Cars have become more like a necessity than a luxury these days. According to Statista, worldwide car sales grew to around 66.7 million automobiles in 2021, up from 63.8 million units in 2020. Looking at this data, we can assume the sales to touch new heights in 2022.
The automobile industry has gone through immense changes in the past few years, primarily because of the online car buy-sell eCommerce apps. These apps have reinvented the car buying experience for many people and enabled customers to buy new and used cars online at affordable prices.
Although there are many multi-vendor car apps, one app that is quite in the news is TrueCar. It has enabled millions of people to buy a car online from certified dealers. TrueCar isn’t just known for being a popular buy and sell car app, but it has also inspired many entrepreneurs and startups.
If you are a budding entrepreneur who wants to develop a multi-vendor car eCommerce app, learning from the journey of a successful app like TrueCar might help you. It can help you lay a solid foundation for your own car buy-sell app development.
So, have a look at the overview of TrueCar and learn from its success.
What is TrueCar exactly?
TrueCar is a multi-vendor eCommerce app for buying and selling new and used cars. Moreover, it is a car price checker and car buying service that connects people with a network of over 13,000 certified dealers across the U.S. The users can also receive pricing on over one-million in-stock vehicles on this app.
TrueCar was originally incorporated under “Zag.com Inc.” in Delaware in February 2005. After a year, the founders Scott Painter and Tom Taira introduced TrueCar, and it has been growing ever since.
The TrueCar eCommerce app provides several tools that help users understand the current prices of cars in their local area. Moreover, it also offers guaranteed savings on the cars bought from certified TrueCar dealers. This means Truecar offers the ‘true’ price of a car that will be lesser than the dealership’s prices.
How does TrueCar earn money?
Since TrueCar doesn’t charge any penny from the users, you might wonder how it earns money. Well, TrueCar makes money from the fees paid by the dealerships. Whenever a vehicle is sold through the app, the app charges a fee from the dealers. Thus, this is the primary source of revenue for TrueCar.
Apart from this, the company also makes money through the advertisements on the app and consultation.
What are the top features required to develop an app like TrueCar?
Features are like a magnet for an app. Great features attract the customers to the app and even retain them. Let’s have a quick glance at the must-have features of eCommerce car buying apps like TrueCar.
- A vast range of car brands
- Car search and comparison
- Catalog display
- Push notifications
- Multiple payment gateways
- Search filters
- In-stock vehicles with VIN-based offers
- Review and ratings
How to go about car eCommerce app development?
For developing a successful, feature-rich app, it’s important to hire a mobile app development company having expertise in developing successful eCommerce car apps in the past. The right eCommerce app development team can do wonders and create the app you have always wanted.
You can check how to select the right software development company for your project here. It might help you choose the eCommerce app development team you can rely on.
Now, let’s see what app development steps to follow.
Be clear about the business model of the app
Car eCommerce apps like TrueCar work with dealerships across the U.S. Each dealer commits to provide their “lowest guaranteed price” on the app. The app then allows the customers to search any brand and model and provides them with the lowest guaranteed price.
Prototyping and wireframing
You must pay attention to the prototyping and wireframing during the app development. Wireframes are the app’s basic layout and structural guidelines, whereas prototypes are the advanced design model of the app.
App development
Now comes the most crucial step of eCommerce car app development. It is this step that will give birth to your app. The app development team turns your app concept into a powerful and feature-rich app during this step.
Testing and launch
The last step includes testing the app to ensure it doesn’t have flaws or errors. Once the app goes through quality assurance, it becomes ready to be launched on the play store.
What will be the cost to develop an app like TrueCar?
This question always puts everyone in a dilemma as it is difficult to give an exact cost estimation. Do you know several factors that affect the variation in cost from one project to another? Well, you can understand them now; have a look at below-
- Size of the project
- Features of the project
- Add-ons and integrations
- Hourly rates of the developers
- Geological location of the developers
- Technology stack
Among these factors, the location of the developers is quite important since the cost of development differs in different countries. For instance, if you hire mobile app developers from an Asian-based software development company, it would cost you somewhere between $20,000- $50,000. This cost is much less than other European companies.
Moreover, you can hire an experienced team of mobile developers from our software development company to develop a car marketplace app solution that makes a difference.
Wrapping up
If you want to provide a great car buying experience to the customers at affordable prices, developing an app like TrueCar can fulfill precisely that. A great opportunity is waiting for you. All you have to do is trust your conscience and begin with the car marketplace app development.
If you have decided to develop a multi-vendor marketplace car eCommerce app, we can help you bring your idea to reality.
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