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COVID-19 caused a surprising rise in the popularity of Grocery apps, which led business owners to invest in this market and elevate their business growth. Grocery apps save customers’ time and deliver a convenient shopping experience. 

Grocery apps are one of the fastest-growing types of apps in the United States, with 30.4 million users (and increasing) in 2022, as per a report shared by Statista.  

Leading brands like Instacart, Kroger, and Walmart Grocery are already leveraging the grocery app features, and now it is your turn to flourish your business. 

This blog post is a complete guide on grocery app development. 

Benefits of Developing a Grocery App

• Uplifts the Business

Business growth is every enterprise owner’s priority because it helps them reach customers globally. With the help of mobile apps, businesses can gain a 24*7 online presence, letting customers order grocery items anytime, from anywhere. Grocery app, in return, helps in elevating an online grocery store’s success in terms of customer-base and revenues. 

• Better Scalability

Scalability is imperative for every grocery app’s success. A scalable grocery app can help in accommodating the business growth, deliver a flawless online shopping experience, and provide a better return on investment (ROI). 

Most importantly, grocery apps with better scalability are future-ready, leaving room for upcoming updates and making the user experience smoother. 

• Tracking Customer Behavior

Do you know the best way of enhancing the user experience? Understanding the customer’s preferences, buying patterns and customizing the search filters accordingly. 

The grocery app lets you achieve everything as it keeps a record of customer behavior at every phase. Tracking the customer behavior helps in restocking or reducing the unsold stock.  

• Easy Inventory Management

Businesses can manage their inventory and orders efficiently from the app. In other words, a grocery shopping app is economical because it stores everything in the app, from ordering to transaction history. 

Grocery apps also let businesses set alert messages at the time of stockouts and overstocking. 

Top 3 Business Models of Grocery App

• Aggregator Grocery Business Model

The aggregator is a network model where an intermediator (or a middleman) collects the data from a vendor for the offerings of goods and signs a contract. Customers can place an order from the listed stores, and later the aggregator handles the delivery part. 

An intermediator helps the vendors market their products and reach potential customers. Instacart is one of the greatest examples of an aggregator Grocery Business Model. 

• Inventory Grocery Business Model

In this model, the business owner buys an inventory to store their grocery items and deliver the products through a delivery partner. 

The business owners with an inventory model monitor the produced goods; overall, they record the inventory, directly communicate with the customer, and ensure on-time delivery. FreshDirect is an example of an inventory-based business model.

• Omnichannel Grocery Business Model

Omnichannel delivers a customer-oriented shopping experience across brick-and-mortar and online storefronts. The model ensures that businesses reach potential customers across all the possible channels with unified messages and cohesive visuals. 

In other words, the omnichannel grocery business model bridges the gap between online and offline stores by offering customers multiple choices and great flexibility. Walmart Grocery is one of the successful examples of the omnichannel grocery business model. 

Key Features in Grocery Mobile App Development

Admin Panel

• Dashboard

A dashboard allows admins to manage grocery items, track orders, handle transactions, delivery partners, and much more.

• Manage Vendors

The admin can add and manage multiple vendors easily.

• Feedback Management

Admins manage the feedback and ratings shared by customers to maintain the store’s authenticity. 

• Ad Manager

Admin approves/refuses the ad, looks after its positioning, optimizes the ad revenue, and access report. 

• Customer Management

Admins can manage and track the customer profile details along with their buying pattern, order, and transaction history. 

• Tax Management

The admin can define and manage the tax label & percentage. 

• Store & Delivery Boy Earning

Admins can manage and track each store and delivery partner’s overall earnings and commission reports. 

• Delivery Manager

This feature lets admins add and manage the delivery partner for effortless order delivery. 

• Coupon Management Module

Admins provide exciting offers or discounts to regular customers. 

• Chat Support

Admins deliver continuous customer support for an excellent online grocery shopping experience.

Vendor Panel

• Login/Signup

Vendors need to sign up or login into the grocery app to get complete access. 

• Separate Dashboard

Vendors have a dashboard that manages the orders, payments and assigns delivery partners.

• Shop Management

With the shop management feature, vendors can manage the unstocking or restocking of the grocery items. 

• Ad Manager

Vendors can run their ads for brand awareness wherein they give an ad a name, select a particular set of audiences, decide the ad budget, and placements within the available slots. 

• Sales Report Management

In sales report management, vendors look after the overall sales and see how much profit they have earned. 

