If you're reading this article, there's a good chance you've either been involved in or are considering starting on-demand courier app services. There is no doubt that the food on-demand courier apps and delivery industry are booming, and it is one of the best food delivery services for customers of restaurants services. But like any other venture, there are a few things you need to know before heading into the delivery app development for on-demand courier delivery apps.
There is a lot to know but one core thing to consider in delivery app development for the food delivery services.
Do you need to understand the delivery app development process? To build a delivery app for customers and restaurant couriers, what will you need? And how on-demand delivery app works for food delivery services.
During the pandemic COVID-19, the day to day operations of people have changed, e-commerce has boomed up to 200%, almost everyone has started buying online just to be on the safe side, and yes, it's more convenient to buy from your comfort zone around the world just with a phone few taps through the on-demand delivery app.
The pandemic COVID-19 has produced more business opportunities like food delivery services, groceries, and other eCommerce item deliveries. The on-demand courier delivery apps and courier delivery apps are third parties between buyers and sellers whose job is to take items from sellers and bring them to buyers' doors, and on-demand courier delivery apps have made it possible to do so.
Due to the pandemic, restaurants, food corners, and coffee shops were closed and started selling online; they have partnered up with on-demand courier delivery services. And now, experts predict the food delivery market will grow by 300%, which is a huge number and a perfect opportunity for you to get started with on-demand delivery app services as a business.
And luckily, we have got you everything you need to know how to build a delivery app, how an on-demand courier delivery app works, the on-demand delivery app development process, and how to get started with an on-demand courier delivery app as a business.
We have also covered how to build a delivery app and what technologies are used in the delivery app development in the on-demand courier delivery app development and what multiple payment options are available.
How does a delivery app work?
Before deep-diving into the delivery app development, let's understand how on-demand courier delivery apps work.
A customer who wants to order an Italian Pizza navigates to the on-demand courier delivery app and searches for Italian pizza; there, he clicks on one of the listed restaurants' links and orders the pizza. The courier delivery app is built in such a manner that it will notify the specific restaurant that you have an order. The chief start preparing pizza; when it's ready, a courier boy comes and picks up the pizza and delivers it to the customer at the defined location, and charges the required amount. And that's the beauty of having an on-demand delivery app for your business.
These on-demand delivery apps have multiple payment options, like cash on delivery, online advance payment, etc.
Some big food companies like McDonald's and KFC have built their own restaurant courier delivery apps to serve their customers. And it is beneficial to have your own courier delivery apps, so you can make some extra profit from it.
How does the delivery app make money?
- Saying again and again that on-demand delivery apps are very profitable and beneficial, it's important to build a delivery app. Every business that is selling physical products online requires building a delivery app to deliver products to their consumers. Some business has their own on-demand delivery models, while other rely on courier delivery apps and business. The courier's job is just to pick up the parcel and drop it at the doorsteps of the buyer, and their job is done. And the courier delivery apps development is such that they charge certain amounts as commission fees, advertising fees, memberships, and delivery fees for delivering the parcels.
- Commission fee: Mostly, the food delivery apps and courier delivery apps charge a percentage from the restaurants for connecting them to their potential customers. For example, UberEats receives up to 30% commission fees. 30% is a huge number but still restaurants, but still, they are happily paying 30% to UberEats because they are making more profits from the customers of UberEats.
- Advertising fee: It is one core source of making money for courier delivery apps; people can advertise their products to promote them to increase their reach to more customers. They can advertise for hours, days, or even months, and in return, they will have to pay the defined fee for promotion. The advertising can be in different formats, like displayed on the main screen, in the sidebar, or anywhere in the footer, depending on the user's choice and fee.
- Memberships: Offering memberships is one of the latest methods in courier delivery apps. Now the courier delivery apps and services providers offer discounts, free shipping, X%OFF on the delivery, and other benefits to their customers if they buy at a certain time in the month. They can buy monthly memberships with X%OFF and other benefits. This builds up more good relationships with customers and increases the rate of returning and loyal customers.
- Delivery fee: The customer will pay the delivery fees unless it's free shipping for the ordered items. The fees can be in different models; some courier delivery apps use flat charges for delivery items like 10$ or 20% of the total order, while other varies from place to place and depends on the size and weight of the products as well. So it depends on you which models you want to adopt for your delivery services business.
How to build a delivery app?
We have understood what an on-demand delivery app is, how an on-demand delivery app works, and how to make money from the on-demand courier delivery apps. It is also important for you to create a delivery app for your business to survive in the digital world.
