We'll see more innovative on-demand apps as more entrepreneurs seek ways to Uberize new services.
How can you make an on-demand app that is popular with customers and profitable? This blog contains tips and best practices to help you develop an on-demand app:
- On-demand is growing rapidly and will reach $335 billion in 2025. It is, therefore, very promising to build an on-demand app right now.
- You must create three products to build an on-demand service application: a mobile app for buyers and providers and a web app for admins.
- You can learn how to create an on-demand app in this section.
Market Overview
Let's take a quick look at what an on-demand app is. An on-demand application is a mobile app that allows you to order goods or services based on your preferences.
Hence, why not call Amazon apps on-demand instead of referring to them as mobile shopping options? On-demand apps serve as a marketplace that connects buyers and sellers. Can you sign up as an Amazon seller to sell anything to anyone? As a second thought, it is still necessary to offer some service. An on-demand app, a mobile marketplace connecting buyers and sellers, offers delivery or other services.
These are some notable stats:
- 42% of U.S. adults have used an on-demand service at least once
- The on-demand economy will reach $335 billion by 2025
- Even the COVID-affected apps on demand continued to grow during the pandemic. 130 new ride-sharing startups were founded in 2020
- Since the pandemic outbreak, investors have invested almost $14B in delivery services on demand.
- DoorDash, an on-demand delivery service, grew its subscriber base by 1.5M in 2020 and 5M in 2021
These are the key industries that will benefit from mobile products on-demand:
- Transport
- Food delivery
- Retail
- Services for the home
- Healthcare
- Services of a professional
Different Types Of On-Demand Services Apps
Let's look at different types of On-Demand Applications to see how they impact their respective industries.
Food Delivery
Food delivery apps have significantly increased in popularity in the last few years. Restaurant owners have used this trend to grow their businesses. After choosing from several options, the customer orders food from a restaurant through an on-demand Food Delivery app. The restaurant will prepare the food once the order has been placed.
The delivery boy arrives at the restaurant while the waiter is still there. The delivery boy takes the order and delivers the food to the address. Food delivery apps' convenience to customers is a major reason for their success. It also gives restaurant owners a greater reach.
Retailmy
Another sector that the on-demand economy has greatly disrupted is eCommerce and retail. The research found that 54% of U.S. citizens aged 25 and under consider same-day delivery to be their first choice. This percentage will increase with the development of On-demand logistics technology. A retail-based on-demand app allows its users to purchase almost any item with limited options and short delivery times.
Groceries
People have opted for grocery delivery apps over shopping at grocery stores. Why not? These apps make grocery shopping easy and save you time. It's easy to search for groceries, choose the one you like, and then buy it. It would arrive at your doorstep in a matter of hours.
Beauty
This app is a lifesaver for anyone who wants to look their best and be able to do so quickly. You can easily call a stylist, beauty therapist, or makeup artist using the On-demand beauty app.
Healthcare
Cutting-edge technology has made tremendous progress in the healthcare sector. On-demand healthcare apps are bringing about a revolution in this sector. The apps allow users to access medical services 24 hours a day via their smartphones. These services include doctor's advice, purchasing medicines, and calling a doctor home in an emergency.
Taxi
Taxi and transportation are the sectors that have benefited the most from the on-demand app. Uber and Lyft have revolutionized the taxi industry. The on-demand taxi app allows users to book a taxi quickly. They need to enter their destination. The driver will be assigned the ride request and will pick them up at their pick-up location.
Common Features in an On-Demand Application
You will need to create multiple apps when building an on-demand application. This includes a mobile app for buyers, a separate app for providers, and a web portal that allows you to manage both the mobile and provider apps. Let's look at the features required for your on-demand application to be fully functional.
Buyer's App
A mobile app for buyers is the best option because it targets the largest market and has more features than an application for providers or a portal. The following are some of the essential features that a buyer solution should have:
- Register and authenticate
- Profile of the user
- Mobile wallet and payments
- Market with goods and service
- Booking/ordering functionality
- Tracking your order
- Ratings and reviews
- A.I. algorithms for recommendation and matching
- Push notifications
Some on-demand apps might also benefit from these additional features:
- Locate and map your location
- Rewards Program
- Chat
- History of orders
- Favorites
- Support
The type of service that you offer will dictate the features required for the end-user app. A doctor-on-demand app should have a video chat feature. If you rent scooters, your product may need to be compatible with Beacon to send location-aware notifications.
Provider App
Which options should service providers have to serve customers best efficiently?
- Profile of the user
- Management of orders
- Earnings and daily reporting
- Active/inactive
- Customers' ratings
Some nice-to-have features include:
- Geolocation tracking in real-time
- Chat online with customers
- Heat maps (showing the current demand for the service)
In the past, mobile apps for providers had a simple design and basic functionality. You must create a mobile app that provides on-demand services to providers with superior UX/UI. There are many competing business models in the market. They might opt for a company with more intuitive software. Navigation would be the first screen for couriers or drivers.
