On-Demand Laundry App Development Company: A Complete Guide

People in metropolitan and well-developed cities are too busy to do their laundry. Doing laundry is an important part of life but is often ignored in the accelerated pace of life in these cities. Recognizing this gap, the number of on-demand laundry services is on the rise. But for an Uber laundry business to operate and grow, it needs a mobile application.

In this guide, we will talk about how to build the best laundry application where with a few taps, customers can call someone to pick up their dirty laundry and deliver fresh and aromatic clothes back. Start by understanding the vision, followed by deciding the best features, creating an intuitive design, and writing the code. Let’s take a deep dive into the development process a laundry app development company must adopt.

Must Read: High Potential On-Demand App Ideas You Should Consider To Earn Heavily in 2023

The Business Model Behind a Laundry Service

The on-demand business model is growing ever since the inception of Uber, making transportation convenient, or DoorDash, making food delivery fast. As these services have revolutionized their respective industries, the on-demand laundry service is on track to deliver the best-in-class services tailored to the customer’s needs.

An on-demand laundry application is meant to overhaul the user experience as compared to the traditional laundry service. Driven with the motive to make it easier for customers to get their laundry done, a laundry application allows users to get their laundry done at their own convenience.

The business model of a laundry application is simple; the customers can put in a request to get their laundry done through the application. Laundromats offering their services through an application can pick up the request and get the clothes delivered. Another model which can work here is that the customers will have the freedom to choose their laundromat and the time for pick up, which they can schedule at a time of their convenience. We can choose from different business models, but the core of every model remains the same, which is to allow users to get their clothes cleaned without having to put much effort.

When building, an on-demand laundry app development company, will have to focus on three key aspects of this application;

• Convenience
• Efficiency
• Reliability

Using this as goal for your application, build a solution tailored to your customer’s unique requirements and fills an increasing gap.

Scope of an On-Demand Laundry Application

In the age of digitalization, many industries and work processes are getting a new identity. With new processes and operations overhauling how businesses operate, we are bound to experience new services and solutions. The online laundry service market was worth $9.76 billion in 2019, and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 35.9% until 2027.

This growth is expected to happen for several reasons;

• Urbanization: With the population in urban areas increasing swiftly, the need for such convenient services will grow.
• Lifestyles: People are getting busier than ever today, and this contributes to the growth of the on-demand economy. As both parents in the majority of the households are employed full-time, they need on-demand solutions to make their lives easier.
• Gen-Z and Tech-Savvy Millennials: These two groups of people are more inclined to use technology than others. They are more likely to use on-demand services and enjoy the convenience of getting anything they need at their doorstep. Because these millennials are also heavy spenders and will grow up to take up the majority cohort of the population, the scope for on-demand laundry service is huge.
• The COVID Effect: The pandemic has taught people to adopt a contactless life, which is further fueling the on-demand system. Online debit and credit transactions have increased by 20% after the pandemic.

Developing a Laundry Application | Step-by-Step Process

For a laundry app development company to create a masterpiece, they need to follow the due process. Here’s the process you must follow;

• Market Research and Analysis

  Since there is a gap in the market, you need to identify this gap and know your customers. Don’t build an application without knowing your target audience and, most importantly, without knowing their preferences. Start by creating a buyer persona of your customers and use that information to create an outline of the application.

  Once done, move on to knowing your competitors. Check all the players who are serving clients with a similar service. Even if someone is providing the laundry service as a byproduct, you need to check them out. Find out about their strengths, SKUs, type of customers, digital solutions, growth history, etc. With this, you will be able to get an idea about what type of services and solutions are working in the market and which are failing.

  After this, move ahead to understand your ideal customer’s pains and expectations. By knowing the customer’s pain points, you can build an application that specifically addresses their pain points, making your solution a panacea for the customers.

• Identify Features and Functions

  Before designing and developing, creating a list of all the features you want to add to the application is important. In the first step, we analyzed the market, customers, and competitors. Using that as food for thought, you must create a list of general and unique features.

  Where general features include login, booking the service, making payments, creating profiles, in-app notifications, geolocation, etc, it’s the unique features that will help you carve out your identity in the market. You can find these features from your customer’s pain point and expectations.

  If you want to solve your customer’s pains, add features in your application that solves their problem.

  Here’s a list of all the important features and their function;

  Feature	Function
  Signup and Login	Allow the customers to easily signup to use your application through social media or Gmail. Once an account is created, allow the users to sign in through a pin, fingerprint, or their face.
  Laundry Service	Depending on the services provided by a laundromat, allow your users to choose from different services. Make it easier for them to make a choice by giving the crucial details on the screen.
  Scheduling Pickup and Delivery	You must aim to add a scheduling feature where the customers can choose at what time and place they want their clothes to be picked up and delivered.
  Geolocation and Tracking	It’s essential for the laundry application to show the location of the customer to the delivery executive and vice versa. Being able to track the delivery is a great addition to an on-demand application.
  Customer Support	Add a customer support feature into the application allowing users to contact the support team. Working as a top laundry app development company, plan out the customer support process meticulously and allow users to get in touch with the support team instantly.
  Rating and Feedback	Another important feature of a laundry application is allowing users to give ratings and reviews to the vendors. It will allow other users to check the performance of all the available vendors and choose accordingly.
  Notifications	The customers should be able to receive notifications from the application. The notifications must include promotional offers, delivery status, order status, booking status, etc.
  Payment Options	Giving multiple payment options to the users makes it convenient to use your application. Adding less-than-optimal payment options may lead to abandoning the order.

