The development cost for a cross-platform online food & grocery home delivery app with Flutter in 2022?
After trolling 08-12 hrs at work and 02 hrs of commute, most of us don't have the steam to drive to a grocery shop & wait in the queue to get daily items, so they look for an easier alternative that delivers the items to their doorstep while they chill with Netflix. As online shopping is becoming more & more accessible than ever, it has not become limited to a specific segment of society but reached everyone in the society. Further, with quick shipment & affordability of services, commuting to a physical shopping center is becoming a chore, which many would like to avoid.
Even though we call it a grocery delivery app, the features mentioned here are applicable for many of the local on-demand delivery apps where users expect quick dispatch (max 12 hrs) like pharmacy, prepared food, meat & fish, daily needs, etc.
A fully functional grocery/food delivery app development is divided into three sections. The first is a consumer-facing mobile app (Android & iOS ), which is accessible by the customers to find & order the grocery, food, or pharmacy. The second one is Client facing web app where the employees of the company will update product & shipping details. Last one is the Delivery boys (drivers) mobile app, where they choose the shipment & update the status
Every fast delivery app has unique features to suit the market & the location the company is targetting, so to have some common ground to make cost estimation we assume that your custom grocery delivery app (or MVP - Minimum viable product) will be going to have at least the below features. Further, Most of the features of the Grocery delivery app are similar to the eCommerce app we explained in our previous post, so if you are reading this post after cost of eCommerce app development you may find that a few things are repetitive.
1. Consumer-facing Mobile Apps (for Android & iOS mobile).
We consider the following features are minimum to run a grocery/food/pharmacy delivery app and are counted for the cost estimation
- Main page - Main page is dedicated to items & categories which drive your business. It also comes with a search option, sliders to brag about current offers & discounts, and links to every category.
- Category pages - Every category (for an on-demand grocery delivery app categories will be Fresh vegetables, Fruits, Daily home needs, etc.) of items has a unique page to show all the items belonging to that category (for this cost estimation we consider the maximum number of categories as 20).
- Product page - It contains all the details about the particular product user selected which includes product name & description, images of the item with zoom-in functionality, video of the product, packing/serving size, star rating, and customer reviews about the goods offered. It also contains "favorite the item" & "add to cart" buttons.
- Search functionality - A much-used feature, which take the cue from the user typed characters and return product suggestions for the user to select. This feature is customized to suggest the products which are available on the client's grocery/food/pharma store. The search button will be available on the main page & individual category pages. Search autocomplete functionality is also built along with this feature.
- Clearance Sale - If any of your items are going to expire in the next few days(or for food items, which have to be consumed within the day of preparation) you could display those items here with big discounts. This page will be positioned in a prominent location as per the client's decision to grab customer attention. This page will automatically fetch the items with a 40% or more discount.
- Favorited food - The user could mark any item as favorites without selecting the quantity and other details. The favorited items are saved in the user's wishlist, so that food-ordering takes minimum time.
- Regular Delivery List - Users could make a list of items(instead of a favoriting single item, consumer favorites many items and create a list) they need along with quantity. With this feature grocery ordering will become even easier for the user. If the user is ordering from this list, the app will take the user directly to the Delivery address/payments page instead of the cart page.
- Add to cart - This feature makes the user choose as many items they want to purchase before selecting delivery. Before adding any items to the cart user will be asked to select quantity, etc. depending on the product.
- Cart - Here users could view the items they have selected to purchase, update the quantity, or even remove the items from the cart before making a purchase. This is like a summary of items the user chose to shop for.
- Log in with Email - Customer will be asked to login/sign up with an email-id so that a unique ID will be created for that user and all the data related to the customer will be stored by referencing that unique ID. Verification of email will be done only during the first purchase.
- Mobile number verification - Buyer mobile number will also be verified for the first purchase and also whenever they choose to use a different mobile number. The Mobile number will make the communication instant and also help the shipping agent to contact the buyer & get directions if needed.
- Delivery Address - This screen shows the earlier used addresses to choose for the current delivery and also an option to input the new delivery address. We could add one more option to select the address based on the phone's GPS location or provide the user an option to select from the map.
- Payments - Payment providers of business choice like Paypal, Stripe, Braintree, etc. will be integrated into the app for easy & stress-free payment collection. The amount to be charged will be decided based on the product cost and delivery charges minus any applicable discounts/offers the user claimed.
- Customer Profile - This is the dashboard for the customer to access their purchase history, wishlists, delivery addresses, real-time delivery status/location, etc.
- Cancel/return orders - In most cases, users will be allowed to cancel the order before they are delivered, however, once the items are delivered no return request will be entertained. This can be updated as per business cancellation or return policy.
- Shipment code - For every food order, a unique code(06 digit number) is created which will be sent to the user app. To complete the order delivery agent has to collect this code.
- User reviews "Product" - Many of the users will check the Customer reviews with star ratings before making a purchase. This feature provides the option for the customer who bought the item (verified buyer) to write a review about the product including a star rating.
- User reviews "Delivery" - This feature is included in the mobile app to collect user opinions specifically related to delivery & agents.
- Notifications - We develop backend functions to show notifications or alerts in the customer's smartphone when the grocery order is accepted, ready for delivery, receipt of goods by the customer, promotional offers. This also includes taking appropriate permission from the respective mobile operating systems.
- Feedback - A system where the customer could provide feedback to the company & also raise complaints within the app that are not related to the product & delivery.
