Online food delivery was once looked at as a mere extension of the food and restaurant industry. Today, however, it has become a vital arm of restaurant businesses across the world. The shift of powers to the hands of the millennials was steadily contributing to its growth. The COVID-19 crisis, however, gave the food delivery on-demand industry the rocket-boosters it required to elevate its relevance, position, and profits as well.
It wouldn’t be a thing of surprise if an aspiring entrepreneur wants to start their own on-demand food delivery business using an app like UberEats. Those who would like to embark on this well-treaded path should understand that mediocrity might not be enough to cut a slice of the market.
One of the most important steps in ensuring success in your food delivery on-demand business is that you will need to be early to hit the market, of course, after choosing the right business model. The technical requirements can be adequately taken care of by UberEats clone apps. Considering the fact that a white label UberEats clone is highly customizable, you will need to ensure that certain features are in place to ensure success and profitability. We have given below, some features that you will need to consider uncompromisingly.
Easy Sign-up And Registration
Let us all admit it! If you are gonna keep the path entry complicated, it is extremely detrimental to your business and its success. It might not be a great idea to keep your prospective customer waiting through a cumbersome sign-up process especially when they are hungry and want to order food at the earliest.
There are two secret ingredients in making this possible: simplifying the process of sign-up/registration, and using technology wherever possible.
The first one can be affected by facilitating logging into your app using existing credentials like Google and Facebook. This does not, in any way, mean that the classic login methods like email and phone number shouldn’t be made available. If fact, giving an option to sign-up using existing credentials help in getting closer to achieving the second secret.
The second one is that the user shouldn’t need to fill up unwanted information. The app can, however, make use of the GPS permissions and with a mapping software like Google Maps or Apple Maps, to find out the location of the user.
All these steps might seem inconspicuous, but they go a great distance in ensuring that a user doesn’t slip off when they’re so close to making a conversion.
Keeping the User Notified
There is always at least an iota of curiosity in every user after they’ve ordered food and made their payment. The only way to satisfy this curiosity is by keeping them updated on every important step, like the acceptance of the order, the pick-up of the order from the restaurant, and inadvertent delays if any.
This can be easily and powerfully put into effect using push notifications. Both the major mobile operating systems - iOS and Android - have facilities using which apps can push notifications. In addition to the usual updates on the orders, push notifications can be used as a medium of promotion.
In all of this, it should be remembered that the customer has the power to disable push notifications for specific apps. Therefore, this feature should be meticulously used. It should be ensured that the push notifications add value to the customer, and do not contain any stray information. They should also be a control on the number of push notifications. Too many notifications can serve more as an irritation than information.
Tracking in Real-Time
An extension of the above feature is giving the user the feeling that they have access to every bit of information. This is done through real-time tracking of the moment of your food order.
One of the greatest innovations brought about by the on-demand spectrum of services is the incorporation of GPS and mapping into everyday activities and services. Using this, the delivery executive can easily navigate to the location of the user. They do not have to depend on vague directions and do not have to depend on the knowledge that the delivery executives have on the locality.
For the user, on the top of the mapping interface, the movement of the delivery can be shown. This makes users feel more empowered. This also means that they do not have to entirely depend on the post notifications to get updates on the movement of their food parcel.
Geofencing
One of the features that can highlight your food delivery app is the commitment that you give for the delivery time. It not on it becomes a service feature but rather a marketing feature that can help you win your customers without any hassle.
At the same time, it is to be remembered that marketing a promise without fulfilling it could be tragic. To ensure that you do not reach people who are outside your scope of service, you can use technology like geofencing. You can also consider using beacons to reach uninitiated customers. You can even float an advertising program where new restaurants can pay your app to increase their popularity.
The beacon technology can be considered the equivalent of handing out pamphlets to people who visit a hangout joint or a hotspot in your locality.
Digital payment options
The entire world is going digital in every walk of life and one of the most prominent areas of impact of digital transformation is in the area of payments. The extent of cash usage has considerably reduced, and it has shown its effect even in some of the cash-intense economies like India.
The COVID-19 crisis has also played a crucial role in reducing human contact, and it directly translates into the delivery executives not wanting to handle cash. Therefore, your food delivery app should be tied up with a versatile payment gateway that can accept payments from multiple methods including but not limited to credit cards, debit cards, Internet banking, wallets like Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Amazon Pay.
Contactless deliveries
The coronavirus has been a major contributing factor to the emphasis on minimizing human contact. Going in line with the regulations of the government, including contactless delivery is an integral part of your app, especially in the time of a pandemic like this.
This protects not only the users but also the delivery executives from catching the virus. The process is quite simple and straightforward. The delivery executive can drop the meal package at the doorstep of the customer and let them know that the package has been delivered. Once the delivery executives have confirmed that the customer has picked up the order, they can update the status of the order.
In the long run, it might become obsolete, but if you intend to launch your app like UberEats, it is not just a good feature to have, but rather a must-have feature.
Integrating chatbots
Chatbots can be considered the most practical and most prominent manifestation of artificial intelligence. AI is slowly catching up. It won't be long before it finds an increased mainstream and option.
Chatbots can not only help in resolving support queries by communicating with users to get mundane information but also help in suggesting dishes for users based on their order history and a host of other factors.
Since chatbots constantly learn from the activities of the user, in the long run, they can even be used to personalize communication.
Personalization
That brings us to the next point of personalization. One of the demands of the millennial generation is that they should not be provided with the same things as it is for everyone. With the personalization feature in place, the app takes into consideration the activities, the orders, the wish list items, and the trend of ordering around the location of the customer. Considering these parameters it can personalize the interface according to what they might need.
The elements of personalization include the restaurants that ensure quick delivery, restaurants that comply with safety standards, especially during the coronavirus times, and even top-rated restaurants. In addition, adding promotions, discounts, and offers elevates the experience of personalization for the user. It is these elements that keep the user coming back to the app time and time again.
Loyalty programs
The profitability of an app lies in its ability to retain customers without spending extra. If you are looking at long-term customer value, you would need to introduce loyalty programs that benefit customers. It is not surprising to find out that about 40% of the customers are always on the lookout for deals and discounts when they order food. On top of this, about 20% of the users use a food delivery app only because they can earn loyalty points.
Given these factors, it is important for your food delivery on-demand app to have a loyalty program that entitles users to special deals, discounts, and offers. It is proven by the success of global giants like Starbucks increased their sales by about 80% after they launched their loyalty program. In fact, Starbucks openly credits 40% of its sales to the loyalty program.
Review and rating system
The last but not the least among the features that you should uncompromisingly consider is having a review and rating system. It is one of the best ways in which you can get feedback from customers without being intrusive. This system also helps you rate restaurants and curate your list of restaurants based on the star-rating that they get from customers.
In short, this review and rating system helps keep the food delivery ecosystem democratic. Indirectly, it also puts the pressure of quality on restaurants because they cannot afford to lose out on the reviews and ratings. It might even end in customers not trusting the brand, and there's a good possibility that the online image also percolates into the offline space.
Conclusion
The reliability and profitability of a food delivery application has already been established. If you are one of those aspiring entrepreneurs who would like to embark on this exciting journey, the above pointers will help you build an app that is brimming with features bound to delight your customer irrespective of you building the app from scratch or customizing an UberEats clone app.
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