/ resources
November 3, 2025
Content Manager, Bizrate Insights
At the onset of 2020, the option to buy online and pick up in store (BOPIS) was considered a nice-to-have for online purchases. Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S., BOPIS became essential, providing a safe and efficient shopping option during quarantine. The desire to socially distance and stock up on items quickly drove curbside pickup usage up 86% from March to April 2020.
By Fall 2020, six months into the pandemic, shoppers across the country were regularly using BOPIS as a safer way to shop. Retailers encouraged the service to reduce in-store traffic and lighten the increased load on shipping carriers.
Throughout the year, Bizrate Insights tracked how consumers used BOPIS and how their behaviors changed. The results, combined with data from our network of retailers using Bizrate Insights’ BOPIS solution, enabled us to create this guide to share the top learnings and best practices for a successful BOPIS program.
This guide presents exclusive data in two sections. One section focuses on insights from eight months of online shopper survey data, while the other highlights direct customer feedback from our retailer network. Keep reading to discover what matters most to today’s customers when buying online and picking up in store.
The data points in this section come from an ongoing Bizrate Insights survey on BOPIS usage, running since March 2020. These results reflect responses from October 2020, focusing on survey participants who reported ordering online and picking up in store within the past month.
Looking at these results, we can see that many BOPIS users engage with the service at least once a month, and often even more frequently. Nearly half of respondents reported picking up an order within the past week, either on the same day or the day before.
⚑ Takeaway
If your business is struggling due to lower foot traffic, then this is a great time to invest in your online shopping and BOPIS strategy. Offering the option to buy online and pick up in store will allow you to match your customers’ expectations and retain customers who want to support you, but don’t want to spend as much time shopping in store.
A Bizrate Insights survey of nearly 1,000 online shoppers in late October 2020 found that the most popular response to “How likely are you to use BOPIS in the future?” was “Highly Likely.” This means that consumers who have used BOPIS once are looking to use, it again.
The following are the most popular responses to the question:
⚑ Takeaway
Speed and convenience are two of the common reasons that consumers want to pick up rather than have items delivered, so make sure your store is adequately staffed. Have at least one employee dedicated to helping customers with in-store pickup, including answering questions, addressing concerns, and processing returns.
While BOPIS is all about convenience, in the current climate it’s also about safety. If your competitor is offering BOPIS and you aren’t, then you risk losing loyal customers who would otherwise prefer shopping with you.
Additionally, by investing in a robust BOPIS program, you are not only providing a good customer experience, you are demonstrating your dedication to your customer’s health and wellbeing. Going the extra mile for your customer will always pay off and this is one way to demonstrate your loyalty to your customer base.
Investing the resources to create a seamless curbside pickup experience may seem like a luxury for a small business who can’t afford to have staff running orders outside throughout the day. However, there are benefits and challenges to each pickup option and many customers have a particular preference.
⚑ Takeaway
From April through October 2020, results remained steady with the majority of shoppers who leveraged BOPIS choosing to pick up items in store. The inclination to use in-store pickup is good news for retailers with open storefront locations since shoppers are prone to make additional, unplanned purchases in-store when picking up the items they purchased online.
Be sure to have a clearly marked station for in-store pickup and a quick and efficient process to accommodate customers who are coming into the store, but still crave a quick and efficient pick up process.
Below are the results for how likely a respondent is to use curbside or in-store pickup depending on the type of retailer.
This isn’t particularly surprising when you realize that those most likely to be used for BOPIS are the businesses that have long offered buy online pick up in store options, like restaurant take out or pharmacy drive-throughs. These retailers have had more time to smooth out their processes and by 2020, ordering food, groceries, or a prescription on an app is easier than ever.
All three of these retailers also provide basic necessities in food, home goods, or medication. While overall pickup has been increasingly popular in the digital age, the option to quickly and safely purchase these important items has risen in prominence in has risen in prominence in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Retailers that leverage Bizrate Insights are able to tap into customer feedback in real time to respond to urgent issues, identify where there’s room to improve, and gauge how their own performance compares to industry benchmarks.
To share some of these insights, we took a sample of customer feedback to identify the most common areas that impact a customer’s BOPIS experience. These responses are from verified customers of retailers on the Bizrate Insights network.
When looking at retailers on the Bizrate Insights Network that are offering BOPIS and taking advantage of our BOPIS survey, we uncovered the top experiences or features that impact whether customers had a positive or negative experience.
Many of the negative comments are specific to a retailer and an individual experience. To respect anonymity and focus on productive feedback, we will share insights from customers who indicated that there were negative and positive aspects to their BOPIS experience.
Common issues were around limited use of coupons (e.g. an online coupon not being honored in store or vice versa), finding the same item at a lower price in store, and customer service issues related to returns, exchanges, or refunds.
⚑ Takeaway
As you can see, the most common topics for a positive comment also were popular among negative comments, meaning that these are the most crucial elements of a pickup experience.
Another highlight is that customer service was the number one topic for retailers in both positive and negative comments. This underscores what we already know: the interaction a customer has with an employee has the power to impact whether they walk away with a good or bad impression of your brand.
The other popular topics that impact a customer’s experience are product availability and checkout experience. Customers who are using BOPIS are looking for a fast, convenient pickup process, and many satisfied customers mentioned how quickly they were able to pick up their items. On the other hand, items being out of stock or missing from the order are a quick way to irritate customers. Ensure that your stock is up-to-date online for individual retail locations and that your employees are carefully packaging orders.
If you do run into an issue where an item is out of stock, remind your employees of the power of positive customer service. When customers have a good experience, it can be made even better by helpful employees, but more importantly, a less than ideal experience can also be salvaged by an attentive employee.
You can use the data in this guide to assess where to focus your time and the important elements of a successful BOPIS solution, but to truly optimize your program, increase customer retention, and provide a stellar customer experience, you need feedback from your own customers.
Learn more about how Bizrate Insights can help you tap into the minds of your customers to provide an exceptional customer experience that will boost retention and turn first-time buyers into lifelong shoppers.
Discover how to bridge the gap between raw data and actionable strategy through human-led VoC analysis, identifying the root causes that automation misses.
Updated 4/20/2026 For a PDF download version of this report: Download Now The Win-Win Potential of Ecommerce and Nonprofit...
Explore the "sisters, not twins" relationship of NPS vs CSAT and learn how to use these complementary metrics to bridge the gap between transactional satisfaction and long-term brand loyalty.