• Delivery Slots Management

Vendors manage the delivery slots by seeing the availability of grocery items and delivery agents. Later, they proceed with the order accordingly. 

Customer Panel

• Login/Signup

Registration and login is the first step for the user to interact with the app.

• Auto-Detect Location

With the auto-detect location feature, users can detect the nearby grocery store to shop.

• Order Placement

Once the user finds their preferred grocery store, h/she can place the order from the app. 

• Delivery Schedule

With the delivery schedule feature, users can plan a specific time from the calendar to receive an order at their convenience.

• Multiple Payment Options

Multiple payment gateways let users select a payment method as per their choice, whether it is credit/debit card, net banking, digital wallets, or cash on delivery (COD).

• Order Tracking

The feature keeps the users aware of the order’s status from time to time via push notifications or SMS. 

• Order Refund/Cancellation Requests

If the user wants to cancel any order for any reason, h/she can simply cancel the order and get a refund.

Delivery Panel

• Profile Management

The delivery partners can manage their profile with information, like name, phone number, and employee id. 

• Define Delivery Radius

Delivery partners have a defined circular delivery area to see the orders for the nearby location and accept them. 

• Route Navigation

Route navigation helps the delivery agents to navigate the directions of the customer’s location and get the best route with minimal traffic. 

• Delivery Order Management

It notifies the delivery partners about the deliveries to be made and the order number associated with the customer’s details. 

Top 5 Grocery Mobile Apps

• Kroger 

Kroger launched its app in 2010 based on the omnichannel grocery business model. The store operates 2,726 grocery retail stores in 35 states and has headquarters in Ohio, United States. Kroger has generated revenue worth $132.5 billion in 2020. 

Features:

• Use Kroger’s locator to find the nearby Kroger store.
• Users can now refill their Kroger Pharmacy prescriptions directly from their phone/tab.

• Instacart 

Instacart is an American company founded in 2012. It is based on the aggregator grocery business model with operating grocery delivery & pickup service in the United States and Canada. In apps like Instacart, customers can view, select, and purchase the grocery item from their preferred store. The company was valued at $1.5 billion in 2020. 

Features:

• Use Group Carts to shop together with family & friends easily. 
• View nutritional information & filter by your diet type.

• Shipt 

Founded in 2014, Shipt is an aggregator-based grocery business model headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. Apps like Shipt enable a smooth delivery from various vendors through smartphones, available on Android and iOS. Shipt generated $1.0 billion in revenue in 2018.

Features:

• Discover curated seasonal product offerings. 
• Message your shopper to add special requests to your order. 

• Walmart Grocery 

Walmart Grocery is an American multinational grocery store founded in 2012 with headquarters in Arkansas, United States. It is an omnichannel grocery business model, meaning it has both online as well as brick-and-mortar stores. Walmart has its own delivery services, delivering a flawless user experience. The grocery business model has generated $572.8 billion so far. 

Features:

• • Use the barcode scanner to check prices and add items to your shopping list quickly.
  • Quickly reorder routine items and schedule your curbside pickup or delivery.

  • Thrive Market 

Thrive Market is an inventory-based grocery business model established in 2014 with headquarters in Los Angeles, California. It is an American eCommerce membership-based retail shop providing natural and organic food items. Thrive Market aims to streamline the supply chain by eradicating the markups, mainly applied by physical stores. 

Features:

• Offers full-size, premium products every week. 
• Products are curated to ensure that they don’t contain any uncertain ingredients.

Steps to Build a Grocery App Development in 2022

• Discovery Phase

The discovery phase begins with market research as it is imperative to comprehend the competitor’s insights and user preferences. Business owners can also define a grocery app’s opportunities and reflect on the existing solutions.  

Businesses can consider the following questions to determine the grocery app opportunities:

• What is the outcome you are expecting from a grocery app?
• How are your competitors meeting the customer’s demands?
• Which technology do you think is best for developing your grocery app?
• What are the areas of improvement for better business growth?

• App Prototyping

Once the discovery phase is completed, business owners can proceed with app prototyping. In this phase, business owners get a mockup of the grocery app before finalizing it. Grocery app prototyping aims to exhibit app designs that avoid expensive rework.  

In the app prototyping, app designers create a wireframe of the grocery app telling how the users will interact with the app. Wireframing is a simple layout of the app involving research, mapping out user flow, sketching, and later, adding details. 

