How to Build an On-Demand Delivery App: Mobile & Web Applications

Nowadays, 41% of customers are ready to pay for same-day delivery services. At the same time, 24% of online buyers are willing to pay extra for delivery within 2 hours.

For businesses, it means that building an on-demand delivery service can bring additional revenue and help them expand their clienteles.

Practically, this article will be useful to anyone who’s considering building an on-demand delivery business. But if we were to generalize all the cases, it appears that the most popular ones would include:

• Creating an on-demand delivery app from scratch.
• Improving existing on-demand user experience with new features.
• Replacing 3rd-party solutions (services like Uber Eats or Postmates) with your own delivery system.

If you’re interested in on-demand delivery app development, hold the line — we’ll give you all the necessary information!

✅ Types of On-Demand Delivery Services

First things first, we’d like to dispel the myth that on-demand delivery equals food delivery.

Yes, food services are a big part of the on-demand industry. However, there are many more parts to the industry like transportation, healthcare, flowers & gifts, etc.

Read our article on how to make a food delivery app.

This on-demand delivery app works in London. Citizens can send and receive packages through their personal courier called “Peyker”. The courier arrives at the customer’s pick-up point within 20 minutes.

🚚 Delivery Set-Up

Before we dive into details of the on-demand delivery app features development process, we’d like to talk about a couple of important delivery aspects.

Delivery Costs 💲

Firstly, to create a delivery website or app, you’ll need to find out how you’ll cover costs for the delivery service.

There are 2 main types of delivery fees: “free” delivery and flat rate.

# 1: Free delivery

Technically, the delivery can’t be free — there’s always someone who pays for it. But who and how is the right question to ask in this case.

An app like Postmates should pay attention to their workflow being smooth

However, when it’s a matter of minutes, any delay during packing, dispatching, or delivery itself can cause a worsening of the performance and/or user experience.

For instance, if an order is not sent for preparation on time or the courier isn’t notified to pick it up in advance, the customer won’t receive it on time either.

Besides, such situations put additional pressure on couriers and drivers which can result in even poorer performance.

To prevent such inconveniences, you can do the following:

• Automate logistics. Meaning, you should automate as many processes as you can.
• Take time on the safe side. You should consider showing the time to your customers with a 5-7 minute gap from what was initially planned. If any inefficiencies happen, couriers will still have time to either fix them or inform logistics specialists that could then help them. If they arrive earlier than planned, the customer experience will only be better.
• Regularly update the navigator that your couriers will use. Thus, you’ll make sure that all the routes are as safe and fast as possible.

However, don’t sacrifice quality and safety for speed. It will cost you much more if couriers lose or damage the package while delivering than potential late arrivals will.

So make sure that your workers consider the quality of products to be the top priority.

⚙️ Features of an On-Demand Delivery Platform (For Customers)

In this section, we’ll review the main features of an on-demand delivery app.

Before that, we’d like to point out that during the delivery app development, you’ll most likely need to build 3 versions of it:

• For customers.
• For couriers.
• Admin panel.

Furthermore, you can build all 3 within a single solution or develop 3 separate ones.

We've decided that the most convenient way to structure this information would be to divide the article into three sections — one for each version. In this part specifically, we’ll take a look at the main features of the version for customers.

# 1: Sign Up & Profiles 🔐

For a delivery app, the sign up process is something that should be optional since there’s no need for you to know any kind of personal information before the checkout.

However, if you still want to, you can ask for basic information like name and/or e-mail.

It’s also essential for users & couriers to be able to leave comments about anything important regarding deliveries. It can be a specification about the pick-up point, order status update (maybe, the color a customer had chosen isn’t in stock anymore), and so on.

As for the feedback, it works as a kind of the motivation for couriers to work as qualitatively and quickly as possible — great feedback & performance = extra payment.

# 7: Payment Gateway 💳

To make the ordering process smooth, you should provide a convenient & secure payment gateway.

Normally, the best payment gateways for a customer:

• Are consistent with your delivery mobile and web-based app as well as with various OS options.
• Allow using all popular payment options like a credit card, Google & Apple Pay, PayPal, etc.
• Work fast without delays.
• Provide strong users’ data protection.

📦 Features of an On-Demand Delivery Platform (For Couriers)

This section will be dedicated to the main features that a version of an-on demand delivery app for couriers should have. However, we’d like to point something out before.

If you want an on-demand delivery website, you should think about how couriers will access it since it’s almost impossible for them to use PCs and laptops while delivering orders.

For that purpose, we recommend that you either make your website mobile-friendly or use a framework that’ll allow you to build a delivery app and a website with one code.

We have an article where these frameworks are presented if you’d like to check it out and learn about it a bit more:

Besides, you can set a limited number of couriers needed for a certain period of time. Once the time is booked, the window closes.

Couriers can use it as a planner to manage their working hours and, accordingly, track their income since it's based on hourly rates in most cases.

📊 Admin-Panel for an On-Demand Delivery Platform

The features in this section are for managers, administrators, business owners, and the team that takes care of your delivery app development (during the app development) to control the workflow and tech parts of the application.

# 1: Content Management 📝

Depending on what exactly you deliver, you’ll need a screen in your delivery app that will display the information regarding the partners whose products you deliver.

The functionality can include:

• Working hours tracking.
• Payments transferring.
• Working area & route management.
• Logistic specialists and tech support.
• Feedback & rating access.
• Courier leaderboards for productivity tracking.
• Calendar management (e. g. close the time if these working hours are full) & others.

Read also our guide on how to develop a courier management system.

# 4: Metrics 📈

For delivery app development, it’s essential to implement features for collecting and analyzing metrics.

You can track:

• The overall revenue.
• The number of orders (per day/week/month).
• The revenue made from orders from each separate partner.
• The costs for courier payments.
• The bounce rates & others.

For your convenience and dynamic visualization, the data can be presented as infographics instead of simple tables.

💰 How Much Does On-Demand Delivery App Development Cost?

So you have a better understanding of what development costs might be, we've created a rough estimation for the implementation of features we talked about in the article. There's going to be 3 separate tables - one for the customer app, one for the courier app, and the admin panel:

To easily manage both of the apps, incoming orders, and your business in general, you can consider developing an admin panel for $17,600-$25,700.

💡 Takeaways

To sum up the necessary information on how to make a delivery app, we’d like to summarize what we’ve covered in this article.

1. There are 3 main types of delivery app business models — B2B, B2C & C2C.
2. When setting up the delivery, decide how you’ll cover delivery costs.
3. You’ll most likely need 3 versions of your platform — for customers, couriers & an admin panel.
4. Decide on what features you’d like to have on your platform.
5. To start the development process, you can find a Tech Partner (e. g. like Stormotion) who will assist you all the way through.

If you need some help with the development or have any questions left, feel free to drop us a line. We’ll find a way to help you!