While several on-demand businesses are fuelling for half a decade, the food delivery segment has made a substantial mark universally. The platform-to-consumer services like Uber Eats, DoorDash have expanded the food delivery market significantly. Integrating services like takeaways and great deals have broadened the customer base tremendously.
According to Statista, the number of food delivery app users has doubled in the last three years. While it was 364.8 million in 2017, it skyrocketed to 625. 9 million in the year 2020. Furthermore, it is expected to reach 858 billion by the end of 2024. With the existing 111 million existing users (as estimated till 2020), the food delivery market will surpass a billion milestones in the year 2025.
The above facts are enough to state that this on-demand app business is never going to see a downfall. Consequently, businesses and individuals looking out for a scalable and revenue-generating option should certainly opt for the food delivery market. The first and imperative step to attain success in the online food and grocery distribution business is creating an all-inclusive mobile app for food delivery. That being said, we are here to help you with detailed insight into creating an on-demand food delivery app.
Aspects to Consider While Creating a Food Delivery Mobile App
Building an app from scratch is not at all plain sailing. Here are the following pointers you need to consider while planning to create an on-demand app for your business:
The Pre-Development Phase
Skimming through the market trends: Keeping up with the trends is what every online business thrives on. Consumers are more inclined towards apps with quirky and attractive features. The first step you need to take is to understand your target audience and analyze what is the customer looking for in their food delivery apps? Integrating social media, virtual assistants and smartwatches are commonly popular options to consider.
Know your target market: If you avail of any food delivery app development services to build a food delivery app, the first thing you have to convey is the type of customer you are targeting to sell your products/services to. Understand your customer’s demographics, preferences, and prioritize the aspects like age, gender, income and nationality accordingly.
Identify the vital features: Each type of application encompasses common features like registration and login. Try identifying and introducing some unique yet vital features that will let your app stand out in the highly competitive market. Some imperative features to consider are ordering, payment notifications, order tracking, posting reviews & feedback, giving ratings, etc.
Choose best-suitable technology for app development: The general bifurcation of any food delivery app is based on different features, same is the case of the technology aspect. You will need Grubhub API or FourSquare API to list the restaurants. Popular applications like PayPal, Square API, Braintree and Stripe will be responsible for facilitating payments. Another technology aspect that you will look into is the framework that induces the location part. Google Maps, Google Places API. Finally, the notifications features can be embedded by using common technology options like Amazon SNS, Urban Airship and Firebase Cloud Messaging for push notifications.
The App Development Phase
The next phase is to focus on the development part. The following recommendations and best practices can be categorized into two aspects – user needs and tech requirements. Have a look at pointers that will help you build a robust app for long-term success:
User Needs:
When you avail of on-demand app development services, integrate the below-mentioned features in your food delivery app:
Quick search: The food delivery app you are planning to build should offer accessibility of the user’s location to quickly order food from the restaurant from the closest proximity.
Order status: Update the customers with the order status of their order in real-time. Sending them notifications like – order accepted, the meal prepared, and parcel on the way – will be of great help.
Real-time parcel monitoring: Acquaint your users about the location of the courier person so that they know when they will receive their parcel approximately. Incorporating real-time courier monitoring mechanism will enable you to achieve the same.
Hassle-free payment method: The payment method is a crucial step in ordering/delivering food. Allow your customers to select their preferred payment methods from cash, debit/credit card or Apple/Google Pay. This also enables you to expand your target audience reach.
Customer support: Offering helpful and always available customer support is directly proportional to an increase in customer retention rate. There should be a separate feedback segment for the customers to convey their order related complaints. AppStudio offers exemplary iOS and android app development services to infuse excellence in your business.
Promo codes and gift coupons: This also works as a consolation or compensatory measure to retain unhappy customers. Smoothing out the conflicts by offering promotions or gifts is one of the commonly popular steps the food delivery businesses take.
Technical Requirements:
Reliable infrastructure: Having a robust infrastructure is of utmost importance. Investing in server-side software by the aggregators and new deliveries along with logistics support has to be precisely taken care of. Or else incidents like a sudden influx of users can affect several elements of the app like – network hardware, server software performance, resource quota reserves, and the app’s ability to handle competing requests.
Robust security: Security is the foremost aspect that should be paid attention to, both technically and with respect to users’ needs. Sensitive and confidential data like contact details, payment, address, etc. should be end-to-end encrypted. This data should be stored securely to eliminate the possibility of leaking and misuse and leakage of data, causing loss of goodwill and trust amongst the employees.
Keeping logs: When you face any issue, logs can come in handy. Tracing the exact source of the problem becomes easy because of the properly maintained logs. For instance, in the case of incoming and outgoing traffic, branches in your algorithms use a unique ID for the set of logs to link them to the existing long-term operation. This will let you know about the app’s behavior and timely diagnose the potential issues. Every android and iPhone application development company builds apps while integrating the log-managing feature in it.
Clutter-free admin interface: Creating an upfront admin interface that enables you to work effectively while saving a substantial amount of time. You will achieve processing more and more orders per minute and the faster processing results leads to the highest customer satisfaction.
Wrapping Up
The food delivery industry is one of the fastest-growing segments globally. While the revenue is expected to grow exponentially, the food delivery app development market is also flourishing tremendously. Having said that, AppStudio, the premier web and mobile app development company, offers robust, secure and highly scalable food delivery applications that are extremely convenient for the end-users. If you wish to venture into any on-demand business, let us take care of the app development part. Contact us to discuss your project, our team will take off the rest!
Frequently Asked Questions
Q,1 Where to hire a food delivery app development company?
AppStudio is second to none when it comes to offering on-demand app development services to diverse verticals. Our deft developers are adept at building stellar apps by harnessing the power of avant-garde technologies, tech stacks and tools. Hire us to witness the best-in-class food delivery apps for your business.
Q.2 How much does it cost to build a food delivery app?
The cost of food delivery app development depends on multiple factors. The type of app you aim to build, the number and complexity of the app’s features, and the time taken to integrate the features – the cost of creating an app depends on these factors.
Q.3 Name some of the best food delivery applications.
Grubhub, DoorDash, Instacart, Uber Eats, Seamless, Postmates are some of the popular food delivery applications that are acing the game.
