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Do you remember as a child picking up a dial phone and calling your local restaurant to place an order?
Feels like it's been ages since we have done that. Don’t you feel so?
We all are in the era right now where everything is at our fingertips and easily accessible. Well, I know that’s the overall goal and job or technology – making our lives easy. Today a company like Zomato gets almost 535 million ordersin the year 2022 only and this number is expected to grow over the coming years. Soon ordering via your smartwatches will be an even more common phenomenon! In an economy, market value and need like this, if you are planning to go ahead with food delivery app development, you are at the right place.
Herein, I will walk you through in a step by step guide on how to create a food delivery app and ways in which online food delivery app development company like ours can help you.
Let’s begin with understanding and exploring your competitors and step by step guide to start with food delivery application development.
Table of Content
- Know your Competitors
- How to Start Food Delivery Application Development
- Define the Core Features
- Marketing Your Food Delivery Application
- Ways to Monetize your Food Delivery Application
- Conclusion
Know your Competitors
Like every field even you are bound to have a number of competitors with whom you are likely to go head to head. But, having a healthy competition is completely okay! Because while you are working on food delivery app development it will help you to think differently and innovate.
What are some of the things you must be looking for in your competitors’ and how to start food delivery business? To begin with, I suggest learning about the strengths, weaknesses, and studying their business model. These things will help you to define your business model and your unique selling points. Below are the common competitors in the food delivery industry
- Uber Eats
- DoorDash
- Zomato
- In-house food delivery apps from Dominos, PizzaHut, and more.
Focus on what they do write and wherein they lack as a company. Having this understanding will help you to define your USP.
If you are wondering how to carry out competitive research and learn about your competitors? Feel free to connect with us. Our expert marketers and researchers will help you to start with food delivery app development.
Next up, let me walk you through how to create a food delivery app and what all things you should be including in it:
How to Start Food Delivery Application Development
Research and Understand Market Needs
Carry out thorough research on your competitors and know the market needs. In-depth research will help you to define and understand where the market gap lies and what exactly does your users need. Having this knowledge will help you a lot as and when you define your product’s unique selling point and are starting with food delivery app development.
In addition, this information will also help you to know how to start food delivery business along with the business model that will work as you start with food delivery application development.
Define your Scope of Work
Once you are aware of the market and user needs you are very well-versed with what is the gap and how will your product help to overcome it. Having this knowledge handy will help you to define your scope of work for your minimum viable product.
When you are starting out, it is always better to keep your scope small and work on your MVP. This will help you to start small and have a clear understanding of the problem. Focusing on one problem at a time and trying to solve it will help you to broaden the scope of your project. Developing MVP will also help you to define the core and necessary features of your product which will actually solve the issue.
To begin with; you can start with defining your target audience, location, set of core features your application will need, number of user login required, etc.
Define the Core Features
Once you have defined the scope of your work, your next job is to come up with the set of features required in your application. For a food delivery application, there are multiple login which are required like: for restaurants, for drivers, and for users.
1. For Drivers
- Registration and/or Login
This is the essential feature to have in your application to help provide personalized recommendation and solution to each of your users.
- Driver Profile
Drivers should easily add, update, and delete their driver profile details. When starting with on-demand food delivery app development you can also focus on the way in which drivers are delivering their orders by car, bicycle, or walking. This information will help you to define the tipping for your customers and help drivers earn a bit more.
- Driver Verification
Verifying drivers is a very essential feature to help you have quality control as a company. You can focus on asking drivers for legal IDs and upload their picture. This will help to make customers and even restaurants aware of who are coming to pick and drop the orders.
- Navigation and Route Optimization
This feature will help optimize the route for drivers to pick the food from restaurants and deliver it. Additionally, this feature will also help restaurants and customers to know the live location of the driver in turn helping to define the ETA.
- Performance Stats and Earning
Drivers should be able to easily see how they are performing and how much money they have earned. Having it at their fingertips is very likely to help them perform better. Some of the things you can add here are earnings per month or bi-weekly, number of hours worked, number of kms traveled, how many orders delivered, etc.
- Availability Request
This is an essential feature when drivers are planning to take a break. So, if they have not set their availability on, they won’t be receiving any requests. Helping them have some me time.
- Real-time Requests
Real-time requests will help to send drivers orders based on their locations. Helping them avoid unnecessary notification and work efficiently.
- Ability to Accept or Reject Orders
Drivers should be able to accept or reject the order according to their needs.
- Multiple Payment Acceptance Options
Drivers should be able to accept the payment in multiple options. Helping them make easy transactions.
2. For Customers
- Registration and/or Login
This is the essential feature to have in your application to help provide personalized recommendation and solution to each of your users.
- Customer Profile
Customers should be able to add, update, and delete their profiles easily without much trouble. This will help them to define the need for it.
- Payment Options
Customers should be provided with multiple payment options to help use the application efficiently and easily place an order.
- GPS Food Tracking
One of the key features of on-demand food delivery app development is GPS tracking as it will help customers to know the ETA of their food. It's very important for people to know when their food is arriving to help them manage their other tasks.
