Taxi App Development: Extensive Guide with All Steps Covered

 

The market of taxi booking apps has been on the rise for a few years.

In 2022, the revenue in the taxi and ride-hailing segment is projected to reach $314 billion. The revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate of 5.30% in the following four years and reach $386 billion by 2026.

Uber, one of the most popular taxi riding apps, made $14.46 billion in revenue in 2021, which made it the biggest taxi app in the world. Lyft follows suit with $3.2 billion.

We have prepared the following steps of the Taxi app development:

CONDUCT MARKET RESEARCH

First of all, decide what type of app you are going to develop. You can create a dedicated taxi booking app – an app for an already existing taxi business or an aggregator taxi booking app like Uber or Lyft.

After you’ve identified your niche, take a look at the market and evaluate the situation. Market analysis will help you identify your USP (Unique Value Proposition) before you invest in taxi mobile app development.

MAKE COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

Market analysis will help you identify your USP (Unique Value Proposition) before you invest in taxi mobile app development.

Look through your future competitors, analyze their strong and weak points. Try to identify features that they lack, areas that they don’t cover and identify how you can make your app better.

VALIDATE AN APP IDEA

The analysis should encompass market research and communication with the target audience. You can make polls to ask the audience about their pains, what existing solutions on the market lack, and what features they’d like to have in a taxi application.

This information will help to form an app idea and create a USP that will meet user demands.

Business Model Canvas is one of the ways to organize all the information gathered during market research. Business model canvas usually consists of nine blocks:

·         Key partners

·         Key activities

·         Value proposition (for drivers, for passengers)

·         Channels

·         Customer segments (drivers, passengers)

·         Customer relationships

·         Cost structure

·         Revenues

CREATE APP DESIGN

App design is the first thing users see when they open your app. In fact, they see it even before opening an app by looking at the app icon.

Mobile app design usually covers two parts of the app: User experience (UX),User interface (UI).

During car booking app development, you should create an app that not only looks great but also meets the best design practices. Google has Material Design Guidelines and Apple has Human Interface Guidelines that provide designers with guidelines on how to create user-friendly mobile applications.

DECIDE ON FEATURES

The next step of taxi app development is deciding on the set of features that an app will offer. The feature set will be divided into three interconnected parts:

·         Features for drivers

·         Features for passengers

·         Features for admins

CHOOSE A TECHNOLOGY STACK

Now that you know what features you want to implement during cab booking app development, it’s time to decide on the technology stack for your application.

CHOOSE MONETIZATION STRATEGY

There are different monetization strategies that you can implement and we reviewed some of the most important ones below.

·         Commission

This monetization model implies carding drivers with a service fee for every ride they perform. The commission may vary from 20 to 25 percent.

·         Cancellation fee

You can also charge users a cancellation fee every time they can cancel a ride.

·         Advertising

You can run ads in your taxi application, charging for every view or cost per click.

·         Third-party promotions

A great example of third-party promotions is used in Uber when the company partners with famous brands and promotes their services or products. Users can receive some bonuses or gifts from brands that work with your application.

START APP DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Before you start taxi app development, you need to find a company that will perform all technical tasks. There are numerous taxi app development companies that you can choose from. Clutch, The Manifest, GoodFirms, and other review platforms are great starting points in your research.

Choosing between companies, keep in mind the difference in taxi app development cost based on the region of outsourcing.

For example, hourly rates for taxi app development services in the USA are around $150-200. The same services cost a lot less in Europe – around $50 per hour. At the same time, choosing Europe you don’t need to sacrifice quality for cost-efficiency. 

LAUNCH THE APP & PLAN FOR ONGOING DEVELOPMENT

After the app is ready, you’ll need to submit it to app marketplaces and launch to the market. A taxi booking app development company usually takes on such tasks so you don’t need to worry about it. So, you won’t need to worry about the technical side of the app launch.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO DEVELOP A TAXI APP?

Let’s move on to the most important question – cost.

Taxi app development cost ranges between $100,00 to $170,000 for one platform (iOS or Android). The more platforms and features you can, the higher the development cost.

As mentioned before, development cost highly depends on the outsourcing location. By choosing countries outside the USA, especially in Europe, you can create two app versions – for iOS and Android – while in the USA the same sum will allow you to build only one version of a taxi application.

Read more about Taxi App Development.