Who wants to spend time selecting potatoes or onions? Not so many of us. People prefer to delegate it to personal shoppers.
The explosive growth of this market sector makes digital entrepreneurs seriously consider grocery app development. This year, US grocery app users have reached more than 30 million consumers.
Top-5 grocery apps in the USA
Who will argue that fast and effortless filling the fridge is the thing that can free up your time for more captivating activities than selecting cabbages or carrots? People vote for expanding technologies with their money: the statistics of online grocery purchases are increasing. Let’s list some of the services people use to solve the issue.
Instacart
As you can catch from its name, the app is honed for providing same-day delivery. Virtual shelves are rich in eatable items within diverse pricing categories. Customers value the service since it covers hundreds of cities in the USA, partnering with more than 40,000 supermarkets and providing flexible search and budget-friendly delivery.
The shtick of the grocery app is an opportunity to communicate directly with the shopper who collects items for you and clears up all the details in case of changes/replacing the goods in the order.
Shipt
Emulating Instacart, the service abuts the aggregator model. Customers communicate with the personal shoppers who are ready to take into account their personal dietary limitations depicted in the personal profile settings and make substitutions by customers’ requests.
Uber Eats
Honed on delivering food from restaurants, the app presupposes contactless interaction: orders, delivery time, and other conditions are set via the app. Simple design and easy navigation paired with the availability of delivery for free with a subscription makes the service a sought-after product.
GoPuff
The grocery app differs from Instacart, Shipt, and others because of its strategy. Charging a fixed $1.95, the service performs facilities in the cities it serves. Prompt delivery of a wide assortment of items (along with groceries: meals, booze, and household needs) from independent contractors makes it an on-demand solution since the app works 24 hours a day without day-offs.
Gorillas
When one needs some items “just yesterday”, Gorillas can save the situation. They specialize in deliveries within 10 minutes. After placing the order in the app, the driver goes to the distribution center and delivers the paper bag with groceries by bike to your threshold. The shortcoming of the service is a limited territory of work and a poor assortment of goods.
The features to consider when you’re planning to conquer a grocery delivery niche
Sort out the functionality that the product is expected to include. As a rule, the core features coincide in various products of this type, though you can oversee some unique alternatives. Here’s the option that the buyers get used to discovering in the service.
Sign-up page
To take the visitors onboard, a grocery app usually invites users to fill in the registration form. Refrain from irritating people with the complicated variants of joining the app: respect their time/effort. Let them get signed up just with the number of telephones, email, or social media.
User profile
The personal space in the app where one can add private data: address for delivery, bank cards for paying, and telephone/messengers for fast and easy connection. Here the user can get acquainted with his story of purchases and personal reviews he left.
Catalog
Like virtual shop shelves, the catalog equips users with the opportunity to examine the assortment and select what they want. It can be described as the collection of previews: pictures of products that are available for purchasing or ordering in advance.
Product cards
By clicking a definite card in the catalog, the buyer opens it and examines the offer’s details. The product card informs the user about the price, weight, location of manufacturers, packaging, shipping details, etc.
Search bar and filters
The user can be lost among the plethora of offerings by jumping into the grocery app. A search bar with filtering functionality is the tool for managing the choice. Navigating the catalog with the setting of certain limitations (categories, brands), the buyer finds what he needs.
Ratings & reviews
The opinion of previous clients can motivate or demotivate customers to buy something in the app. The freedom to assess the experience and give scores to definite products facilitates growing the trust in the business and helps people to get consulting on the goods firsthand.
A shopping cart
Standard functionality for checking the set of selected items and managing them: adding, multiplying, deleting, and changing.
Payment functionality
A simple and easy checkout process facilitates increasing conversion: fewer shopping carts will be left halfway if the user doesn’t feel embarrassed with the conditions of the service.
Delivery scheduling
It’s sometimes necessary to manage the time of delivery: arm users with the functionality. By making your grocery app more flexible, you’ll get more loyalty and attract people who appreciate a customer-focused approach.
Order status & tracking
Don’t make customers suffer from uncertainty: get them rid of anxiety by monitoring the state of their order.
In order to strengthen the app, you can add video reviews, a rating system or something else to the app. But the basic set of elements is depicted above.
6 steps towards bringing idea to life
The ladder leading to the launch of a grocery app is constructed from six steps.
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Analyzing the market
Examine pros and cons of solutions people use at the moment: note which strengths can be emulated and how the weaknesses can be escaped or changed for better alternatives.
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Selecting the set of functionalities of the product
Leaning on the conclusions you’ve got from analyzing the competitors/economic and social trends/innovative technologies, describe the main features that should be performed in the grocery app.
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Devising the prototype
In close collaboration with the UI UX design team, you’ll agree on the user flow and confirm the samples of visual implementation. As a result, you’ll assess the look of the grocery app and the convenience of navigating through it.
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Converting the prototype into an MVP
Order the development services if you’re satisfied with the graphical version of the product. Focus on the core set of functionality in order to launch an MVP.
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Analyzing feedback
When the real users can evaluate the design and convenience of the grocery app, you’re supplied with precious data: which changes for improvements can be performed. If there’s a lion’s share of coinciding suggestions, pay attention to the trendy customers’ desires.
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Polishing the product
Oversee the budget for maintenance/support and implementing the improvements and additional features in the app. Regular updates guarantee a smooth and bug-free work.
Monetization strategies
Since you aim to make riches with your grocery app, project the schemes for earnings in advance. The spectrum of tools is diverse:
In-app purchases – offer to customers recipe books written by famous chefs, firm species, or something else.
Subscriptions – people are willing to pay for timely deliveries and get some other benefits. The membership can provide them with better discounts or conditions of delivery like same-day delivery, zero-charge delivery, etc.
Charging fees per delivery – open access to separate orders with the opportunity to get groceries in the footsteps.
Third-Party Advertising – gives the opportunity to non-competitive companies to expose their goods/services to your customer base and charge for promotion.
In summary
As you see, there are various variants for making the app profitable. Experiment with the formats in order to figure out the most suitable way for your solution.
In any way, the product you’ll deliver to the market isn’t a final version of a digital business: it is just the first step in the long business journey with myriads of findings and insights.
