An ecommerce click and collect brief explains how an online order moves from checkout to a verified collection at a real pickup point. For a Kenyan store, this involves more than showing an address. Customers need to know when an order is ready, staff need to find the correct package, and the business needs a dependable record of who handed it over.
Bring that workflow to your ecommerce website development team in Kenya before approving the checkout design. A pickup option should reflect the service your staff can actually operate. The scenarios in this guide are illustrative planning examples, not claims about a particular shop's results.
This brief focuses on reservation, readiness and collection. Delivery pricing and courier destinations are a separate task covered in our ecommerce delivery-zone planning guide.
Define what customers are choosing
Write a plain-language description of the collection service. State whether the customer buys online and collects later, reserves goods for payment at the counter, or requests a custom order that requires separate approval. These arrangements create different expectations and should not share an ambiguous checkout label.
Identify the eligible products. Some stock may be stored at the pickup point; other items may need transfer or production. Ask whether mixed baskets can use collection and what happens when only part of an order is ready. The system should not imply immediate availability simply because a pickup option appears.
Choose the first launch scope deliberately. A store might begin with one pickup point and a limited product range before supporting several branches. Put the boundary in the brief so the developer does not assume a multi-location inventory system is included in a basic checkout option.
Create a pickup-point information sheet
For each location, collect the approved public name, address, directions, collection hours and customer contact route. Add practical details that genuinely help someone arrive, such as the entrance, floor or collection desk. Keep staff-only telephone numbers out of public instructions unless their owners have approved that use.
Distinguish opening hours from readiness. A location may be open while an individual order is still being prepared. Decide how customers will be told not to travel until they receive a ready-for-collection confirmation. Avoid promising same-day collection unless your team can support the conditions and cut-off rules described.
Assign an owner for temporary closures and changed hours. An inaccurate pickup address can waste a customer's journey even when the payment and stock records are correct. Include a method for updating both the website and any order instructions affected by the change.
Confirm the platform's actual pickup behaviour
WooCommerce's Checkout Block pickup documentation describes pickup locations with names, addresses and instructions, and a customer choice between shipping and pickup. Its block-based setup differs from the legacy local pickup method. Ask which checkout your store uses before assuming that instructions or extensions are interchangeable.
Use the documentation to frame questions, not to substitute for your business specification. Ask the developer to demonstrate your chosen location fields, eligible baskets and customer messages in the actual implementation. A setting visible in an administration panel does not establish that the complete warehouse-to-counter workflow exists.
Where additional branch inventory, appointment slots or special collection approvals are required, list them separately. Confirm whether they are included, depend on an extension or require custom work. Avoid discovering those dependencies after the website's price and launch scope have already been approved.
Decide when stock is reserved
Write down the moment at which the business commits stock to an order. Is reservation triggered by verified payment, staff acceptance or another approved step? Decide how long an unpaid reservation lasts and what should happen when it expires. These are business rules the website needs to represent consistently.
Ask how the system prevents two customers from being promised the same last item. If pickup stock and dispatch stock share a pool, the brief should explain how staff see that shared availability. If they are separate, identify which location supplies each order and who approves a transfer.
Do not let a customer's browser decide that payment succeeded or stock is now available. Ask the team to demonstrate the saved order status and the verified payment result alongside the checkout screen. A visual success message should agree with the records that staff use to release the goods.
Define preparation and readiness states
Use a small set of meaningful statuses that staff can explain. An illustrative sequence is received, payment confirmed, preparing, ready for collection and collected. Your business may use different names, but each name should correspond to an observable operational condition.
Name the person or role allowed to mark an order ready. That action should mean the package exists at the promised location and has passed the required preparation checks. Sending a collection message before stock has arrived creates a service problem that a polished notification template cannot repair.
Review partial orders explicitly. If some items are ready and others are not, decide whether the customer can collect the first part, who approves that arrangement and how the remaining quantities stay visible. A single completed flag should not conceal goods still owed to the customer.
Make collection verification practical
Agree what evidence the customer or their authorised representative needs to present. Choose a process proportionate to the order and review any identity requirements with the responsible business team. Do not collect extra personal information merely because a checkout field makes it possible.
Give staff a reliable lookup method, such as an order reference combined with the agreed confirmation process. A screenshot alone should not cause the system to release a package that has already been collected. Ask how the handover action is recorded and how accidental duplicate completion is prevented.
Specify the record left after collection: relevant order, quantities released, pickup point, responsible staff member and time. If a correction is needed, define an approved correction path rather than allowing anyone to erase the original handover history without explanation.
Plan exceptions before the launch demonstration
Discuss late collection, no-shows, a customer arriving before readiness and an unavailable pickup point. Decide what staff should do and what information the customer sees. Do not invent a universal expiry or penalty rule; use terms your business has approved and can apply consistently.
Add a wrong-item scenario to the test plan. Staff should be able to stop handover, correct the preparation problem and preserve an accurate order record. Where the customer wants to change from pickup to delivery, specify who checks the new address, availability and any revised total before accepting the change.
For payment reversals or approved refunds, use a separate financial process. Our ecommerce refund workflow brief explains the decisions to document. A collection cancellation should not automatically pretend that money was returned or that goods have already been restocked.
Test the counter journey and hand it over
Run acceptance in a controlled environment with sample accounts and sandbox payments or agreed mocks. Include a normal collection, an unpaid order, a duplicate attempt, a representative collecting and a partial order. Check both the visible screen and the final stored quantities and status.
Have a staff member follow the written instructions without coaching. Can they find the order, identify its location and understand whether handover is allowed? Record ambiguous labels and missing information. A checkout demonstration alone cannot reveal every problem that occurs when a customer reaches the counter.
Keep the approved location sheet, status definitions, exception process and test results in the handover. Request an ecommerce project quotation with these responsibilities included. After launch, separate pickup usage from actual collected orders and qualified sales so the business can evaluate the workflow using meaningful numbers.
Frequently asked questions
Can customers collect immediately after paying?
Only if that is the service you deliberately support and the order is genuinely ready. Otherwise explain the readiness confirmation clearly before customers travel.
Is pickup always free?
That is a business decision. Publish only the charge rules you have approved, and ensure the order total is calculated and saved consistently with them.
Do several pickup points mean separate stock at each one?
Not automatically. Branch stock, transfers and reservation rules must be specified and demonstrated. An address selector does not prove those capabilities exist.
What should we prepare for a quotation?
Send pickup locations, hours, eligible products, payment rules, preparation steps and representative exceptions. Include the staff roles involved so the proposed build covers the whole collection journey.
