A Guide To Developing An On-Demand Application
By Santosh Kumar | October 2, 2020 | App Development,Mobile App Development
On-demand apps are now everywhere; they have become an integral part of our lives. From delivering groceries to food delicacies to booking taxis at a touch, on-demand mobile applications are disrupting several varied sectors. The growing popularity is because of the simple fact that these apps have made our lives easier and effortless.
Customers (even I and I am sure, you too) love scrolling endlessly on social media networking apps like Instagram. But they would hate to get up from their comfort space and go out to do the grocery shopping or shop for that extra pair of shoes or get the weekly medicine supply from the market. With on-demand apps available for every service/product, the customers only need to open an additional application to order daily household items, make important appointments, get urgent medical care, etc. Moreover, companies offer additional benefits like easy return/exchange policies, loyalty programs, express delivery options, and so on.
The COVID-19 pandemic defined the new normal life where people were forced to work from home and stay at home to help contain the virus. There was a mass surge in on-demand businesses because of the lockdown policies. Therefore, applications that provide instant gratification to customers with fast delivery of services and products at their doorsteps will continue to revolutionize several industries, one at a time.
If your organization is still relying on conventional business models, then it’s time to upgrade because on-demand apps have survived the great recession of 2020. In this blog, we explain how to develop an on-demand app step-by-step to help you take your business mobile easily.
On-Demand App Development Guide
Know Your Target Audience
Choosing a target audience is the wisest and the most crucial decision. Your target audience can be anyone: family guys, college students, school students, travelers, gypsies, night owls, singles, food lovers, gamers, or shopaholics. Depending upon your business niche and services, you should choose your target audience carefully. Make sure it is in large numbers and you have considerable potential customers for your service.
Identify The Key Problem Areas
Everyone goes through some common problems in their day-to-day life. For a business owner, it is essential to observe and identify the key pain areas of the target audience that can be resolved with their app or product. In the government imposed lockdown, it was hard to get out and buy groceries and necessary items. Food delivery apps identified these issues, collaborated with grocery vendors, improved their services, and expanded their business. So, business leaders should keep an eye on such problems faced by large masses that can be resolved with mobile applications.
Define The Roles
Once you are aware of your audience’s key pain areas, it is time to define different user roles for your application. Identify the people who will be using your application; customers, vendors, service providers, business managers, etc. and mark their roles. Different roles will have different responsibilities. Moreover, defining the roles will help you understand how many app interfaces you would need to develop to create a complete solution.
Planning The Feature List
Now the user roles are defined, jot down the feature list for mobile, web, and backend interfaces separately.
Customer app features
Push Notifications
Push notification is an essential feature of any application to keep the customer updated and notified. With regular notification about events, product launch, offers, and services, the customer opens the app more frequently and engages more. At the same time, the customer stays on top of all details about his orders and their status.
Real-Time Tracking
Customers feel assured when they can track their orders in real-time. As they are aware of their product delivery status, they intend to be more patient. Consequently, they trust your application and service offerings more.
Payment Method
Payments are a crucial part of every business. When offering payment options through an app, ensure to offer convenient, safe, easy, and reliable options. A mobile solution with multiple payment options is more preferred and liked by customers.
Preferences
There should be a section that allows customers to set and define their preferences and choices. It helps in refining the customer journey by avoiding the unnecessary steps to find their preferred products or services.
Favorites Or Wishlist
This is similar to window shopping when the customer saves the stuff that he/she would like to order in the future. You can use this feature to promote relevant offers for the products that have been wishlisted by individual customers, thus offering personalized and smooth customer experience.
Customer Feedback
When customers feel heard and valued by businesses, they invest their time and money in them. Therefore, it is important to have a feedback section for customers to provide constructive reviews and honest ratings about your service offerings and products. It will help you identify your areas of improvement and offer more enhanced services.
Customer app features
Push Notifications
Push notification is an essential feature of any application to keep the customer updated and notified. With regular notification about events, product launch, offers, and services, the customer opens the app more frequently and engages more. At the same time, the customer stays on top of all details about his orders and their status.
Real-Time Tracking
Customers feel assured when they can track their orders in real-time. As they are aware of their product delivery status, they intend to be more patient. Consequently, they trust your application and service offerings more.
Payment Method
Payments are a crucial part of every business. When offering payment options through an app, ensure to offer convenient, safe, easy, and reliable options. A mobile solution with multiple payment options is more preferred and liked by customers.
Preferences
There should be a section that allows customers to set and define their preferences and choices. It helps in refining the customer journey by avoiding the unnecessary steps to find their preferred products or services.