- Order Status Tracking
Users should be able to know whether the restaurant and drivers have accepted your order or not. This will help users to make any necessary decisions if needed.
- In-App Messaging and/or Calling
Customers should be able to easily reach out to restaurants, drivers, and support if the need be. Providing good customer service will help you to stay ahead of your competitors.
- Rating and Reviews
Customers should be able to rate and review restaurants and drivers easily. This feature will help you to build a sense of community and define the expectations for them.
3. For Restaurants
- Registration and/or Login
Restaurant owners should be able to login and/or register to update and manage their services in the application
- Restaurant Profile
Restaurants should be able to manage their profile and add, update, and delete some essential information. They can add some of the things like: their working hours, services, types of food, location, delivery or pickup services, etc.
- Restaurant Verification and Quality Control
Restaurants should be able to upload their legal IDs and restaurant documents to help verify their business. This will help you in your business to have proper quality control and serve your customers better.
- Ability to Accept or Cancel an Order
Depending on the rush hour and other factors restaurants should be able to accept or cancel orders. This will help restaurants to serve their customers better.
Design your Application
Once you have the list of core features needed in your application, your next step is to put the design team together and start working on designing it. Having a good design is essential in order to retain your customers and also attract new customers.
Start Developing your Food Delivery Application
Once you have the designs in place, the next step is the development. Based on your designs you need to come up with the tech stack which will help you to build an application. Herein, if you don’t know where to start with reach out to food delivery app development company like ours which will help you. Leverage our food delivery app development services and our expert team of developers will help you to define your tech stack and start with food delivery mobile app development.
Testing the Application
Testing the product is essential to make sure that it is bug-free and easy to use. The company where you get your application developed will also help you to test your application. Additionally, testing will also help you to know if there is anything which is needed or not and how much of it is needed. Rely on on-demand food delivery app development company to help you to stay ahead of the game. Lastly, don’t forget about food delivery app development cost too.
Marketing Your Food Delivery Application
There are multiple ways you can promote your application like: social media marketing, content marketing, in-app ads with restaurants, and influencer marketing. Each of these methods has its own advantage and helps you to reach out to your target audience effectively.
- Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the most common method which is used by plenty of companies. You can design and develop a website for your company and put a content marketing plan together. Blogs will play a huge role to help start with SEO. One of the major advantages of SEO is it helps you to reach out to a wider audience on the internet and you never know where your next opportunity lies.
- Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing nowadays works closely with influencer marketing. Herein, you can onboard certain companies or influencers and ask them to help you promote your application. Many big companies like Amazon, Uber, and others rely on affiliate marketing to gain a loyal customer base and retain existing ones.
- Social Media Marketing
This is the most common type of marketing to reach your audience. There are already plenty of social media platforms in today’s time, in such cases you need to put a social media promotional plan together. Seek out your target audience and focus on which platform are they the most. Having a proper social media plan with a dedicated team helps you to go a long way.
Moreover, since your target audience is very likely to be millennials and GenZ you will have them on social media platforms. Hence, this is a perfect place to be for a business like yours. Additionally, there are various tactics on social media like ads which help you to target your dedicated audiences and stay ahead of the curve.
- Influencer Marketing
This is becoming more common now thanks to various social media platforms. Reach out to influencers you think aligns with your company’s values and will have a similar target audience as yours. They will help you to gain your loyal customer base in the long terms.
Remember to build a promotion plan, start with understanding your target audience and where you are likely to find them. Define how your audience is used to consuming content and how they will remember your product. Additionally, rely on our food delivery app development services and let our expert marketers help you.
Next up lets’ help you define ways you can monetize your application which in turn can help you earn some profits.
Ways to Monetize your Food Delivery Application
In-App Ads
Once you have finished with on-demand food delivery app development collaborate with restaurants and start in-app ads wherein they can promote their restaurant. This in turn will help you earn some money and the restaurants which are loved by users will also have a chance to shine up bright. Additionally, it will also bring in a little healthy competition among the restaurants to serve quality food to their customers.
Sponsorships
Sponsorship is the most common way of gaining money on your food delivery application. Partner with different restaurants by helping them give some spotlight and being on the homepage. You can also partner with different events and provide a certain amount of discounts for them as they place an order for the food.
Business Collaborations
Collaborate with various businesses in a way that each of you earn some profit from each other. For example, you can partner with Uber for certain events and provide Uber customers a certain amount of discounts. Have a tactical plan to carry out business collaborations and provide your customers with the right and quality service.
Conclusion
I know food delivery app development demands a huge amount of time and effort, but it isn't required when you are with the right food delivery app development company. Though there is a tough competition in the market by big shot names, there is still a chance for you. Follow the steps I layed out for you and see how it will help you to define your USP. With quality service and the right effort you can have your own audience who will be loyal to you.
If you feel lost and don’t know where to start, reach out to us. Our expert professionals with decades of knowledge will help you to develop an application from end-to-end lifecycle.