  While these are the basic features, you will need to add additional features by carefully understanding the market needs and customer requirements.

• Development Platform and Approach

  The next important decision to make here is about the development platform and approach. Here you will have three options;

  • Android
  • iOS
  • Cross-Platform

  Each of these platforms has its own perks and downsides. Where Android has the highest customer base, iOS has the highest number of customers who are ready to pay for the services. iOS cannot match Android’s customer base, but where it stands out is the quality of the product and its execution.

  On the other hand, you have cross-platform, which means one application will run on Android and iOS both. However, a cross-platform application won’t have the quality and finesse of a native application. But it will cost substantially less to develop a cross-platform application than an Android or iOS application.

  Another option a mobile app development company can choose is building a web application. A web app runs on the device’s browser and uses its capabilities to execute the required functions.

• Designing the Application

  The next step in a laundry app development process is application design. A good design has the perfect balance of aesthetics and functionality. Good designs help end-users have a seamless experience and navigability while making it soothing for the eyes to look at the screen.

  Here too, you need to account for your customer’s preferences and requirements. With an in-depth understanding of your customers, create a wireframe and design prototype while following the principles of easy navigability and color psychology.

  For better results, you can use a design system that explains and describes every design element in your application. A design system becomes a guiding book for everyone involved in the design and development process. Using a design system, you can maintain design consistency across the development process and work smoothly.

  Lastly, add interactive UI elements into the design, which instills life into the design, making it dynamic. For an interactive design, designers can use different states, variables, and expressions for different elements and designs, like buttons, sliders, scroll bars, etc.

  These might be minute changes, but they have a big impact on how end-users interact with the application.

• Application Development

  This is where the actual coding part begins, wherein programmers write the code for the application based on all the aspects we have covered. The first thing to do here is set up the development environment. A development environment represents a workspace dedicated to developers working together, brainstorming ideas, and make changes to the product while still working on the project.

  Once the environment is good to go, work on the coding part, where the developers will generate the code for all the features, functions, and design elements of the application. Make sure that the developers write scalable and readable code, which makes it easier to make changes to the codebase.

  In addition to writing the code, work on the security aspects of the application. For every application, five security aspects are important, including;

  • Authentication
  • Authorization
  • Encryption
  • Logging
  • Application security testing

  The coding stage takes the longest to complete, and it also requires sheer dedication. An application’s success depends on how it operates, but it also depends on how it safeguards the user’s data. One data breach can ruin years of brand building and reputation.

• Application Testing

  An application must undergo multiple tests to ensure that every aspect of the same is working according to the requirements. In application development, five types of tests are always executed;

  • Unit Testing: Checks whether all the individual components and elements in the application are working as intended in integration with other elements or in isolation.
  • Functional Testing: This test evaluates application’s performance while checking its requirements. The purpose is to ensure that the application behaves according to the specifications.
  • Usability Testing: This test checks the application’s overall user-friendliness and user experience for things like intuitiveness, navigation, etc.
  • Security Testing: Security testing is about identifying all the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of the application. The app is run through various stages to check its security preparedness.
  • Performance Testing: Performance testing checks the application under different conditions to check for performance lags and crashes.

  This completes the testing stage. While testing, the development stage continues as the developers keep on making changes according to the results of the tests.

• Application Deployment

  To deploy the application, begin by setting up a hosting and server environment. Coming from an expert on-demand laundry app development company, we are seeing businesses skewing towards subscription-based cloud-enabled hosting environments.

  These environments allow businesses to host their applications on the web without having to spend on physical storage space and infrastructure. Once set up, you can also optimize the deployment server according to scalability and load requirement.

  The last step in this stage is launching it on the requisite application stores. Depending on the platform, you can deploy the application on App Store or Play Store.

With this, we are done with the laundry app design, development, and deployment process. However, the work still needs to be done. Once deployed, businesses must get a laundry app development company to take care of the post-development aspects.

It’s essential to update the application in terms of new features, functionality, security, etc. To complete these, a laundry business needs to hear its customers and take their feedback only to provide them with the required features and functions.

Conclusion

Running a successful business without an online presence is near impossible today. When businesses have an application for their business, they can directly communicate with their customers and deliver solutions that they love. For a laundry business, having an application is akin to grabbing an opportunity at the right time.

At present, when the market is still nascent, it’s an opportune time to hire a mobile app development company and build a laundry application for your customers and fill the gap. For best results, contact Mobmaxime, an experience laundry app development company.