On-Demand Transportation App Development: A Complete Guide
The era of on-demand services and business is here to stay for many years to come. With the convenience and extent of services provided by these applications, a lot of entrepreneurs are gearing up to bring the next innovative solution to the market and make big banks.
Like all the other industries, the logistics and transportation industry has also seen substantial improvement. Building a transportation application means you need first to understand the market. This is followed by researching the user’s requirements and then working on developing an application’s technical aspects.
With mobile becoming a part of our everyday lives, you need to focus on building the perfect mobile-friendly solution for your users. An on-demand transportation app development exercise must adhere to the latest application creation standards and add the required features for the end-users.
These aspects must be combined with the right design and execution. While this provides an overview, we will be going into the details of transportation app development in the following sections. Stick around with us to know more.
Must Read: Mobile App Development Process: Easy Step to Build your First App
How to Create a Transportation Application?
Ensuring smooth and effective application development requires following the proper steps and executing every step with perfection. The five steps below will help you build an ideal application, provided you are fulfilling the requirements of each step.
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Define your Objectives
The crucial step for building any sort of application is answering the WHY part.
- Why do you need to build an application?
- Why do you think that your application will work?
- Why do you want to build an application in the transportation industry?
Answering the WHY will help you understand the way forward. This is because you will have a better idea about what needs to be done in terms of features, purpose, and functions.
Whether you want to build a product or a SaaS solution is also an important question to answer. Business owners can take either of the two ways to move ahead in the industry.
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Who’s Your Target Audience?
Any on demand transportation app development company or developers will first ask you about the target audience. These are the ideal people for whom you are creating the solution.
Without understanding your target audience or who are the people who will be using your application, your efforts may not bear fruit. This is because based on the fact that how much you know about the target audience will help you frame the features, functions, design, etc., accordingly.
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Create a List of Features
With the first two steps in on demand transportation app development complete, create a list of the required features. While some features and functions are generalized across all transportation applications, you must work on adding some unique features depending on the pain points of your target audience.
Moreover, as it’s a transportation application, you will have different panels for different users. There will be a customer panel, a driver’s panel, and an admin panel.
The features for all these panels will be different, and some of them will be common, too (we will get into the details in the further sections). Your focus must be on building the MVP version of the application initially.
Do not invest your time, money, and efforts into making the final product in the first go. Build the MVP version first and review the customer’s response. As your application starts to gain some traction, you can keep on adding more features and utilities to improve the user experience.
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Choose the Right Tech Stack
This is another important consideration in every form of development, including a transportation application. Creating any form of digital solution requires using different technologies.
This includes creating the prototype, designing, coding, testing, launching, marketing, etc. So, the amalgamation of all the technologies in your tech stack and selecting the right technology for every development component.
Before selecting the tech stack, you also need to choose the platform and type of application. The answer to these questions is further dependent on your target audience.
- Are they using iOS or Android-based devices?
- Do you want to give an authentic native experience or want to build a hybrid application?
With these questions answered, you can easily select appropriate technology partners and providers.
These are the four major steps for building a transportation application. After the development part is complete, you need to work on the marketing. But to some extent, your application’s marketing must begin while the product is under development.
The purpose is to create hype for the upcoming product and gather the user’s response. You can do this by creating social media ads, sending emails, and creating landing pages connected to the ads and emails.
Let’s move on to discussing the major features you must add in the MVP version of the transportation application.
On-Demand Transportation App Development Features
As we have said before, you have to build the application in three panels;
- Customer
- Driver
- Admin
Customer Panel Features
| Feature | Description |
| Registration or Sign Up | You need to ease the customer sign-up process by connecting it with social media or Google. Adding a one-click sign-up allows the users to quickly enter the application and start using it with a few tweaks.
Plus, you will also get access to the user’s social media account or email address, which is required for better communication. |
| Push Notifications | Push notifications are crucial to establishing a communication channel between all three panels. The customers will receive notifications about the arrival of their vehicle, the charges, time to destination, etc.
This feature is used to update everyone who is connected by a service request. |
| Payments | The users must be allowed to pay for the services used by different methods. Adding multiple payment options will improve the user experience and let more people use your service.
You can include payment options like credit/debit cards, online wallets, cash, etc. |
| Location Tracking | Let the customers track and monitor the driver’s movements after they have hired a transport vehicle until the job is complete.
A location tracker will help the customer know how much time it will take for the driver to reach the destination. |
| In-App Messaging and call | The drivers must be able to send messages or call the customers (like it happens with Uber). In-app communication channels save the drivers and the customers from dabbling with other communication channels.
As they both are well connected via a single portal, it will be easier for both of them to communicate without interruptions. |
| Book a Car/Vehicle | Another major feature is letting your customers book a vehicle from the application. And this is the core feature, or we can say the sole purpose of building a transportation application.
