Blog Post

Develop a Food Delivery App
On-Demand Apps

13 Factors To Consider While Developing a Food Delivery App

Sanjay Kidecha,

Food delivery apps have made our lives more comfortable and convenient. We all have to agree with this point. Forget all waiting times at restaurants and long queues as you have a mobile app that directly orders your favourite dish from your favourite restaurant in a few clicks. You can choose from your favourite cuisines and order at the best prices in the market with various discount coupons and online deals. Isn’t it fantastic? 

Online food delivery apps are making their mark across the globe. Foodpanda, Swiggy, Zomato, Grubhub, UberEats are some of the examples of these on-demand food delivery apps and with exclusive and user-friendly features and splendid user experience, they are already remarkably beating the heat. However, there is still potential in the market to launch your on-demand food delivery app to encash those unexplored markets and a huge chunk of profits. 

Also, there is a prevailing tendency among the millennials as they don’t want to deal with people and that is the reason they prefer everything online. They just want a solution for the problem and that’s what these on-demand food delivery apps are offering. 

In this article, we will discuss some of the things to take care of while building a food delivery app. Stay tuned! 

Decide your business model 

Before you start on-demand food delivery app development, you need to decide the business model for your app. There are two business models you can choose from- Restaurant to customer and Platform to customers. 

First, the restaurant to customer model is a model in which restaurants directly connect with customers including delivery. Here, restaurants have their delivery boys and they deliver food items to the customers directly. 

In the platform to customer model, customers order food on the platform and the platform confirms the order from the restaurant and here, delivery might be done either by the platform or by the restaurant. For example, UberEats has the delivery mechanism that it uses for delivery. 

Ensure user-friendly interface

One of the most important aspects of the on-demand food delivery app is to offer unparalleled load time to users. You are not inviting customers to get confused about your app. If they fail to connect with your app instantly, they might not come again to your app. In fact, in the worst case scenario, they might uninstall your app too. All your developing hours, marketing and promotion strategies and efforts go in vain when a customer uninstalls your app. 

Luring customers in the first place is very crucial and it can be achieved by providing an attractive and easy to use interface. 

Customers should be able to take actions they want without any confusions. Just watch out some of the on-demand food delivery apps like Foodpanda or UberEats and you will know how much efforts they have made to make an attractive and visually appealing interface. Users should be able to navigate through all features without any hindrances and issues. 

In addition to that, you need to ensure that all the common features such as restaurant search, deals and discounts, restaurant menus and others must be visible to the users. Design an interface in a manner that users don’t have to use their minds to find significant features and functionalities. It is your best shot to win the hearts of the users by creating a compelling user interface for them. It is a must thing to consider when building a food delivery app like Zomato. 

Secure payments 

We all worry when we pay online and always expect a secure payment gateway that does not reveal our payment details such as credit card or debit card numbers and other crucial details. Online security is a big concern and you need to establish a secure payment gateway that users can trust. 

In addition to that, if you are using customer’s data for your use, you need to take consent from customers first. If you want to develop trust and loyalty with your customers, this could be a significant move in the right direction. 

Develop a Food Delivery App

Live order tracking 

This is one of the most important things of food delivery apps that you need to facilitate to the users as it is highly appreciated by the users. Most of the food delivery apps such as UberEats and Zomato are already offering this feature to lure users. 

With this feature, users can track their orders with the help of the map. They will be able to track the food cooked by the restaurant, picked up by the delivery boy and where the delivery boy has reached. 

You need to provide this feature not just to customers, but to all channels such as restaurants and delivery boys too. 

Restaurants would be able to measure the time taken by the delivery boys and delivery boys would be able to locate the destination for the delivery. 

Push notifications

When it comes to notify users about new arrivals, deals and coupons and some other updates, push notifications never fail you. It is one of the must features that you need to incorporate in your on-demand app development project.  

Decide your budget 

From the moment you decide to go for an on-demand food delivery app development, you need to start thinking about the budget. You need to remember that it is one thing that can vary as per your expectations and needs. The budget depends on many factors such as hiring experts, features you want to insert in the app and frameworks you want to use for app development. 

Hence, the budget is one of the important factors to consider while developing food delivery apps. Hire a mobile app development company that matches your budget, has a proven track record and a promising portfolio. 

Frameworks to choose 

Another thing that you need to choose before you begin with an on-demand food delivery app development is the number of operating systems in which you want to develop your app. Mostly, entrepreneurs go for the android and iOS platforms, but you can also go for Windows too. 

There are many things to consider here such as the availability of your users and target audience on the platforms, your budget and other things. You might not have any ideas about different frameworks and the mobile app development company you have hired can walk you through the advantages and disadvantages of choosing a particular framework for the app. 

How well you know your customers 

Before you start developing an on-demand food delivery app, you need to have a clear picture of your target audience, their likes and dislikes, a sure shot target audience strategy and a pre-launch plan for them. It is one of the most important things to consider when developing a food delivery application. 

It would be wise to start with market research about your target audience. App features, functionalities, user interface and other things must be in accordance with your target audience. 

What’s your USP?

There are already established players in the market for food delivery and you are new here. Hence, you need to come up with something that no-one is offering yet. What is your USP and how does it help users are the two questions you need to ask yourself. An in-depth competitor analysis might help you to find those unexplored areas you can focus on. 

Remember, you need to come up with something different and unique to attract users in the first place.

Develop a custom website 

Having an on-demand food delivery app is one thing and very crucial, I accept, but you also need to have a custom website too. Not just that, you need to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and responsive. The reason is that many users prefer to use the website from their mobile browsers.

Develop a Food Delivery App

Design a pre-launch plan

In an era of cut-throat competition, you need to have a pre-launch marketing plan to catch the users’ attention. Hire the best marketing experts who can evaluate your app offerings and can come up with a pre-launch plan that works well for you. Apart from a traditional marketing plan, you also need to create a buzz on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and others. 

There are paid campaigns you can target to reach out to your target audience. Remember, without a proper and thoughtful pre-launch plan, your app will not be able to get more downloads. 

Start locally first 

Don’t start globally from the start. It will not take you anywhere. Instead, you need to start locally first and then expand. You might consider it as beta testing too. Select an area or a city and start from there. After some time, check and measure your operations and find issues and mistakes you have made. Rectify those issues and then slowly and gradually expand your operations in different areas. 

Think of different revenue sources 

There are many ways you can generate revenues from. Come up with different sources of revenues to sustain in the market in initial days where your app is reaching at the break-even point. You can think about giving premium accounts to the restaurants by highlighting their profiles first on the search results. Also, you can allow third-party ads on your platform too. 

Conclusion

On-demand food delivery app development is a serious and costly affair and you need to ensure that it works for you and turns into a profit generating idea. While adding value to the lives of users, it is also important to make profits from the business. By incorporating the above-mentioned factors in your practice, you would be able to win the hearts of the users and will be able to convert them into your loyal customers. 

Sanjay Kidecha

Sanjay Kidecha is the Chief Finance Officer at Kody Technolab and a Fintech geek. With one foot in finance and the other in tech, Sanjay likes to write on emerging Fintech trends, ideas, and how-to guides to keep industry leaders updated with the ever-changing world of fintech!

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