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The first online food ordering service, waiter.com was founded in 1995. At the time, it delivered food only in northern California and later expanded to multiple locations across the United States.
However, it wasn’t until 2004 that food delivery apps became a global phenomenon. Grubhub, a food delivery portal was later transitioned into a mobile app when smartphones became popular, setting the stage for the evolution of such mobile applications.
Later, apps like DoorDash, Postmates, and UberEats took food delivery app development to the next level.
Today, we are at a loss without on-demand food delivery apps in our lives! But, if you are into the same business or looking for ways to make your way there, you would know the bottleneck competition you have to face.
To outsmart your competitors and give your customers more than just delivering food, you have to think out of the box. And not just that, include those extraordinary features so your app looks different from the rest!
Best 8 Features For a Food Delivery App Development
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User-Friendly Interface
A clean, intuitive interface is crucial. It should facilitate easy navigation, allowing users to swiftly find restaurants, explore menus, and place orders without any hassle.
Use these tips to simplify your food delivery app’s user interface:
- Ensure your app has neatly-placed buttons that are readily accessible and can be tapped seamlessly.
- Streamline the registration process for your audience. Give them multiple options for sign up. For instance, using mobile number, social media, or as a guest. You can also provide a quick tour to get your audience familiarized with the UI.
- Optimize navigation and make sure to keep the UI layout predictable and familiar. Categorize based on cuisines or restaurants as you find suitable.
- Optimize the app’s performance to ensure it runs smoothly without long loading times, which can be frustrating for users and lead to app abandonment.
- Ensure that the app is fully responsive and provides a seamless experience across different devices and screen sizes, including tablets and various smartphone models.
- Actively seek user feedback through surveys or feedback forms and use this information to make regular updates and improvements to the app.
- Show clear and distinct information about your menu, pricing, restaurant list, delivery fee, estimated delivery time, etc.
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Advanced and Interactive Search Functionality
Building an advanced and interactive search feature during food app development is a necessary step as your customers should be able to find the dishes they are looking for.
Tips to build advanced search feature:
- Implement a robust search algorithm that’s capable of handling queries with minimal typos, alias or synonyms.
- Implement auto-complete and auto-suggest functions to assist users in their search. This feature can suggest popular dishes, recent searches, or trending restaurants as the user types, enhancing the interactive aspect.
- Integrate filters in your search functionality to let refine or narrow down their options. The filter options could include price range, cuisine types, dietary restrictions, etc. You should additionally include sorting feature so your customers can sort the list as per their need.
- Use analytics to track how users are interacting with the search feature, what they are searching for, and how effective the search results are. This data can guide further improvements.
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Real-Time Order Tracking
Most food delivery applications today provide real-time order tracking so their customers can quickly track the status of their orders and location of the delivery executive.
- Integrate GPS to track location of the delivery executives having GPS-enabled devices.
- Create a system that tracks and updates the order status in real-time. This system should be able to communicate with the GPS technology to receive live location updates.
- Implement real-time data transmission between the server and your customer’s app so they receive latest updates instantaneously.
- To maintain real-time data accuracy, make sure your database and server are working in order without any lag in data flow.
- Integrate your order management system with tracking system so your customer’s clearly see which stage their order is in (preparation, out for delivery, or delivered).
- Use push notifications to alert users of the change in status.
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Ratings and Reviews
Genuine reviews and ratings increase the trust factor of your brand. Customers are more likely to order from a restaurant that has positive reviews or order the dishes that are marked bestseller. Make sure you design a neat UI to include restaurant reviews, let customers rate the various dishes individually, and leave a textual or pictorial review.
Implement intelligent mechanisms to filter out spam, fraudulent, and inappropriate reviews. Use the data from reviews and ratings for analytics. Understanding customer preferences and common complaints can help improve the overall service quality.
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Personalized Recommendations
Developing personalized recommendations for a food delivery app involves leveraging user data and machine learning algorithms to create tailored suggestions that enhance the user experience. You can implement machine learning algorithms to analyze the collected information.
Identify customer behavior by implementing content-based filtering, collaborative filtering, and hybrid approach.
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Loyalty and Reward Programs
Keep your customers engaged and retain them by offering lucrative discounts, reward, and loyalty programs. To get this right, analyze your customer base and understand their preferences and behaviors. This insight will help tailor your loyalty program to meet their needs and interests.
Decide the type of reward structure you are aiming. Tiered rewards, points-based system, and milestone rewards are a few common models for rewards. Make it easy for the customer to earn and redeem a reward.
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Integrate Social Media
Integrating social media with your food delivery app is a way to improve user engagement, marketing reach, and overall customer experience. Allow your customers to login using the social media platform of their choice and share reviews of the dishes they have tried on the same.
Let users share orders, their favorite restaurants, etc. directly to the social media handly from the food delivery app. Engage with social media users who comment or tag your brand for better engagement and improved customer experience.
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AI-Guided Virtual Assistant
Having an AI-guided virtual assistant is crucial to success of your food delivery business. Out of thousand Mobile App Ideas for Your Restaurant, your app has to stand out from the rest and a virtual assistant can be the dealbreaker.
Conclusion
With technologies like AI and NLP, a virtual assistant can help your customers in multiple ventures including but not limited to navigating the app, placing orders, getting recommendations, and providing customer support.
That’s not all, voice integration in your food ordering app can also provide you a competitive edge. The delivery executives can just listen to voice instructions and reach destinations quickly. These voice instructions can also come in handy when a customer wants to mention something specific for their order.
Customizable menus is another great feature you can add to elevate your food delivery app’s performance. You just have to think out of the box and make sure that your food delivery app developer is able to build that feature efficiently for you.
If your app is built with strategy + tech innovation, you are bound to succeed in the food delivery app development.
Author Bio: Maulik Shah is the CEO of BiztechCS, a development company. He often takes the front seat in the company’s development projects, because he enjoys solving problems through technology. When it comes to writing for any blog, his contribution is priceless. Maulik ensures that his interaction with development is frequent enough, and his industry knowledge is ever-evolving so that he can share it. Despite his packed days, Maulik’s door is always open and he is generous with sharing this knowledge and experience.
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