Favorites Or Wishlist
This is similar to window shopping when the customer saves the stuff that he/she would like to order in the future. You can use this feature to promote relevant offers for the products that have been wishlisted by individual customers, thus offering personalized and smooth customer experience.
Customer Feedback
When customers feel heard and valued by businesses, they invest their time and money in them. Therefore, it is important to have a feedback section for customers to provide constructive reviews and honest ratings about your service offerings and products. It will help you identify your areas of improvement and offer more enhanced services.
Customer app features
Push Notifications
Push notification is an essential feature of any application to keep the customer updated and notified. With regular notification about events, product launch, offers, and services, the customer opens the app more frequently and engages more. At the same time, the customer stays on top of all details about his orders and their status.
Real-Time Tracking
Customers feel assured when they can track their orders in real-time. As they are aware of their product delivery status, they intend to be more patient. Consequently, they trust your application and service offerings more.
Payment Method
Payments are a crucial part of every business. When offering payment options through an app, ensure to offer convenient, safe, easy, and reliable options. A mobile solution with multiple payment options is more preferred and liked by customers.
Preferences
There should be a section that allows customers to set and define their preferences and choices. It helps in refining the customer journey by avoiding the unnecessary steps to find their preferred products or services.
Favorites Or Wishlist
This is similar to window shopping when the customer saves the stuff that he/she would like to order in the future. You can use this feature to promote relevant offers for the products that have been wishlisted by individual customers, thus offering personalized and smooth customer experience.
Customer Feedback
When customers feel heard and valued by businesses, they invest their time and money in them. Therefore, it is important to have a feedback section for customers to provide constructive reviews and honest ratings about your service offerings and products. It will help you identify your areas of improvement and offer more enhanced services.
Choosing The Mobile App Development Company
Push Notifications
This service keeps the provider notified every time a user purchases its services or goods. Push notifications help the service providers plan their stocks and get shipments delivered in time.
Accept/Reject Requests
This feature aids the service provider in accepting or denying any request in a specific time frame.
Start And End Services
Using this feature the service providers can start or end service as per their choice. They can easily decide when to provide the service and when to not.
Track Earnings
It is an integral feature for service providers that allow them to measure the performance of their business and build future strategies more efficiently.
Schedule Management
This feature facilitates the service provider to create flexible working schedules. They can choose their working schedules and fulfill the customer needs around the clock.
Choosing Availability
Choosing the availability duration makes the working hours more efficient for the service provider. They can decide the availability duration as per their preferences.
Admin App
Dashboard
Your app is incomplete without a customizable and easily accessible admin dashboard. The dashboard allows the admin to navigate through various sections and easily connect the service provider and customer. It offers a bird-eye view of everything about your business in a single interface.
The Matching Algorithm
Matching the appropriate service provider with customer requests is an important and responsible feature of an on-demand application. This can either be done manually by the admin or you can ask the development team to create a matching algorithm that connects vendors with customers in real-time as per availability and other attributes.
Manage Users
Admin can add, modify, delete, and manage all customer details including orders, discounts, cancellation charges, payments, etc.
Manage Service Providers
Admin can manage service providers and related details such as pricing, availability, schedules, earnings, incentives, penalties, etc.
Manage Commissions and Pricing
Admin can manage the prices of the products as per the customer demands and define a commission for each product or service provider.
Analytics and Reports
For your business to make intelligent decisions and measure performance, analytics play a crucial role. With reports, you can analyze what all is working in your favor and what needs to be stopped.
Choosing The Mobile App Development Company
With a list of features of your on-demand app, you need to look out for the right mobile app development team. The most appropriate company or team will understand your vision and build our application as their own. With the increasing demand for mobile applications, the complexities have also increased drastically. With each passing day, numerous changes are introduced in leading mobile platforms - Android and iOS, thus making it difficult for all technology companies to keep up. So, it is important that you choose your technology partner with full awareness.
Launch Your On-Demand App
Test your app as much as you can before launching to ensure a seamlessly pleasant customer experience. Start testing the app with the app developers then test with the internal team. Initially, let your developer team operate in private beta and eventually deliver the public beta. Repeat the process each time you add new features to your app to minimize the bugs.
Publish
Get your mobile application published on the online app marketplaces as per the chosen platforms.
Market Your App
Remember, the target audience that you defined? It is time to reach out to them and let them know how your application will add value to their lives.
The Bottom Line
The growth in on-demand applications is making the survival of human beings easy with minimum efforts. Following the basic and essential steps while developing an on-demand app will make your services and products user friendly without any complications. Analyzing should be done from both the customer and the admin perspective to make your application more effective and successful.
If you are looking for a mobile app development company for your on-demand business solution, contact us and get a free consultation from Tectra’s mobile experts.