How to create a successful food delivery service? How to set a developer task and what functions will be required first? In this article, using the UberEats example, we will take a closer look at what is necessary to create a food delivery service.
Our team has made several service platforms, including a food aggregator (see our work on iOS and Android). This material was prepared on our experience. The article will be useful for relevant startup projects and restaurants that want to create tools for food delivery.
The Uber service to order a taxi is a project with millions of investments. UberEats is an additional line of business for the company.
It is important to understand that business success is only 20% dependent on the quality of the site and mobile applications. The rest is working with partners and customers.
The design of the site is functional and discreet, as far as possible meets the objectives of the project:
High download speed.
You can access the site from a desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile phone. And everywhere it will display correctly, the items will be easy to use size and important information in sight.
When browsing the site from a mobile phone, an additional "Download application" button appears.
In the web version of the project, you can specify your location without registering, after which the visitor comes to the page with a selection of restaurants.
You can see the menu of the selected establishments, estimate the approximate time and cost of delivery. To place an order, you must log in or register.
The UberEats food delivery app exists in two versions: for iPhone and Android. After installation, users log in or register.
Pay attention! The UberEats app during the registration process requests credit card information. This can cause a negative. People are afraid to provide data, they prefer to pay for a delivery service. This factor, as well as other characteristics of the selected region, is important to consider when creating your own service.
After authorization, the user, just like on the site, can view a list of restaurants, menus, place an order, track it online. On mobile devices, GPS is used to determine the delivery location. If desired, the address can be manually entered or changed to any located in the Uber Mail service area.
To select dishes, the user performs several actions:
At the stage of choice of dish in the service there are several interesting moments:
The dish can be supplemented with spices, sauces, salads, vegetables and other additives to choose from. Sometimes they offer to choose a drink at once or decide on a garnish.
In the dish card there is a field for a note where you can leave important information and wishes. This avoids unpleasant situations. For example, when a product is found in a dish that is unacceptable to the customer due to allergy or diet.
Cost of order and delivery price are shown when the order is being placed. Usually in Uber the delivery cost is fixed for the chosen region. It doesn’t depend on the sum of the order. Minimal cost of the order doesn’t exist.
If the order is placed from a particularly popular institution or in an area of the city where the delivery load is especially high, an additional "popularity" fee may be charged at "rush hours" for food delivery. Institutions for which you have to pay more than usual for an order receive a special note.
The prices in the service and when visiting the restaurant for the same dishes may vary. The delivery menu and the cost of the dishes are confirmed by the associated restaurants. And here everything depends on the pricing policy of the chosen institution.
Depending on the tools the restaurant uses for automation, upgrade options are possible:
Data exchange with the restaurant's website or accounting program through the API.
Add and update restaurant employee information manually through the in-service restaurant admin panel.
For each order, the user receives bonuses, which in the future may pay for delivery and food. Bonuses are awarded at registration. They are usually enough to have a free snack. This is a significant incentive to sign up, so at the design stage, consider a roll-up bonus system.
In the UberEats system, a user can pay with bonuses only in the country where the currency in which the payment was made is used for the calculations. The service provides discounts in itself, restaurants pay the affiliate fee regardless of the number of orders paid with bonus points.
After payment, customers see the amount of bonuses accrued and information on how to earn even more points. For example, accumulation of additional bonus points for inviting a friend. Referrals from friends are one of the best types of advertising.
UberIts users receive email notifications about the connection of new establishments, ongoing promotions and new discounts. Said after-sales work remembers the service and promotes the return of users to the application.
Be sure to collect the email address database when registering users and think ahead of time what tools you will need for newsletters. You may find it useful:
UberEats is positioned as a service that allows you to receive deliveries from many restaurants, including those that do not have their own delivery service. In each region, the company has its own staff of administrators and operators who provide service and are responsible for solving contentious problems. Restaurants and deliveries, considered service partners, participate in the preparation and delivery of food.
Restaurant manager control panel.
The partner restaurant pays the service a certain percentage of the number of orders. Uber, for its part, guarantees the delivery of food.
After the conclusion of the contract, the restaurant has access to the "partner's office" on the service's website.
Delivery application
The delivery service has a mobile application for work. In addition to the possibility of choosing the days, time and duration of the work period. UberEats offers cooperation in food delivery to all stakeholders. Delivery is allowed by car, motorcycle, bicycle and even on foot if the distance is short.
The UberEats service is an automated system. However, Uber administrators (operators) work every day:
During development, it is necessary to correctly organize the user roles and the access levels associated with them. An example of organizing user roles:
Tools and reporting for different employees are made with regard to the special features of the business. Access to the information depends on the role an employee has. For example, an operator can’t look through the orders in other regions or view financial statistics. A regional director has right to view all the orders, but he can’t make changes into the orders closed by a delivery boy or an operator.
