Once upon a time, Stanford University’s four students carrying the sole purpose “to enable every merchant to deliver” were working on a delivery app prototype for small businesses. They kept learning the day-to-day life of store managers and small businesses to solve their problems with their delivery app solution.
In 2013, these students came up with a solution they were working on for a long time and named it Palo Alto, after the city where they were studying. They decide to start it with the food delivery service. The reason being, in Palo Alto, none of the restaurants delivered food on-demand before. They were then studying in daylight and delivering the food at night.
After a few months of the launch, they named it DoorDash and kept working insanely hard on their service quality. Students took care of drivers, restaurants, and elated customers connected with their startup. On the journey of their startup, students found out many families and office workers facing the problem with delivery convenience. And realized when their on-demand delivery app delivers the food at their convenience, it also delivers happiness.
Aiming to assist and empower local businesses by their delivery services, their app is now operating in over 4000 cities and offering a selection of 340,000 stores crosswise the U.S. and Canada. Like DoorDash, Grubhub, UberEats, Instacart, and many more on-demand delivery applications focus on different niches. But the goal remains the same to offer a platform to connect merchants with potential customers for next-gen delivery services.
So, here we are talking about How to Develop an On-Demand Delivery App. If you want to create history like Uber X, DoorDash, Instacart, then you have to pick your business niche wisely. Meaning, you cannot focus and target every market and its audience from day one. However, if you want to cover every market let’s say like Uber X, you can gradually expand after succeeding in one.
Let’s have a peek on a few essential steps to make an on-demand delivery app, for an online delivery business for any industry vertical.
1. Market Research & target niche
Any business idea starts with the market research, deciding the potential niche, service category, and analyzing the level of competition at your niche. For the online delivery business, you have many options to opt for as your niche, such as Food & Grocery Delivery, Medicine Delivery, Courier Delivery, etc.
2. Create a Lean Canvas
Lean Canvas is a one-page business model and a planning method to get to the heart of your business idea. It includes beneficial elements for startups to deal with uncertainty and risk. The business model comprises problems which your end users are facing, solutions your app provides for those problems, and key metrics to track and evaluate the success of your online delivery business.
3. Listing of your App’s feature
Before you jump and bust your app with loads of features on each panel, i.e., Vendor, Customers, and Admin, you must consider these questions along with planning the features.
- If these features ease the user experience?
- Do these features comply with the main aim of the delivery app?
- How much loading time will the app take if you integrate any particular features?
- Are these features under your budget you have determined?
- If these features match the user perspective?
Nevertheless, most of the on-demand delivery apps have the same basic features set for both service seekers and providers. For instance, Sign up, schedule delivery, order tracking, online payment gateways, reviews on service, order history, payment history, etc. But you can come with new features if those can enhance the app experience and help your app to stand out.
4. Hire an on-demand app development company
The technical part comes into the picture next to market research, planning, and feature identification for your on-demand delivery app. First, you have to decide the platform Android, iOS, or both as per your user demographics. Then, hire a mobile app development company or developers to structure your on-demand delivery app.
It is preferable to hire a development company rather than hiring a team of developers or freelance developers and designers. The reason being, a company takes care of your project from start to finish, while developers will need your assistance at each level. Besides, a company also provides maintenance services that lack in hiring individual developers and designers.
Lastly, create an MVP(Minimum Viable Product) with must-have features and launch in the market. Nowadays, it is one of the most adopted techniques to validate on-demand economic apps. Early adopters’ reviews towards your MVP help to build the final product more efficiently. It costs very less than those expensive mistakes when your ultimate app lacks something and needs to redesign after launching it.
5. Grow your online delivery business
Developing and launching an on-demand delivery app will not generate revenue or accomplish your goal automatically. The delivery app development concept is quite common, you need to work hard to be noticeable and attract your target audience to your app. Here are some useful practice;
- Partner with local vendors: Like our protagonist, DoorDash did, partnership with local vendors. For example, if you develop a food delivery app, start with small, regional, and well-known fast-food networks in a specific geographical area to deliver their foods to a dense population.
- Pre-launch Marketing: For securing the success of the delivery app, it is inevitable to advertise and let the people know about the services you are going to offer in advance. To create such hype and introduce your concept before launching, you can use different marketing channels from social media marketing to offline advertising or hire any PR agency.
- Delivery Cost: To entice customers and turn them into your regular customers, keep the rate of delivery charges less than your competitors. The option is highly potential to gain loyal customers and also help you retain them.
Ready-steady-go
With the blend of the right approach, technology, and implementation strategy, your on-demand delivery app can stand out from thousands of other apps the same as DoorDash. And you will be able to expand your online delivery business to other industry verticals as well.
You have to focus on being efficient, precise, and technically-driven and keep up with the latest trends to expand the customer base. To develop an out-of-the-box on-demand delivery app as per your business idea, you can reach us at any time. We have a hands-on experience team of developers that can build you the most promising on-demand delivery app at the best price.
