How to Develop an On-Demand Food Delivery App?

How to Develop an On-Demand Food Delivery App?

Currently, smartphones are capable of almost serving every sector existing in the market. With the help of a few apps, you can use smartphones to watch movies, click pictures, track locations, talk to friends, and order food. Now, if we only focus on the statistics of food delivery apps, it is estimated that 60% of customers based in the U.S. prefer online delivery and takeout at least once a week.

Moreover, according to Statista, the Online food delivery segment is expected to grow up to $28,486 million in the U.S. by 2021. Globally, China is expected to lead the revenue growth with $56,936 million in the same period. The number of users will also boost up and touch 117.4 million in 2021.

If you own a food business and you are planning to develop an app, you are on the right track. An on-demand food delivery app can help you in growing your business at a good speed.

Important Points To Notice Before Beginning Of The App Development Process

Now, when you have made up your mind and are ready to get into the race, here are a few things that should be considered. Your app development might need multiple elements you can consider before you begin.

• The purpose of your app might vary depending on your goals. Like, do you want to develop an app specifically for your restaurant? Or, you are building the app to be a bridge between restaurants and customers in your area;
• The cost of developing food delivery appmight vary depending on the technology you are going to use, the platform you will develop an app for, app maintenance costs, app marketing, etc;
• You have to figure out some information related to your customers like their income level, age group, etc;
• Figure out if the availability of the internet is stable in your target market as food delivery apps can not function without that;
• Number of competitors who are already serving the market with apps;
• USPs you are going to apply to your on-demand food delivery app.

Features to Include in the On-Demand Food Delivery App

There are plenty of food delivery apps existing in the market already. Now, growing your app comes down to a few parts like features of the app, USPs, popularity of your restaurant, etc. Let’s discuss some features which are usually common for food delivery apps. However, you can figure out more features and integrate them with your app or use these features to build an app with your preferred presentation.

1. A food catalog is something you can categorize according to the cuisine, restaurants, rating, distance, or popularity. It depends on the basic purpose of your food delivery app;
2. The rating and feedback system is something most of the users prefer. It helps you as well in improving your services;
3. Use GPS to calculate the exact distance between users and the restaurant or to find the location of the user to help the delivery person in finding them easily;
4. Offer biodegradable packing materials and other such environment friendly features to increase the goodwill of your app;
5. Provide accurate price catalogs for the convenience of the user. Integrate safe payment systems as well;
6. Personalize catalogs according to the buying behavior of the user. For example, some might only order ice creams from the app everyday, so showing them the dinner menu is useless. However, keep all options open for them to find.

Stage-Wise On-Demand Food Delivery App Development Process

After discussing elements and features let’s talk about the real deal here. The food delivery app development process is not very different from building an app. However, I am going to discuss the development process in various stages for your convenience.

1. Know your target users :Make sure that you know your target users well. Figure out factors like their age group, number of smartphone users, network availability, technology familiarity, etc.
2. Choose a platform: There are two types of apps mainly existing in the market, Native apps and Hybrid apps. Native apps are platform-specific apps. For different platforms like Android and iOs, you will have to build different apps. However, these apps can offer a good number of features without having any issues. Moreover, Hybrid apps are cross-platform apps. It also costs less to maintain a Hybrid app as you only need to make changes in one app. However, hybrid apps can offer a limited number of features to make them compatible with multi-devices.
3. Calculate the Cost: Building an app is a costly process. It will include the cost of app designing, hiring developers, app maintenance, app marketing, cloud services, etc. Hence, you are building the app to grow your business, make sure to figure out if the app will help you in generating revenue that will cover the app cost and increase your profit.
4. Build a prototype: A prototype is an initial form of your app but without any real-time functions. You can draw rough sketches with the type of layouts and features you want in your app. Later, with the help of software like Adobe XD, Sketch, Figma, etc, you can build a prototype. There are plenty of UI designers existing in the market to help you with that as well. The Prototypewill help you in seeing a replica of your app before you begin the development process.
5. Hire developers: Well, now it all comes to the main part of the process. Hiring the right people is a must as you need to make an impressive app for business growth. You can either hire an individual developer, which will be less costly compared to the cost of hiring one of the top mobile app development companies.
6. App Marketing: Well, app marketing should not wait till the official release of the app. Once your app is tested, or in the final stage of the development process, you should start the marketing process to inform your customers about your new app. Repetitive marketing will help in keeping your app remembered by users. Use platforms like social media and third-party websites for the marketing of your app.
7. App Testing: App testing is the most crucial part of the entire app development process. You have to make sure that the app is working properly on various platforms and devices. A flawed app might ruin your existing reputation as well and annoy the user.

In the end, I hope that my blog was useful for you in making a perfect app development strategy. I also hope that your plan of developing an on-demand food delivery app will boost the growth of your business.

Author Bio:

Jason Camaya loves carrying his camera wherever he goes. When he doesn’t click pictures, Jason loves to write, play video games, and procrastinate. He has been writing for the technology vertical for quite sometime now, and as talented as he gets, he is giving tough competition to his fellow writers. He has been featured in many websites and blogs.