources from and encourages shoppers to get in touch if they need additional information.

The specialists are also working very hard to emphasise the freshness of their produce. There are examples of this in the mainstream, too, with Tesco and Ocado featuring online life codes on their fresh meat and fish products. But the specialists go one step further, giving shoppers detailed information about exactly how their meat and fish will be delivered, down to the type of box that will be used. This is an area the mults should look at, believes Mann. “It doesn’t have to be about special boxes, but simply talking about how you’re ensuring meat and fish is delivered fresh sends an important message to consumers.”

The biggest lesson the mults can take from the specialists, however, is on overall presentation, she says. “The specialist websites are far more engaging, and the more engaging a website is, the easier it is to sell items with a higher price point.”

So what are the areas the mults should look at? Making uncooked produce look good in a photo is certainly a challenge, admits Blair. “Fish is not very photogenic, especially when it’s raw,” he says.

To overcome this, specialist websites such as The Fish Society, Donald Russell and Westin Gourmet tend to draw shoppers in with attractive pictures of cooked meats and professionally prepared dishes alongside clear photographs of the raw meat and fish - preferably with zoom.

It’s a winning combination, believes Mann. “UK consumers don’t really like seeing the raw product, so this is a way of giving them more appealing images that give taste cues, but it also gets them to see exactly what the product looks like when raw,” she says.

There’s also the wider look and feel of the websites to consider. The specialists’ sites are heaving with detailed cooking instructions and recipe suggestions as well as selling complementary sauces and accessories, which leave shoppers in no doubt they are in an expert environment.

All this certainly look very appealing, but how realistic are these suggestions for the mults, for whom meat and fish is just one category of many online? As Blair points out, the specialists are called specialists for a reason: “We are very much targeted at serious fish lovers who are prepared to pay a premium, and we have to ensure there’s clear blue water between what we offer and what customers can get in the supermarket and on the high street,” he says.

Mann agrees incorporating all of these changes into a major retailer’s website could prove difficult, but suggests retailers consider creating dedicated meat and fish microsites on their websites, with a different look and feel to the other grocery sections. “This would allow them to signpost different sections and make them feel different - like a specialist area.”

Even a few more moderate tweaks, such as better use of photos, could prove worthwhile, she says. “These could make people more confident buying more expensive meat and fish, plus there are huge opportunities for cross-category selling from higher-value items. When done well, this could really increase basket value.”