Admin Web portal
The web portal for administrators is the final piece. This allows employees to manage their mobile apps and collect usage statistics. What are the features this web app needs?
- Moderation of Apps' Content
- Manual order management
- Subscriptions and fees
- Notification rules
- Users can be blocked or unblocked
- Analytics and reports
Administrators can extend the functionality of their web applications to include buyer and provider apps. This will allow them to manage their users and content. You can also track the performance of your product in terms of delivery services, payments, and so forth.
The bright side is that you don't have to spend much on web solutions because they don't face customers. It should be easy to navigate the U.I.
Technology Stack for Building an On-Demand Application
On-demand app development company can look very similar to other mobile projects. The tech stack for mobile apps won't be too different from the technologies used in custom mobile development.
Go native or cross-platform and get the same results. These peculiarities will also influence your choice of technology.
- Machine-learning capabilities (matching algorithms)
- The necessity to process large volumes of data
- Ability to scale quickly
TensorFlow and Python will be required on the server side for machine learning. It would help to use the native tech stack (Swift, Kotlin/Java) to enable machine-device machine learning.
You'll need Apache Spark or RabbitMQ to process large data sets from many customers. Cloud services offered by AWS and Google Cloud are great for scaling up.
It would help if you also considered the web technologies that will be used to create the admin portal. This scenario will work perfectly with any framework like Laravel or similar. First, Laravel has many standard features, such as authorization and user role management. You can also customize each element to your specifications.
5 Steps to On-Demand App Creation
On-demand app development, as mentioned above, involves the creation of multiple applications:
- Mobile solutions for customers
- Providers can now have a mobile product
- Administrators have a web portal
What are the steps to create your app for on-demand services?
Rapid Prototyping
Cyber Infrastructure Inc. begins On-Demand App Development by building a prototype. This is just like any other mobile application. What is a rapid prototype? This is a visual representation of your product with no code underneath. As a first step, create an on-demand service application.
To verify your idea, we start with a prototype and then fine-tune it to meet your customers' needs. Users can view the prototypes in their browsers or on their mobile phones.
You can improve the UX based on their experiences with the prototype. It is also possible to improve the UX without writing code. This keeps your development budget in check.
Pro Tips:
- You can start with a prototype and set up an agile development framework to help you later in your project development.
- To optimize your app's design, use developers' input (primarily concerns edge-cases and animations and radically new U.I. interactions: possible, not feasible alternatives)
- To create a compelling user experience for both sellers and buyers, a provider app must be as well-thought-out and polished as the buyers.
- Templates are a great way to make your product stickier.
2. Development
Filling the graphical app shell is the second step to building an on-demand platform for service. Your software engineers should be familiar with this process. These are some things to remember.
Back Begins
Are you ready for the second eureka moment? You will need to create back ends for your on-demand service applications. Not only do you have to develop three different apps, but also the back end. As you may recall, the back end is where most logic and calculations occur while customers interact with the front ends (mobile or web applications).
You will require at least one backend for provider and end-user applications and one for the admin web portal. The back end is your app's brain. APIs allow all applications to communicate with each other and share data.
APIs allow your mobile product to connect with other software. It would help if you considered whether your product is likely to benefit from the creation of new products by other developers.
Code Reusability
You don't need to create both mobile apps from scratch. To speed up development, you can reuse some code blocks. This is true for all similar components, such as registration and authentication, user profile, and settings.
Make Use Of Mobile SDKs
Mobile SDKs are another way to optimize your budget while creating your on-demand application. You can quickly develop different features for your on-demand app using a variety of pre-made SDKs.
These SDKs will help you get started:
- SendBird or Twilio to have a chat option
- MapBox and Here are maps, in addition to Apple's MapKit or Google's Maps SDK.
- For payments, Stripe and Authorize.net are available.
- Intercom and UserVoice are available for customer support.
- PushWoosh or One Signal are two options for notification.
- Twilio and Agora.io are audio/video calling options.
Your choice ultimately comes down to the features you wish to offer.
Offline Mode
You might consider adding offline app support. This feature is a complex one, but it's worth the effort. Your engineers must create a caching mechanism that synchronizes all input data, even if the app is offline. Clear visual clues will be required for both offline and online modes.
Machine Learning
On-demand apps are becoming increasingly popular because they are often very intelligent. They get to know users better and can fine-tune matching and recommendation algorithms.
This A.I. functionality can be implemented in the backend (cloud-based) and on a mobile device. We have a dedicated blog if you want to learn more about ML app development cost. On-device ML is more secure and provides a smoother user experience. This is especially true if you require object recognition or augmented reality.
The cloud-based version is ideal if you intend to create applications for other platforms in the future. Each app will need to connect to the A.I. backend in this case.
Payments Integration
It isn't easy to build a digital wallet within an on-demand app. Integrating with Stripe, a payment processor company is a better way to add payments to your app in its early stages. Uber, for example, used Braintree to manage their payments in the past.
