In recent years, especially after the covid-19 pandemic, the demand for ordering foods through online apps has increased which paves the way for food delivery apps to grow.
The success of many online businesses like UberEats during this time convinced others that creating a Food Delivery App can make their dreams about running a profitable business come true. However, it turned out to be a nightmare just because they tried to exactly imitate famous apps like UberEats.
The point is that for running a successful online business, on one hand, you need to evaluate essential factors based on your circumstances, and on the other hand, you have to come up with some innovative ideas which make you different from others.
In this ultimate guide about running a successful online business by building a Food Delivery App, I’m going to share with you the basic requirements for running such businesses in addition to some creative ideas helping you to make your app work better than similar ones like UberEats.
Let’s get started.
Conduct business analysis and collect data
The first consideration when deciding to run any kind of business is to analyze the data gathered from the market research. Market research has two levels: primary and secondary.
In Primary research, you need to collect data yourself by looking for any information about your competitors in the market. I recommend you to search and find the most reputable apps providing food delivery services nearby and learn from them.
In secondary research, you have to analyze data gathered by other resources such as statistics and reports available about the food industry on related websites.
To run comprehensive market research, start with searching around the web and find the food delivery apps working in the location you want to start.
I recommend you to start providing food delivery services for some regions in your city where there is a compact aggregation of organization or company buildings. Usually in such locations, you have a huge number of target audiences demanding food delivery.
You can also find several catering or restaurants ready to collaborate with you to give them this opportunity to sell their food in your online app. Searching on Google Maps can’t help you very much in this part. As there are a lot of caterings or restaurants with no sign on it. So, you probably need to go and convince them to cooperate with you face to face and collect all the data you need.
It is very important to look for exact data when negotiating with them, including:
- A complete Menu with the Price of each food
- Time for each food to get ready
- The content number of the person in charge for further coordination
In this stage, collecting the data of at least 50 potential partners is necessary. Then you need to choose the most suitable ones based on the requirements of your target audiences.
During the negotiation with the restaurant manager or any other authorized person, it is also important to reach an agreement about the Commissions. Usually, the commission fee is between 10% and 25% of any order.
Learn the requirements of your target audiences
Knowing your target audiences and their requirements is another factor essential to be considered before entering any e-commerce market. Reviewing Demographic and Psychographic data plays a crucial role in recognizing if you are going to start a successful business or not.
At first, you need to find out which audiences are more interested in your niche. It's obvious that the most target audiences of online food delivery services are young people who know how to work with smartphones.
The statistics from MCA revealed that the 18-34 years old working professions have the largest demand for online food delivery. It is also interesting to know that women order more online food than men.
These insights help to build an e-commerce app with ideal features that meet all the requirements of your target audiences.
So, it’s your job to find the best methods for grabbing the attention of these target audiences and make them order from your app.
Find Innovative ideas to meet your audience requirements
Now it’s time to compare all data you gathered and decide about the restaurants and caterings you want to cooperate with them. You can think about some innovative ideas at this stage as well.
For example, it makes sense if you divide the restaurants into some categories according to the taste of your target audiences.
For instance, if your data analysis shows the time of delivery is very important for your audiences, you can put fast foods with less than 15 minutes of delivery in one category to let them choose from. Or if you come up with this idea that the high-class organizations need to order luxury food, put the high-level restaurants in a separate category and make your audiences find and order it very fast and easy.
Determine the functionalities and features needed in your app
If you want to create food delivery apps better than Ubereat, you need to have fantastic features in your app that improve your customer experiences.
To ensure the functionality of your custom food delivery app stands out from the crowd, keep in your mind that you need to develop three different types of apps, including:
- The customer app
- The admin app
- The courier app
Although it is just the Customer app going to be published in the market and it is very important to focus more on its features, building the other apps with appropriate functionality plays a crucial role in the success of your business.
Here are the most important features you need to consider when developing the UX/UI design of your app:
- Registration options: To let customers, authorized staff, and delivery men create a profile on each platform and track their orders.
- Profile Management tools: To allow users of each app to optimize their profile with the right information, which is important for order placement and delivery.
- Easy Search Option: To make sure all users find what they want in the minimum time possible.
- Preferences and Categories on the home page: To make the process of finding foods based on the requirements of your customers more convenient.
- Safe Payment Gateway Integration: To ensure customers can pay the cost of food by their credit/debit card.
- Displaying Ratings and Reviews: To help users choose the right place to get their food from, and also let the restaurants and the food delivery platform itself, know where they can improve more.
- Push Notifications: To allow users to know when their orders are almost there or inform them about the special offers going on.
Innovative ideas to integrate into your food delivery app
As we previously stated, developing a food delivery app similar to Uber eat and expecting to make a lot of money is not enough. You'll need to come up with some innovative and original concepts to make your app stand out.
Here are some creative ideas to get you started:
Use Machine Learning To Display The Right Kind Of Restaurant
A student is unlikely to place an order at a Michelin-starred establishment. And a top-tier banker isn't likely to buy pizza from a neighborhood joint. Customers must be able to find the appropriate restaurants on the homepage of your app. That is why, based on the user's preferences, you can utilize machine learning to display a list of eateries on the first page of the app.
Coming Up With Proper Logistics System
When considering how to create a food delivery app, you must first devise a solid logistics system and plan your logistics with these considerations in mind. You must also examine the city routes and how long they take when using them.
Based on this information, it is very important to collaborate with responsible delivery men that deliver the food on time. You can add a timer with the location of the courier in your app to show the customer where the food is on its way exactly.
Publish your app in the marketplaces and implement marketing strategies
Although it can be intimidating to submit an app to the App Stores for the first time, The pleasure and rewards of reaching millions of users around the world, make the work all the more appealing.
There is no doubt that the most popular marketplaces to publish your food delivery app and make sure users have access to it are Google Play for Android and App Store for iOS.
However, registration in these marketplaces is not for free, and at the beginning, it makes sense if you look for a local popular marketplace in your own country which has less publication fee.
For example, the best way to upload and publish your Android apps for free is via Upload.com. You can find other marketplaces by performing a local search easily.
When you proceed with the process of registration in the marketplaces it is very important to start implementing the advertisement and marketing strategies to encourage customers to download your app and start ordering from it.
Offers, coupons, rewards, and loyalty benefits will keep your users and attract new ones. With a specific partnership, you may provide users with enticing incentives, resulting in devoted clients for both the restaurants and your app.
Conclusion
The market for food delivery apps is flooded. You aren't the first one to think of it. The competition is fierce, but you have two options for dealing with it.
You can let the competitors scare you into giving up and abandoning the project entirely.
You can also simply go ahead and take a chance.
In this tutorial, I’ve tried to give you some innovative ideas for running a successful business by developing a food delivery app.
If you’re not sure about how to accomplish the process, then it would be best to contact our experienced experts that offer mobile app development solutions with high-level functionalities.