The on-demand delivery app is just the frontend interface for people to interact with, but behind the scene in the delivery app development process, there needs to have a proper business and logistics plan. It's also important to choose the right tools and technologies when we have so many different options for the delivery apps development.
The most important factor in building a delivery app is to choose the right technologies and platform that meets the specific needs of the business and its users. Some platforms offer a very secure delivery app development, but then you may compromise the performance a little bit and vice versa. You can get the same functionality in delivery app development from every platform, but it is important to choose the right platform that fulfills your business needs and improve the user experience of building a delivery app.
Every platform has its own pros and cons, so you need some tradeoffs between deciding which one to choose to build a delivery app.
For the delivery app development, you'll need to choose one of the below-defined platforms or choose any other platform, but the delivery app development should support cross-platform development because the delivery app will be used by IOS, Windows, or Android users.
Some popular platforms for delivery app development
It is always an issue when there are plenty of options available to build a delivery app, and then choosing the best ones for the delivery app development sometimes seems a bit difficult, but it is important to choose the right tools and technologies to build a delivery app.
Here are a few of them that you can use for delivery app development. Since the on-demand courier delivery app will be used by different devices with different operating systems, so it is better to build a delivery app on a cross-platform technology to increase the accessibility of the application and capture more audience. This is an important thing to consider during delivery app development.
React Native: React Native is an open-source framework developed by Facebook for building native mobile apps. It is a cross-platform SDK that enables developers to build mobile apps, and you can build a delivery app it uses JavaScript as a backend language. React Native offers a number of benefits, such as fast development time, code reuse, and efficient performance. You can use React Native to build a delivery app. It is one of the well-known platforms when it comes to delivery app development and on-demand delivery app.
- Code reusability: Code reusability is a major and core feature of React Native. It allows you to build a delivery app for cross-platform operating systems like Android and IOS because it's the JavaScript behind which can be used for both.
- Efficient development: The code reusability reduce the cost, development duration, and human efforts. In delivery app development, code reusability helps in efficient and fast development, and developers can build delivery apps efficiently.
- Testing and debugging: Testing and debugging in the delivery app development process is a necessary step to do in order to build delivery apps without bugs. React allows you to make changes in real-time on the live application and make them fixed while the app is loading. And only the specific piece of code will be updated but not the entire application, which means in the app development process, making changes to one part of the application won't affect the overall application unless there is a relation between those parts. It helps in testing and fixing bugs on live applications.
- Xamarin: Xamarin is an open-source Microsoft-owned app development platform that allows developers to build a delivery app and other mobile apps using C#. It uses single code across IOS, Android, Windows, and other platforms. The app development process and experience are exactly like native apps. The apps for different operating systems are developed with a single shared .NET codebase. Also, the Xamarin framework supports complete access to the full spectrum of functionality by underlying platform and device, including all platform-specific capabilities. If you want a clean and modern user interface design for delivery app development, then Xamarin is the right choice for you to build a delivery app on it.
- API integration: The Xamarin developers can use any existing APIs, and UI controls in a platform-specific programming language, which reduces the integration cost and the delivery app development time. Adding multiple payment options also requires an API, and Xamarin is very friendly when it comes to API integration and delivery app development.
- Native user interface (UI): Users always expect consistent experiences from mobile apps, and Xamarin here enables you to write codes that closely match each operating system's native user interface (UI). This simplifies code sharing across the different operating systems like IOS, Android, Windows, etc. it's so easy to build a delivery app with Xamarin since one code is used for different operating systems.
- Open source: Being an open-source framework, it is continuously improving with time; apart from this, it is backed by the tech giant Microsoft which keeps it stable, saleable, and robust.
- Flutter: Flutter is also an open-source Google-owned development kit that enables smooth and easy cross-platform app development. You can easily build a delivery app in Flutter. Instead of writing code separately for Android and IOS, Flutter is also one of the platforms that let you build delivery apps with one codebase for both Android and IOS.
The SDK of Flutter is based on the Dart programming language. For mobile apps, it uses the Dart language, while for the web, the Dart is converted into JavaScript with the help of the Drat2js Trans compiler. Delivery app development with Flutter is one of the best options because it supports both IOS and Android.
Single codebase: It also supports the code reusability factor of development; you just write one codebase and use it where needed for Android, IOS, and even for the web.
Rich libraries: Flutter is one of the richest platforms, with tons of libraries that you can import and use to do a specific task. In delivery app development, you will need many libraries, and Flutter provides tons of libraries to ease development and helps you build a delivery app.
How do I start the on-demand courier delivery app?
Now we have understood the on-demand courier delivery app business model, the working of the on-demand delivery app, and the different technologies that support delivery app development.
