Ride-sharing App: Features and how to build it
The individuals who live in huge cosmopolitan urban areas with occupied traffic and absence of parking spot, decline to possess vehicles for rideshare companies like Uber & Lyft. Popularity for individual vehicle rides makes business visionaries. We think about how to make an application like Uber and effectively dispatch it on nearby business sectors or even around the world.
Also, Uber-like application improvement is by all accounts a sensible move for business people as well as transport organizations too. The market of ridesharing applications has never been so full as in the ongoing years. New applications keep springing up, warmed by Uber and it’s a gigantic achievement, in the longing to get a bit of a pie.
Uber is a technology platform that connects drivers and riders. From the taxi app development perspective, there is a key functionality that you have to focus on:
Key Elements
Passenger App | Driver App | Admin Panel | Analytics
How Does Uber Work?
If you need to make an application like Uber, you ought to know about how the business work at the end-user. The general application execution can appear in 5 straightforward steps:
Request- The customer requests a car instantly or on schedule via the app. Those requests are received by drivers nearby.
Matching- The driver may either accept or reject the ride. If they reject it, the request is sent to another driver.
Ride- The customer tracks the taxi approach and knows the estimated time of arrival.
Payment- The cashless way of payment and the price estimated beforehand make this process smoother for both parties.
Rating- It’s an important component of Uber’s business logic which enhances the service reliability.
Technology Behind the App Like Uber
While Uber app serves a million travelers every day, there is a lot of technology work going behind the app to support its systems. One of the key technologies used in this taxi booking app is Geolocation and since it is built on both iOS and Android platforms, it uses different technologies for both the mobile application platforms.
Maps and Location
The technology of GPS tracking is used to identify the current location, find cars & track the way. Besides, the perfect journey tracking gives the actual estimation.
In-app Payments
Having an app without a payment gateway solution fully compliant and working fine is the same thing as having a Tesla car without a battery. Inbuilt payments allow a user to pay for the ride right from the app. The current technology also enables transferring money between drivers on mobile.
If you want to process credit card payments directly from your clients, you need to use a payment service such as Stripe, Braintree, PayU, or Hyper Pay that partially does the job for you. The integration of such payment options involves technical complexity that consumes numerous hours and resources which can lead to an increase in app cost.
Built-in module to collect fees from drivers
Paying the driver in cashless installments using the driver’s credit cards is a must. The system should allow you to make your own rules: set up how, when, and how much fees you want to get from your drivers. Create multiple subscription plans, select a billing cycle, and forget about manual paperwork. The system handles payments automatically.
The driver has access to the current balance, subscription details, top-up features, and a list of transactions.
Smart analytics system
Doing your business with no analytical data is like driving a car with your eyes closed. Get numbers, analyze them every month or day, and improve your business accordingly.
Having the information about every bit of your business in well-presented reports will help you see where your business needs some improvements and where it is doing good. Track the number of orders, booking sources, assigned vs missed orders (yes, you need to track that).
Make decisions ONLY based on real numbers!
The integration of those “invisible features” can take a 10–20% additional budget.
Profiles
The basic requirement of authorization has various reasons. First, for online payment, it is necessary. Also, details like, driver name contact number, profile pic, license details can be added.
It chooses ratings & reviews more personalized. After all, a driver and a customer also can share and see their contact details to have smooth communication between them.
Communication
When you build the first app, push notifications and in-app messages are a must to inform passengers and drivers about news and campaigns that you may have for them.
Dispatch and Tracking Panel
Web-based panel with google maps to take phone bookings, manage taxis, drivers, and assign trips. It also allows company owners to track drivers with their status, track orders created from passenger apps, and web desk.
API — required to communicate between apps and pass messages to and from the ‘call center’.
Here are some OTHER features that need to be developed, to build an application like Uber:
- Fare calculator
- Split payments
- Vehicle selection
- Interactive map and taxi tracking
- Referral program
- Trip history
- Coupons
- Reports
- Navigation
Determining Cost
You see there are lots of features that need to be taken care of before project cost estimation. As said, the final cost of your Uber-like app is highly dependant on various factors and your personal preferences. Many functions and their complexity are negotiable.
An MVP with basic features can be accomplished in approx 10,000 USD from Asian Market.
Few Parting thoughts
The taxi-booking companies like Uber and Lyft are solidly positioned in the business and keep on working forcefully on worldwide development, there’s still a lot of space for new players to advance. By recognizing a specialty and concentrating on the one of a kind incentive, they can make a productive adaptation technique.
New players should consistently prepare for exact features and functionalities, which is profoundly likely halfway through item advancement. This can be done by freezing the requirements or by picking to assemble an MVP first to find out item possibility and reaction.
