Although the pandemic lockdown has presented an opportunity to start an online business through a mobile application, the need was already growing before the unfortunate viral outbreak. You see, today more people are looking at saving their resources, May it be time, money or material. This also applies to a common household where budget saving is essential to carry out monthly and daily activities. We already have seen how mobile application development for restaurants has allowed us the convenience to purchase food without travelling outside through food delivery services. However, it is about time we accelerate this and spread it to other areas as well.
Hence, from on-demand services to food & grocery products, residential areas are a huge audience for promoting such applications. When it comes to grocery applications, especially, people are getting a chance to compare all sorts of products in a store, or even different stores, while shopping. Conclusively, your business is the one getting the most benefit since it is your mobile application they are using. Once your application is installed, the user experience plays a vital role in retaining your audience and this is where a Business analyst’s unique skills come in handy. So if you want to help research and design your application then you can enroll in Intellipaat’s Business Analyst course.
When speaking of statistics, over 79% of mobile users have some kind of grocery or food delivery application with them. In 2018, 39% of e-commerce purchase was thanks to the mobile user and their mobile applications. With millions, or possibly billions, of applications already in the online apps store, there is no doubt that this market can be explored by a local business to gain added benefits.
Types of Mobile Applications for Food & Grocery
There are a handful of types for mobile applications for food and grocery delivery that local businesses can make use of.
1) Applications for Chain Stores
Applications for Walmart, Carrefour and Target are some of the common examples in this area. These grocery businesses offer several products all under one roof, like a super general store. With on-demand delivery arrangements, these chain stores can send requests to the nearest outlet for delivery services.
2) Aggregated Delivery Applications
These applications work similarly as compared to mobile applications for chain stores. The common example here is Food Panda, which offers nearest restaurants the users. These restaurants have to apply to partner with Food Panda to show up on their application.
In a comparable case, businesses can set up a list of grocery stores in the same way as well. This will prompt users to form fair price comparisons between one store and the other. This can also extend to another section of food, fruits & vegetables. In some areas of the world, there are daily changing rates for raw vegetables and fruits and vendors tend to set different price rates because of this. A mobile application which shows different price rates of different vendors will once again prove to be convenient for users.
3) Mobile Application for Specific Grocery Store
This option is for all those local businesses that are looking to join this trend in the digital age. When you have a specific store or a facility where people can shop, then there is a high chance that you will need to increase your reach, and that’s where mobile application development can help you. You will have the control to align your application according to your business and customer dealings. You can even add several features necessary for the online mobile purchase. The aim here is to make your application better than your local competition.
Classifying Your Application
Popular applications for grocery shoppers may attract a lot of customers. However, some are unique and offer unique services that also attract customers. Let’s look at some of the services you can choose to offer:
- Grocery Delivery Applications:
These are your typical mobile applications that we are discussing. Offering from food, grocery and other products like electrical appliances, clothing and fashionwear, gadgets and easy-home miscellaneous items, there are so many options to choose from.
- Price Comparison Applications:
All shoppers would want to know why some places are offering the same item for more/less. Give them the transparency they need by building an application that lists down prices of the same product from different vendors.
- Grocery Discount Applications:
Some applications only work to provide discount and coupon codes during purchase. These codes are normally used by scanning a certain QR Code or barcode which is placed near a cashier of a grocery store. Scanning the code will give you a discount on the total bill. While this method still asks the users to travel to a grocery store, there isanother feature available now as well. Regular discount codes that activate with the certain restaurant by adding them to their discount code feature service is another method.
Conclusion
In this age, any business prosperity can make use of a mobile application to increase its audience reach and promote a brand. Especially in the times where several countries get hit by a pandemic and have to go through lockdown, online applications become the only tool for several households to buy grocery and food items. We have already discussed the situation of mobile application development before 2020, and it is only increasing from then onwards. Trotons Tech Magazine is the best Web Blog to inform and provide genuine tech news and updates. As more and more people continue to gain access to the Internet, this online market is only going to increase. Therefore, those who quickly adapt to this change and utilize it are going to gain the most benefit.
Read: Top 5 Challenges That Mobile App Developers Face