Plan
The first and the most important thing to consider before starting any business is a proper plan. Your plan is your road map towards your destination. Make vision and objectives to achieve. Calculate all the expenses like the operational costs, taxes and maintenance costs, etc. The next step is to target your niche for on-demand courier delivery services; some businesses are very broad; they deliver every item, but some are specific to a niche, like food and medicine courier delivery apps.
Team and delivery app development
Now you have a proper plan, it's time to hire drivers, riders, and managers to manage the process of the business model and train them about it the on-demand delivery app and the delivery service business model. During the delivery app development, integrate multiple payment options to ease customer usage.
And parallelly build a delivery app which will be the front desk where customers will interact with you online.
Promote your business
The last step is to let your potential customers know that you exist and you are offering on-demand courier delivery services.
Seven examples of on-demand apps
With the advancement in technologies and digitalization, the business has changed its processes and models to survive in the industry. Every physical business has a digital footprint either on social platforms or straight on the web, so it's important to create a delivery app for your business.
These footprints are providing us with the goods and services we demand. In simple words, on-demand courier delivery apps mean we get what we want without depending on place or time. On-demand delivery app services have made it possible; they deliver us products at the specified location and time. So we are not bounded to go visit markets for shopping, keeping the mall timings in consideration. Additionally, these new on-demand delivery courier delivery business models accept multiple payment options to ease and improve customer experience.
Here is a list of different on-demand delivery app that is trending nowadays and making huge profits.
- Zomato: It is an on-demand delivery app that can be found in 25+ countries around the globe; it was an India-based company but was later acquired by UberEats. In 2021 the success of the platform reached a new height of 39X oversubscribed.
- UberEats: UberEats is another on-demand courier delivery app, and it is operational in more than 1000+ major cities around the globe. It is one of the top on-demand delivery apps with market dominance, and a wide range of restaurants are willing to work with UberEats.
- UberEats also keeps checking and balancing the customer restaurant couriers to ensure quality and standard. It provides services like group orders and schedules orders for a specific time.
- MercadoFresh: it is a Brazil-based on-demand delivery app that saves your time by delivering items at your door with just a few phone taps. You can shop from organic shops, grocers, pet shops, butchers, liquor stores, and supermarkets with MercadoFresh.
- Booster Fuels: Booster fuels are one of the top leading on-demand courier delivery service providers, but it is niche specific as it just delivers fuel. Booster fuels is a California-based startup, and it has so far delivered fuel to commercial fleets, companies, universities, and estate owners. It has served 10,000+ people in 300+ companies, including Cisco, Oracle, Facebook, PepsiCo, etc.
- Healthtap: This app is bounded to the healthcare industry, it connects doctors with patients, and so far, it has connected 108000 doctors with patients. The patients book a virtual appointment with the doctor. Healthtap ensures the privacy and security of patients and doctors.
- Handy: It is a New York-based on-demand delivery app that serves all over the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. It provides different services like Home and Office cleaning, TV mounting, Furniture Assembly, Wall handling, etc. It's one the reliable and fastest way to book household service providers. Just with a few phone taps, you can book professional household service providers.
According to Handy, it is processing 1,000,000 bookings, 500,000+ clients, and over 50,000 independent professionals. Handy has worked with Google Home, Walmart, Nest, and Wayfair.
Wype: Wype is another on-demand delivery app; it serves you car cleaning services anywhere, anytime. It is located in Los Angeles, and users can utilize car cleaning servers instantly as well as they can schedule it for later.
5 important key performance indicators for on-demand apps.
Key performance indicators are very important for any on-demand delivery app because it gives you insights into your business performance. As we know, on-demand apps are a rapidly growing sector of the app market, and as such, it is important for businesses operating in this space to track key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure that they are meeting their business objectives.
Here are a few important KPIs that every on-demand delivery business should consider.
Average cost per delivery. The indicator determines the cost measurement against the distance covered to deliver the parcel.
Average time per delivery. This indicator helps you understand the average time taken to deliver a parcel. Also, it gives you insights into the effectiveness of the network and the efficiency of the planned delivery routes.
Order accuracy. This is a very useful indicator; it lets you know the percentage of successful deliveries against the total deliveries. It helps you know the success rate of the deliveries and provide you room for further improvements based on the given states.
On-time delivery. This matric helps you identify successful delivery precisely on-time delivered parcels against the total deliveries. This can make the managers accountable for the late deliveries.
A number of deliveries. This is not a useful metric, but still, you should consider it because it gives you insights into your business, and you can easily identify the growth and decline rate by the metric, like total deliveries in January vs. total deliveries in February for comparison, etc.