• Minimum Viable Product 

After app prototyping, businesses can decide whether they should develop a minimum viable product (MVP) to see how the grocery app will benefit the users. An MVP ensures that only essential features are built to address the user’s problem and satisfy early adopters. 

The MVP of the grocery app includes core features and functionalities and tests how potential users will respond to the app. In other words, the MVP is the basic version that analyzes the grocery app’s usefulness and functional performance in the market. 

In short, the minimum viable product can act as a fundamental model of your grocery app to meet the business’s primary goal. 

• Begin the App Development Process

The grocery app development process can now start with a complete set of features. Business owners pick a suitable platform to develop a grocery app to meet expectations and stay competitive. 

In this stage, businesses choose the right technology stack and technical architecture to build high-end grocery apps to deliver an excellent user experience. 

The grocery app development includes three crucial aspects, back-end, Application Programming Interface (API), and front-end. 

• The back-end includes a database and a server-side object supporting the grocery app functions.
• The application programming interface (API) is an intermediate between the app and the back-end. 
• The front-end is everything a user experiences on the grocery app. In simple words, the front-end is where an end-user will interact with the grocery app.

• Mobile App Testing

After developing the grocery app, ensure to test it properly to minimize the risk of any bugs, glitches, and other technical issues. It is imperative to test the grocery app in all the possible scenarios, like what are the most used devices, user’s location, and other aspects. 

The quality assurance (QA) team follows well-thought security practices to assure the grocery app’s stability, reliability, and usability. 

The main areas of grocery app testing include:

• Functional Testing

This stage consists of test installation, app launch, business functionality, etc. The QA team verifies if the grocery app functions correctly and focuses on the user’s feedback and operations after app updates.

• Usability Testing

The quality assurance team looks for bugs affecting the functions of the grocery app, like the menu, buttons, navigation system, app size, color, images, zoom-in & zoom-out modes, text readability, etc. 

• Graphical User Interface Testing

At this stage, the app testing team checks the functioning of the app’s interface at different screen sizes, app compatibility with various devices, functions of the app design, or app elements in landscape & portrait mode.  

• Compatibility Testing

The QA team performs cross-platform testing across mobile devices and network configuration in this stage. 

• Application Security Testing

It is the last stage, where the quality assurance team looks for the errors that might affect the app’s functionality or the vulnerability of data breaching, viruses entrance to crack the application and more. 

• App Launch & Maintenance

After app testing, business owners can now launch their grocery apps on App Store or Play Store. They need to create an account in any store they are planning to launch the grocery app. 

Afterward, put an app title with descriptive keywords, and add app screenshots to show users the grocery app’s insides. 

Business owners can also ensure post-app launch maintenance to enhance the existing features or services and make them as per the user’s expectations. 

Revenue Model for Grocery App

• Paid Membership

Grocery store owners can launch paid membership or premium subscriptions wherein the customer can pay a nominal fee per month. 

With the launch of this feature, businesses can generate higher revenues, get more reliable income, and keep their potential audience engaged, leading to better business growth. 

Most importantly, a subscription-based grocery app helps business owners earn customer loyalty by making them feel valued. 

• Commission on Transaction and Delivery

Another significant revenue model for grocery apps is commission on each transaction and delivery. The commission model is chargeable to the vendor on each sale they make on the grocery app. 

As a result, the grocery app owner can earn according to the sales taking place on their app. 

On the other hand, the buyer’s commission is chargeable for every purchase and delivery. The commission gets credited to the grocery app owner as soon as the order gets completed. 

• In-App Advertising

One of the greatest sources of generating revenue from a grocery app is letting vendors run their personalized advertisements through banners and other special schemes on the app. Admins can charge vendors for the extra used space and the number of campaigns running on the app. 

How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Grocery App Development?

The grocery app development cost varies on several factors, and some of them are listed below:

1. Picking the suitable app development platform
2. Integrating core app features and functionalities
3. Creating aesthetically-pleasing app design
4. Taking best security practices
5. Focusing on app testing
6. Providing post-app launch maintenance and support

In short, the grocery app development cost entirely depends on its type and how unique a grocery app you want to stay competitive. 

You can get a no-obligation consultation from us to get precise details. 

Final Thoughts

Developing a mobile app is one of the best ways to foster brand recognition. As a result, many store owners invest in a grocery app development company to boost their online presence and reach customers easily.

With grocery apps, you can attract the targeted audience by offering valuable services to flourish your business. 

We hope you found this blog helpful! 

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