The world around us is changing rapidly, and every passing day, more and more services such as an online grocery delivery app and facilities are finding an online platform for their execution and delivery.
This includes shopping and retail, as online retail platforms have secured a 67% market share in the US alone. As the ease of creating eCommerce stores and selling proprietary goods has increased, so has the customer base that is looking to be pampered sitting right at home.
With a well-designed eCommerce app, you can apply the same principles as these successful eCommerce stores and platforms to deliver groceries and essential food items across a specific region or city of your choice. Here are a few tips to help you get started on a reliable online grocery delivery app for your business with a few factors you’ll need to consider. Read on!
Selecting a Region or City
The first step to creating an online grocery delivery app is to select the regional limits for your services. This is the very first thing that you will need to consider before considering other factors.
This regional limit depends on how you are sourcing your goods, the logistics services, methods you will use to deliver the orders and the volume of products that you can initially provide and handle without running into supply gaps and deficits. Each of these factors is discussed below.
Proprietary Ownership or Seller Based Platform
The extent of the services you can provide depends on how you will be sourcing the goods you mean to deliver. Do you have your own store which has a regular supply chain and can meet fluctuating demands? Or are you planning on creating a platform where multiple sellers can create their own little store and sell goods through your app?
Going with a proprietary ownership model will limit your geographical reach but will ease logistics concerns. Going with a multi-seller platform will eliminate the sourcing and regional limitations while requiring a more robust logistics system to be developed.
Delivery Methods & Logistics
For this article, we will assume that you are creating a proprietary store with a limited geographical reach based on your own supply chain or an already existing brick and mortar store.
In this case, your logistics concerns can be easily met by employing a delivery person for your store and routing all orders through your in-house team.
User, Cart and Inventory Management
The next consideration in terms of features for your app must be focused on user management. You will need specific user roles and segments based on their interaction with the app.
For customers, you can include a simple sign-up and log-in system with cart management features that enable the customer to view their desired items, add them to the cart or Wishlist, and checkout using the payment methods you have allowed through the app.
For your delivery team, you might want to include a segment within the app where they can log in with specific credentials and view the orders to be delivered along with the necessary details.
A similar segment can be created for administrators who oversee adding or removing products from the store.
These user segments can be restricted to customers only as well, while the delivery and administrative accounts can be created at the back end independently.
Delivery Tracking
If you want, you can add a much-appreciated feature for tracking deliveries and estimated delivery times to your app for the customer to use. This way, your customers will be able to view details regarding their orders and plan to receive the order on time.
If you outsource your logistics to an independent courier service, you can attach a link to the tracking number and site of the courier operator next to each order.
Getting Started
Now that you have created a clear and concise understanding of everything you will need to address, you can begin your development process by reaching out to professional app developers in your area.
We recommend using a service like Builder.ai for your app development, as their product, Builder Studio makes it easy, fast, and cost-effective to build your app for iOS, Android and web. It also helps you run, and scale it too. And unlike most low-to-no code platforms, Builder.ai does not need you to have any coding skills, whatsoever. So, sit back, save time and money, and watch your business come alive on mobile screens.
We wish you plenty of success and luck with your business prospects.