Just like we are using several types of ride-hailing services today, your customers build the required feature. |
In addition to these features, also add;
- Review and rating
- Profile creation, editing, deleting
Driver Panel Features
| Feature | Description |
| Registration and Profile Creation | For drivers, you need to add some extra steps in the registration process. But the core element has to be easy to sign up with social media integration.
Drivers need to create a polished profile and add additional information to show authenticity. |
| Navigation | Navigability is another core component of on demand transport app development, and it is pivotal for drivers. Helping the drivers navigate to the requested destination is a great way to improve the user experience on all sides.
You also need to integrate live route information within the navigation to help the drivers get complete access to the road conditions ahead. Lastly, you can also give offline connectivity to the drivers to ensure that they don’t lose their way even in areas with lower connectivity. |
| Delivery Schedule | The drivers must also receive information about the customer, including their address, contact details, and other information.
The purpose is to help them understand everything about the job so that they can plan their trips accordingly. |
| Push Notifications | Just as customers receive push notifications about their interaction with the application and the services rendered, the drivers also need the same.
The drivers will need information via notifications, including the job, address, distance, payment, changes in the schedule or delivery, etc. |
Admin Portal Features
| Feature | Description |
| Dashboard | This will be the portal from where the administrator can get a bird’ eye view of everything going on with the service.
They will get information on the number of drivers engaged, the number of requests raised trips completed, etc. Plus, they can also dive deep into a particular ride and see the task in detail if required. |
| Tracking | Within the admin panel, you need to add a feature that helps the person check the location of the vehicle at any point.
This part of the fleet management system is crucial to help the administrators maintain the perfect schedule for every vehicle and ensure that the customer receives the best possible experience. |
| Drivers Management | The administrators need to be able to receive the required information on every driver enrolled in their services. This includes name, address, vehicle details, availability, rating, current location, and so on.
Knowing this will help them manage the jobs and tasks smoothly while ensuring that everything works in favor of the organization. |
| Push Notification | The purpose of adding push notifications here is to allow the administrators to send the information to the drivers and customers when required. |
Additional features and functions you need to add here include;
- Expense management
- Communication
- Offline support
This completes our discussion on the features for on demand transportation app development. You can easily build the MVP version of the transportation application and promote it further for better traction from the customers.
How Much Does a Transportation App Development Cost?
When it comes to the cost of building an application, we need to look at three things;
- Factors that contribute to the cost
- Number of hours required to build the solution
- Your technology partner
Let’s start with the contributory factors that help decide the cost.
- Complexity of the Features: Adding more complex features in the application means that it will take more time to build the entire solution. Due to this, you will need more experienced developers, which will certainly increase the price.
- Complexity of the Design: Your application’s design also helps decide its cost. Designing is important for attracting users and making their experience smoother and soothing. To some extent, you need an application with a great design, but don’t complicate it as it will add to the cost and weaken the user experience.
- Hosting: There are a variety of hosting solutions you can choose from, but which ones are the best for you requires a different discussion. However, if you are going ahead with an on demand app development company to build the solution, they will help you with it.
- Technology Partner: The type of technology partner you hire for the development process also helps decide the cost. Hiring an in-house team will cost more than outsourcing the work. Plus, outsourcing may cost more than hiring freelancers for the job. So, you need to make a choice here.
Another element of the cost is the number of hours you need for on demand transportation app development.
Which Technology Partner is the best for your task?
You have the choice of hiring in-house developers, designers, QA analysts, business management professionals, and a marketing team. However, this is the costliest option as you would have to bear the monthly salaries of every professional.
The second option is outsourcing the work, in which case you will be charged on an hourly basis. Outsourced agencies from different countries charge different prices. So, depending on the agency you choose, the per-hour development cost may vary. Employing an agency is cost-efficient than hiring an in-house team, but you will have to put in more effort for project management.
Moreover, not every agency you hire will provide the work on intended quality, but you will get assured results with an in-house team. So, you may be benefiting on the cost front, but you also need to be careful about the delivered work.
Third option is that you can hire freelancers, which is the most pocket-friendly option here. Also, you have the freedom to hire independent contractors from any part of the world. Freelancers may be great in terms of cost, but they are not great quality-wise.
Considering all these aspects, you first need to determine the number of hours required for development and the cost per hour. Suppose that it takes 1000 hours to build an application, and you have to pay $100 per hour for the development and designing work; the total cost is $100,000.
This is just an idea to help you understand the system better. The actual number of hours will be given by the agency you hire, or you can hire a CTO to help you figure out this number if you hire freelancers or an in-house team.
Conclusion
Building an application for the transportation and logistics industry is a great idea and can generate revenue if you have built the right solution and worked on its implementation. A few things to take care in on demand transportation app development is that the app should be simple, intuitive, and responsive.
Make sure to gather the customer’s feedback and make changes accordingly to fulfill their requests. In a scenario where 77% of the customers won’t think twice before abandoning it, you need to create the best possible product and reduce the chances of abandoning it.
So, plan out the entire development process and go through the steps in detail as you move ahead with the right channels.
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