Do you want your business to create a lasting Food Delivery app experience among your target audience? Well, the road is not easy, but it is not impossible either. In this blog, learn about developing a food delivery app with a key focus on user experience.
Introduction
The first online food ordering service, World Wide Waiter, was founded in 1995. Since then, app-based deliveries have taken the food delivery industry by storm. What started with a simple order takeaway service has now been entirely changed to deal with the ever-expanding demands of modern customers.
In 2022, food delivery revenues worldwide were estimated to hit 760 billion dollars. As time progresses, revenues are expected to increase as food apps focus more on fulfilling the demands of the consumer to have a loyal brand following.
If you want a food delivery app that delivers meaningful food and craft experiences, add unique features to different interfaces. Follow the guide below to learn more about attributes in detail.
How to Build a Food Ordering App: Essential Features
Creating a food delivery app for a seamless delivery experience is not enough. You need to build a digital ecosystem around it and tie it all together. In other words, to have a food delivery business up and running, it is essential to have a customer app, a restaurant app, a driver app, and an admin panel. Let’s dive into these apps and take a closer look at each.
Customer App
A simple and eye-catching UI/UX design creates a pleasant customer experience, like using keywords or searching for nearby restaurants. For the best experience, you must emphasize a specific meal or a restaurant based on the user’s order history. In essence, the customer app should have the following features:
Registration And Login
Provide your customers with a simple registration and login process via biometric authentication, social media, phone numbers, or Google. The more login options you provide, the more users will register there.
Restaurant Search
Your food delivery app should allow customers to search for nearby restaurants depending on their geolocation. It would be wise to add various filters, like “most nearest” or “most cheapest,” to make the search process more convenient.
Location Tracking
Let customers track their orders on the map in real-time. This makes the app super intuitive and can be developed with the help of the Google Location API for Android OS and the Location Framework API for iOS.
Order Placement And Payment
A simplified checkout process decreases the number of abandoned orders. Take the help of a local payment gateway and add multiple payment options to get the maximum number of order requests. The payment screen should have various options for cash, credit or debit cards, and an in-app wallet.
Push Notifications
Push notifications remind users about delivery stages, from when the food order is accepted until it has arrived on the doorstep. Such statements also inform customers about discounts or special offers at nearby restaurants.
Ratings and Reviews
Feedback helps you see the gaps in your service and work towards its improvement. Therefore, a simple comment box and a visually pleasing star rating give the app a more professional look in front of the customer. Moreover, you can also include the option to provide a tip for the delivery partner if you want.
Restaurant App
To build a user-friendly app only for restaurants, you need to understand what processes happen in it. The app will help restaurants accept orders, get notified, and manage menus. But it has the potential to do much more than that, such as managing availability, advertising banners, and surge pricing, among others.
Furthermore, the restaurant must have complete control to showcase the best of their menu and images through the app. Push notifications for all users, along with their business hours, are some of the top options that you can find in an app for restaurants. The key features of this type of app are almost the same as those of the user app:
Menu Management
From changing images, descriptions, and prices to adding new cuisines, the menu management option allows the restaurant to showcase its brand exclusively. Any changes in the menu, along with the costs, automatically get reflected in their revenue history report. With this freedom, restaurants can implement new things and introduce innovative food items to the general public.
Order Management
Just like in a traditional setting in a five-star restaurant, upcoming orders are prioritized as per their delivery needs. In this online approach, this option allows the restaurant to accept or update the order request at their convenience. This will be directly updated in the user app so the customer knows about their order ETA in real time.
Ratings and Reviews
Like the user, the restaurant can review and rate their experience after a successful delivery is completed. At the end of the process, a review option takes them to a small box where they can choose the number of stars they like.
Delivery Driver App
The driver must have access to an app that is fast and agile and gives them the freedom to see their earnings without having to go to different screens. Most of all, it should be equipped with a map API that prioritizes changes in traffic, road conditions, and even weather. You must have the following features in your app to achieve all this:
Registration and Login
A fast sign-up process has better chances of attracting more delivery drivers. Here, it is essential to have all the details and documents of the delivery partner. Still, there may be more effective ways to get registrations. Instead, try to limit the number of options in the sign-up process and remove unnecessary buttons.
Navigation
A navigation system allows the driver to follow a faster route through oncoming traffic by improvising the directions as per the traffic conditions in real-time. Therefore, it is essential to have a navigation API in place built with the latest updates for both Android and iOS platforms.
Order Details
Giving the driver all order-related information is necessary, as it plays a central role in the entire delivery process. From the food item to the customer’s address and restaurant to the mode of delivery and payment, an informative screen allows the user to check everything at once before making the final payment.
Order History
Seeing the details of past deliveries in one place allows the driver to know the trip amount. The list includes the timing and location of deliveries, along with the name of the restaurant from which the food was picked up.
Admin Panel
This is the command center of your food delivery business. All features here are integrated to manage the data from the user, driver, and restaurant app simultaneously. Let’s dive into must-have admin panel features.
Restaurant, Driver, and User Manager
This feature helps the business owner manage the profiles of their customers, the drivers, and all the places they have partnered with for food delivery purposes. This feature lets every bit of information be seen with a single click. For instance, ratings and reviews of restaurants not doing so well compared to others can be easily filtered out.
Analytics
With this feature, you can track and rank the most popular restaurants and sort them by profit, number of orders received, and so on. Modern analytics dashboards are known to have intelligent KPIs and metrics that can be downloaded into reports for better understanding.
Promo Codes and Coupons/Push Notification Management
With a seamless discount, coupon strategy, and intelligent notification management, your app can rack up more new orders than ever. To do this, go to the admin panel and find promo code management to update the details and name of the coupons and share them with a target audience using geolocation.
Curating The Design Experience
For a seamless Food Delivery app experience, understand that the design process should be crafted to personalize the user’s taste. More or less hungry customers are looking for the perfect cuisine. Therefore, the app should show results relevant to the search a user has made in the food delivery app. For instance, many users don’t remember the name of the place they ordered from a month ago. Therefore, the option of past orders allows them to reorder the same favorite dish quickly and easily.
Ideation
Start from the home screen and separate it as per the options that benefit the user in their food search. Therefore, the starting point is a search bar with a filter and favorites option, coupled with information related to their order history. A richer experience means understanding what the customer seeks by giving accurate results using the keywords in the search box.
Implementation
Understanding all the basic and advanced features of the app is essential for its proper implementation. Again, the source code is responsible for the app’s performance, scalability, and security. Therefore, organized code development and thorough testing can strengthen the scalability and security of the source code before launching the business.
Deployment
To launch the food delivery app, ensure the marketing campaigns have created enough hype for the product. Moreover, test and run the app on different devices to prevent any glitches or bugs from occurring in the first place. Do the same for the restaurant, driver app, and admin panel. You can even do small transactions to understand the flow pattern before making your business live.
Conclusion
The design of modern food apps has been carefully planned using innovative methods of thoughtful and seamless user experience. With new technological advances in the on-demand industry, the app will take center stage. Take the help of a white-label firm and find top-notch clones with features and designs to blow your customer’s mind.
