11 Most Essential Features For Building A Food Delivery Software

In the year 2022 food delivery business has been booming. If you plan to venture in this business then you must read about the 11 essential features you need to have in your food delivery app.

The outbreak of the Corona-virus has led the way for society to maintain social distance and order food online through contact-free home-delivery as the new-normal. Hence, having a customized delivery app has become a reality for all eateries to run their business. Luckily, with the evolution of the digital world, restaurants are making the lives of the public stress-free, quicker, and easier by going the digital way.

So, if you are a restaurant vendor and planning to build your food-delivery app, this is the perfect time to begin. With an increased demand for online-food supply and considering the current pandemic situation, this is the right opportunity to have a user-friendly app that helps your consumers make their orders faster and smoother.

Now, with a leap of faith to develop your app, you must make a list of features for your app. If you are building your E-commerce app, it is very important to put the major and recommended features first. Therefore, we have provided a list of dynamic features that are necessary for your development of a new-delivery mobile app.

Enrolling With OTP and True Caller Integration

Provide your customers with a single-click login with an OTP (One-Time-Password) feature that is generated effortlessly and to complete the user sign-up procedure.
You can also offer your clients to verify and register on your app without the need for a one-time password. True-caller, a popular smartphone app, has over 20-crores users in India wherein the mobile numbers are already verified. Hence, when a customer wants to log in or create a profile, you can integrate True-caller, to verify and onboard users with just a single tap.

GPS Based and Location-Based Store Selection

Nowadays, people want their food to be delivered on time without any delay. Hence, it is crucial to empower your customers with an easy way to find nearby eateries by enabling GPS (Global-Positioning-System). Utilizing GPS-based store selection helps a person locate the nearest store hassle-free. The unique part of this feature is that it helps users know the estimated time to reach their destination via the pickup and drop positions with much ease.

New Age Menu

Your menus can be built with an intuitive structure and fast loading of customized products. You can add many-items, categories, and attractive options to provide your customers with a specialized ordering capability. Every person will be seeking customization! You can provide them with tailored-items where they can filter menus by veg or non-veg category or just by searching a name. You can also present your clients with reviews-ratings of each item, which becomes a decisive aspect while placing a new-order.

According to many studies, clients tend to choose their favourite-menu that contains a photo of every single-dish. An app with image-based menus can generate extra revenue by 25% as compared to text-based-menus. A person usually has a strong intent to make new-orders that have an image. Therefore, it is highly recommended to have them displayed under every categorized-item. Picture-based-menus will help your brand have a high reputation and also increase the number of new-orders every day.

Options To Modify the Home Screen

As per your requirement and advertising strategy, the home screen of your app must be user-friendly and have a natural motive. Your new-food-delivery app should have the ability to embrace certain customizations of foodstuffs, marketing posters, order status, top trending, featured items, and other related widgets for the best user interface experience. You can personalize the home screen with various layouts, carousel banners, and widgets with diverse functionality, and more dynamic options.

Promo and Offer Management

You can implement attractive and smart mobile-based marketing approaches using discounts, offers, and promos. Mobile-based offers and promotions can help to increase mobile-app downloads and sales. Encourage your clients to keep the app installed on their devices, by making promotional offers available and usable only while ordering via the mobile-app. You can also provide personalized offers based on order history, demographics, events, and much more to upscale your commercial sales.

Keep The Order Process Easy

Your clients wish to make new-orders online because of the comfort it provides. Make sure online-order placement process is fast and relaxed. You can fasten the online-order process by having interconnected information within the dashboard menu, such as GPS-based locators for addresses, saving more than one new-delivery address, storing previous orders, various payment systems, and saving past payment information. Having a significant number of localities, an automatic distance calculator for delivery range, and integrating digital-wallets are alternative ways.

Various Ordering Options

You can add different-ordering options to improve its experience. Clients must have the option to place orders remotely via the mobile-app, pay online, and select a supply option such as - home-delivery, self-pickup or takeaway, or dine-in. You can also provide your clients with a contactless dining facility by implementing the feature of QR-Code. This feature helps clients scan the code, order the item, and finally pay online while maintaining social distance.

Various Payment Options and Payment Gateway Integration

You can offer clients various payment methods like online payment through payment gateway, UPI-based (Unified Payments Interface), Debit/Credit card, or cash on delivery (COD). According to a survey study, by 2022, the transaction value of online mobile payment apps is estimated to reach nearly $14 trillion. Hence, providing the convenience to pay for their orders in advance by utilizing these options takes your client satisfaction to a higher level.

Furthermore, a payment gateway is necessary for commercial mobile-apps. Hence, you can utilize third-party mobile-based payment gateway providers and incorporate any payment gateway into your brand app through a software development kit (SDK). This enhances your payment solutions efficiently. All bank transactions, payment transactions, and confidential consumer data are managed securely by third-party mobile digital payment gateway providers.

Brand Loyalty Digital Wallet: Cashback and Milestone Based

Valuable consumers usually desire to be rewarded due to their loyalty to your business. You can satisfy them with a cashback and loyalty wallet so that it encourages them to do business with you again. You can attract new clients by featuring special promos, or offering-rewards to frequent consumers/top-spending members, and more. Furthermore, you can build a community of valuable members by offering personalized, referral-based, and milestone-based bonuses.

Customer Feedback, Ratings, and Reviews

One of the modest and efficient ways of improving your mobile-app is to take insights from customers-feedback, reviews, and ratings. Clients must be able to post their reviews and ratings for the restaurant as well as each dish on the menu. Also, you can provide an option to find their favorite dishes using top picks or via feedback filters.

It is crucial to keep yourself updated for any changes that are necessary for your app by revaluating frequently. In most cases, the users of the mobile-app would suggest any changes that can be taken into consideration. You can also send a customized SMS starting with a greeting message and a link that redirects to a feedback screen in your app where one can share their experience, only after receiving a new-order. Hence, you can improve the services of your brand-app and also the user experience.

Real-Time Order Tracking

Your clients must be able to track the online-order in real-time through the mobile app, after each successful one. They should be able to view the current new-order status, estimated delivery time, delivery riders' location, and other details. You can boost your reputation and services by providing these features with rider movement tracking. Also, you can use the feature of OTP-based new-delivery verification and provide regular app notifications about their new-order.

Conclusion

If you are a restaurant owner looking to create more revenue, elevate brand presence, and expand customer trustworthiness, or you are a dealer investing in an online food-delivery business - the above 11 features are a requirement to include in your food-delivery mobile-app.

According to research revealed by Boston Consulting Group and Google, the online food-based supply market of India is expected to grow an estimated $8 billion market by the end of 2022. Furthermore, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 25 to 30 percent. Thus, investing in a commercial app by incorporating all the above 11 features can do great wonders for your e-commerce marketing.

And if you have any suggestion then do share them in comments section below. Would be happy to add more useful features.