What is essentially important at the stage of developing a site and apps:
Design.
Download speed.
Usability.
Synchronization and API.
Attraction of the visitors.
You shall maintain your primary focus on the convenience and quickness of the food order. Buttons, menu and other elements of control shall be clearly visible. There can be any decorations in case they don’t attract too much attention.
Site navigation, information location, control – everything shall be intuitive to use. Users shouldn’t have such questions as “How to make an order?” or “How to pay?”.
There is a minimal number of the elements on the UberEats site:
Main page attracts most attention – slides with food adverts and “Indicate your address” line.
The Restaurant Select page focuses on the places to eat.
Dishes dominate in the menu, and on the left there is a laconic but helpful menu.
Mobile apps design shall meet the requirements and recommendations of the operating systems:
Requirements to the design of Android apps.
Requirements to the design of iOS apps.
Main task of such requirements is to provide nativeness. The user who downloaded your application shall recognize in it the key control elements.
Nativeness is a user-friendly navigation and management which is an essential parameter when developing a mobile app. Complicated, untypical and strange elements make navigation difficult for the user and decrease conversion.
Long download of the site or slow opening of the app on a mobile becomes a “refuse” factor.
For the service like UberEats such parameter is of high priority because effective food sales require a lot of photos which makes page loading slower. Taking into account the usage of mobile phones of different quality and working under the conditions of slow Internet, speed parameters become crucial.
Avoid high-powered graphics.
Apply scalable architecture. Define which data shall be saved, how to arrange databases and tables, what will be the request structure, which databases will be used often and which not.
Optimize images: the less “weight” a file has and the smaller the picture is, the faster the download is.
Test the load speed of pages from different devices, from different regions and residential places where you plan to offer your service working. Services tools.pingdom.com or gtmetrix.com. can be used.
Conduct load tests: estimate possible quantity of the customers during the rush hours and check the service operation under this load. For this purpose JMeter tool is used most frequently. You can find more information about this tool here.
In order to increase load speed our specialists apply caching, queue services, they build in elaborate architecture of the data storage, configure the server to perform necessary tasks, conduct load testing and other types of tests.
As we have mentioned, food deliver service consists of the apps for the customers, delivery guys, admin panel and a website. In order to provide swift exchange of information synchronization is required.
To organize work of such projects a client-server architecture is used, and API is developed to exchange the data.
API will be also required when arranging data exchange with the sites and accounting programs of the restaurants to upgrade menus and prices. If a place refuses to be automatized, timely prices upgrading becomes its area of responsibility.
Thoughtful arrangement of the data exchange between the apps, programs and the server is important for the work of the whole project. We advise to trust the development of the server part of the project (back-end) and user part (front-end) to one professional developer. It will allow to avoid multiple problems that may arise in the process of setting, as well as to escape possible mistakes related to human-factor aspect (lack of interaction between the developers).
Methods of project promotion should be thought over at the stage of development:
Site optimization. Structure and website code shall be adapted to the work of the search engines and search promotion.
Adaptive layout. Google company officially announced that the sites with adaptive design in a mobile offer of a search engine will have priority.
Cooperation with social media. Buttons of social networks on the site, invitation to share information with friends in social media, in the app, in mobile apps – all these methods provide a notable attendance flow. Their capacity shall be fulfilled at the stage of development.
ASO- optimization: package of measures for setting the app for its future promotion (increase in visibility of the app in the search engine).
The project budget shall include the follow-up work on site and apps promotion, context and other types of adverts.
Here is approximate calculation of the working hours of the specialists:
Total preparation of the project (making a design specification, development of the structure, setting of the main capacities) takes about 50 hours.
Design:
Registration and work with users:
Geolocation and service coverage:
Payment:
Analytics:
Communication and notifications:
Additional capabilities:
Here the quantity of working hours depends on the work complexity and personal wishes. It’s calculated individually.
When design specification is being developed and the budget is being planned, it’s important to bear in mind the following tools apart from the basic functionality, described above:
Statistics gathering and links tracking.
Errors monitoring services.
Feedback implementation.
Push notifications.
Ability to estimate the app and write a review.
You shall include hosting payment and site domain payment into the budget, as well as the cost of the app publishing on AppStore or GooglePlay.
After the startup the project will need a technical support and regular update. This way you will ensure uninterrupted operation of the service, will be able to correct errors in the apps, add new functions, react to the visitors comments.
Let’s sum it up. Development of the app similar to UberEats will take about 600 working hours, the total sum of it directly depends on the customer preferences and operating peculiarities of the future application. But HERE we leave you a project model that consists of an MVP (minimum viable product) with which you can start your own Deliveries platform at the BEST PRICE ON THE MARKET.
Do you wish to create a food delivery service in your region? Write us in the form below or use our Mobile Apps development cost calculation tool and get an estimate immediately, we will do our best to help you.
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