- Policies - Policies related to the company like Terms of Use, Cancellation & returns, shipping policy are available here for the user to refer to.
2. Client-facing / Seller web app.
This web app will only be accessible to the designated staff of the company. This will be the dashboard to check/update/add all the details about grocery/food/pharmacy goods & delivery. It includes the following features.
- Products - A dashboard to add new products, update /remove the existing ones, with details such as products which are on sale, quantity available, images of the product, descriptions about the item, and other details as deemed fit by the company.
- Order creation - This is an automatic backend function that creates a shipping label along with tax details for every completed transaction. This also automatically decreases the count of items available for the next purchases.
- Offer or Discount codes - An web app feature to create a discount code with a start & end date between which it can be redeemed. It has further options to limit the offer applicability to specific categories.
- Shipment Integration - Here we deploy necessary functions to integrate data from the delivery agent app with the customer-facing mobile app.
- Reports Dashboard - To view, how many orders were processed on a particular day/month along with total revenues, dispatch statistics.
3. Delivery agents mobile app(Android & iOS)
This app will be used by delivery agents to collect the item from the restaurant/pharmacy/grocery store and delivery it to the customer.
- Accept Delivery - Whenever new food/grocery order is created, a new "item to Dispatch" notification will be sent to a few of the agents & is provided with an option to accept the shipment request. The agent who presses the "Accept" button first will be allocated to deliver that order and the order details are shared with that agent only.
- Maps integration - When the delivery agent picks up the item from the warehouse/restaurant, a route map will be created in the agent mobile application, which shows the fastest route to reach the customer location.
- Real-time tracking - With this system, we track the location of the delivery agent and update the same to the backend. Whenever a customer wishes to see the delivery status, the data will be retrieved from the backend & will be presented to the customer.
- Complete Order - Once the agent had handed over the product to the customer and collected the unique shipment code sent to the customer, the order will be marked as complete.
With the above features, we could run a typical on-demand grocery/food/pharmacy delivery app. The cost of getting this custom app developed to suit company guidelines & design standards through our development agency is...
| Price in USD | |
|---|---|
| Consumer-facing mobile app for Android & iOS with source code and custom logo. | $ 22,200/- |
| Client-facing web app with source code | $ 3,500/- |
| Delivery agents mobile app for Android & iOS with source code | $ 5,800/- |
| Total | $ 31,500/- |
Frequently asked questions.
Will you implement grocery & food subscription services in my app?
Yes, any regular purchases could be marketed as subscriptions and will be implemented. Recently we have implemented monthly lunch subscriptions to one of our clients.
Could the shipment code be replaced with QR?
Yes. 06 digit number as shipment code could be replaced with QR code.
Could the customer shop for products without visiting the product description page?
Yes, the option of "add to cart" is available for individual items on the main page, category pages & search results with an option to select the quantity.
Could we moderate the reviews before they become visible to other buyers?
The option will be provided to the staff of the company to check the star rating & review posted by buyers. Only after the staff/moderator accepted the review, it will become visible in the app.
How much time will it require to build a custom grocery/food/pharmacy delivery app?
Generally, the cross-platform on-demand food delivery app with the above specification will be completed in 03 months including release to the app store & play store. However, it may take longer depending on the uniqueness of features required.
Could my company offer a discount code to the individual shopper?
Yes, of course, we could build a system to offer a discount code that applies only to the selected shopper. But the same is not included in this cost estimation.
Which backend do you use for the eCommerce app?
It is generally what fits the project better and also what our client prefers. However, most of the apps we built use Firebase for authentication, document storage, notifications, and BunnyCDN to serve images & video.
Which mapping service will be integrated into the app?
Most of our apps are built with Google maps, however, if you need to integrate any other map providers we could do that too.
Could you build product filtering and sort-by features?
If the company wants these features and if there is a scope to implement them, we could develop Filtering & sort by options without any additional charges.
Could you add the feature to notify the user when the "out of stock" item is replenished?
In the customer-facing mobile app, the user is presented with the option to select the "Notify Me" feature for the out-of-stock item. Once the item becomes available again, an alert to the respective user mobile will be sent. This feature is not considered in this cost estimation.
Could you make a system to contact the user without not letting the delivery agent know the customer's mobile number?
Few third-party services provide a phone number masking facility. We would integrate this masking feature into the app.
Could we send an email/SMS to the customer when the order is received, shipped, etc?
We show notifications/alerts on mobile about the grocery order & shipment details. Further, as this is a quick delivery app sending SMS/email for every small update is a little redundant and annoys the customer, so we recommend our clients accordingly. However, if you need this feature, we will get it done at an extra cost.
As a company, we do not want to maintain our delivery crew, so would you integrate a shipping partner?
If you are outsourcing portage, then the shipping partner of your choice will be integrated into the app so that grocery & pick-up details will be communicated automatically.
For a pharmacy app do you allow users to upload doctor receipts?
Of course, we add a feature to upload doctor receipts (in image format), so that medicines that need prescription could be delivered to the customer.
Could wooliv agency develop the Grofers, Haapyfresh, Instacart, Ubereats, Deliveroo clone apps?
Yes, we develop mobile applications to suit every possible design & feature.
Finally, no matter which location & niche you are targeting, If the app is easy to navigate and is designed for quick food & grocery order, it will win customers' hearts and become a major contributor to business success.
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