As you accumulate sufficient transactions, you can integrate with banks and MasterCard/Visa later.
Apple allows you to promote other payment methods simultaneously, as in this article. When you are ready to offer subscription services, you can sign up new customers without paying Apple's fee.
Web-App Considerations
The web portal's primary function is to manage mobile apps and collect statistics about their performance. Adding a dashboard with reports and at-a-glance insights to the portal is a good idea.
You can also restrict access to specific sections of the web app based on user roles. This allows you to share accounting information only with your finance department employees. At the same time, moderators have access to only user-generated content.
Pro Tips:
We recommend that you first read our article on finding developers for apps.
- Agile allows you to have better visibility and predictability in your development process.
- To gauge user engagement, integrate the mobile apps with Flurry or Google Analytics.
- You can implement granular notification controls to allow users to choose their desired messages.
- Your on-demand app users should be treated as a group and offered options for self-moderation.
- For any conflicts or restrictions, carefully research the SDKs you will use.
3. Quality Assurances And Devops
You must ensure your on-demand app performs well before you release it.
Automated Test
Manual testing is a nightmare when you are developing an on-demand app. To automate testing complex solutions like an on-demand app, you need to use Q.A. platforms such as Sentry. Automated testing helps detect issues and guides your coders to the correct solution.
There is an obvious upside: you can test your mobile apps on different O.S. versions on real devices. Imagine a robot army with all kinds of smartphones awaiting your app.
Manual Testing
Manual testing is not impossible. Automated tests can quickly identify many issues. Your QA team will process the apps manually to catch any remaining UX issues and minor glitches.
You should ensure that your team runs all the tests necessary to test your mobile apps and admin portal.
- Regression
- Unit tests
- Integration tests
- Smoke tests
- Functional
What is DevOps?
Why is DevOps included in the subtitle? What does this have to do with testing and development? DevOps means a set of tools that simplify the development process. It is a conveyor. On one side, you have the developers putting code in, while on the other, the Q.A. team and everyone else.
DevOps allows testers to always have access to the most recent version of the app without disrupting developers. If there are any new errors in an app, DevOps lets your developers roll back to the old version.
DevOps tools, which will be available after the public release, will enable coders seamlessly to supply updates to Q.A. and then to ship verified apps to mobile retailers.
Pro Tips:
- Test the app as soon as possible after you receive the first builds.
- Regression testing is all about rechecking any issues that may have existed in previous versions.
- Peer-to-peer code testing is a great practice during the development
- To ensure that the server is stable with active users, stress test it
4. Release
Finally, you will have a gold working web and mobile software. This is when you will release it.
This may seem like an easy step. It takes just a few days to get the apps on the market. This is only true if your development team has extensive experience and understands all the requirements for Google Play and App Store.
Upload the mobile apps to the appropriate mobile stores. Make sure that they communicate with the production environment on the server side. Side note: During development, applications frequently exchange data with a test server environment.
Pro Tips:
- For one last check before global release, you can release to a restricted group of users (using TestFlight on iOS or Google's open testing options).
- You should pay particular attention to the listings you make in Google Play and App Store (try Appfigures for a great example of this aspect).
- DevOps must be set up. Any updates will need to go smoothly.
5. Maintenance
You probably know that you cannot rest easy once an app is successful. You should be ready to monitor app performance and process user feedback to plan for future updates.
Users can still report bugs and edge-case situations on strange devices. If you have followed our advice and set up an application performance tracking tool, then you should be fine. These accidents can be quickly fixed if you can pinpoint them.
Google Analytics, a tool that collects data about how users interact with an application, can be used to provide further insight. Sometimes, it can lead to UX improvements. Let's suppose that most users skip the initial-launch tutorial. You need to find a better method to onboard them.
Google Analytics for mobile apps is the same as Google Analytics for websites. You can create better funnels by reviewing app usage data and optimizing the UX of the application.
Pro Tips:
- You should be able to update your product regularly (at minimum, by major OS updates for iOS and Android).
- Mixpanel and Google Analytics can be used to measure user engagement.
- Sentry, or another similar tool, can track all issues.
Our guide on application development outsourcing may interest you.
What Does it Cost to Make an On-Demand App?
You might wonder: "What is the budget for starting an on-demand app?" A minimum viable product (MVP) costs around $280,000. This simplified version of all three apps has enough features to get some traction with customers. You can expect $500,000 to $600,000. The range for a complete app.
Conclusion
A mobile app for pet and babysitting service providers was one of our most unique on-demand projects. We were brought in to help them redesign their app and bring it to the next level. This on-demand case study can be read more here. But the short version is that the app quickly gained traction in the market and was eventually purchased by a larger company in the same niche.
Another example of an On-Demand Application Development Service. We have built revolving around healthcare services. If you have any questions or would like advice, please contact us.
