Uber is an online rides booking app. This ride-sharing idea paved the way for many others organizations to develop an app like Uber.The main idea behind Uber’s popularity is its convenient, simple, and adaptive service. Large cities with huge and heavy traffic degraded the idea of own cars in favor of rideshare services like Uber.
111 million people used Uber monthly in 2019 but, covid 19 and lockdowns made a decrease in the number of uber users. The number of users decreased from 111 to 93 million. Online ride booking has witnessed a huge surge in the past few years. Uber is the one that gained huge popularity in the last few years.
If you are looking to start building an app like Uber. Then this article may help you start your journey. In this article, we are going to analyze the important features, the best approaches to developing uber like app, and the business model of the Uber-like app.
HOW DOES UBER APP OPERATE
Currently, Uber is functional in 84 countries and over 800 cities providing a 24-hour-per-day service to facilitate mobility between riders and drivers. A rider books an online drive request by using the uber app. The driver accepts the request and reaches the location by using the geolocation feature. After finishing the trip, the rider has to pay the fare generated by the app according to the distance covered. An important feature of this app is, a rider can rate the performance of the app at the end of the ride and can describe his experience. Here are a few steps involved in the processing of the uber app.
STEPS INVOLVED IN THE RIDE PROCESS
Step 1: A rider makes a ride request using the Uber app.
Step 2: Passenger adds the pickup location.
Step 3: The nearest driver accepts the rider’s request and reaches the given location. If the ride is refused by the driver, the app will ultimately assign another nearest driver.
Step 4: Payment method is totally auto-generated based on the distance covered by the driver.
Step 5: Passengers rate drivers according to the quality of services provided, and drivers rate passengers according to the behavior of passengers. This is how Uber provides the best experience to both kinds of users.
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HOW UBER CAME INTO BEING
The story of Uber started in Paris, in 2009. Where Uber Technology was founded by two friends. These two friends Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp were leading partners behind this idea. The idea of Uber came from a conference held on a winter night. When a couple of friends was unable to find a cab. Uber quickly gained popularity to become the world’s most valuable ride-sharing application. Within the first 6 months of its launch, the no of users reached 20,000. Now, the company facilitates more than 10 million rides every day and provides services to approximately 50 million users worldwide.
ATTRIBUTES NEEDED TO DEVELOP UBER-LIKE APP
While planning to develop an app like Uber, your focus should not be on the features of Uber, try to introduce some advanced and novel features into your app. That attracts people more than Uber. Some of the basic features are given below to develop an app like Uber.
As we have experienced Uber, Uber provides services to two types of users: riders and drivers.
Riders features:
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- Pick up a location from an interactive map featured with geolocation
- Use the estimated fare calculator to know the estimated fare according to the distance per km.
- Confirmation of the ride from the nearest driver.
- Track the driver’s movements status through the geolocation feature.
- Payment for a ride via online money transfer or cash.
- Giving a review of the ride driver and providing a riding experience.
Driver features:
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- Accepting the nearest passenger’s request for a ride
- Get geolocation instructions on how to reach the passenger.
- At the end of the ride, the driver receives the fare from each trip and rates passengers.
Here are some basic features for creating a rideshare app.
FEATURES TO ADD IN RIDESHARING APP
User signup & sign in | Adding these features allow users to sign up and sign in with email, phone number, and social media.. |
Car booking | This feature shows users an interactive map to provide their exact address, specify the pickup location, choose the type of car, etc. |
Fare calculation | Passengers can calculate the estimated price of the ride before booking. The price is depending on different factors. |
Driver tracking | This feature allows users to track the movement of their car and see the estimated time of arrival. |
Payment | Uber comes up with various online payment methods to pay the fare by using a credit card, debit card, and PayPal account. |
Push notifications | This is a tool to keep users informed about the status of the driver, time of car arrival, and other details. Both parties can communicate with each other via messages to know the status of the ride. |
Driver rating & review | you can add this feature to allow the passengers to rate each riding experience and, provide them the best quality of services. |
Customer Support | This feature is facilitated by the development team to resolve any issues faced by the passengers. |
Advanced features to add in an app like Uber
Besides basic features, you can add some additional advanced features to attract an audience for your app.
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- Pickup location – this feature can help you to automatically find a driver based on a passenger’s location. The app automatically picks up the location of the rider.
- Ride cancellation – A passenger can cancel a ride for free, but only within the first 5 minutes after booking a request. If a passenger gets late a little longer, they have to pay $5-$10 for each canceled ride.
- Book for others –By using this feature passengers can book ride for friends and relatives without switching their accounts.
- Discounts – this is the most distinctive feature of this app which provides them with discounts based on mileage, offers coupons, etc.
- Waiting list – at peak hours, when there are a lot of requests in the queue, passengers can add their requests to the waiting list. once the requests of the first ones in the queue would be fulfilled, the last ones will be facilitated. But, it may be a time taking process.
How much an Uber like app can cost?
If you are pondering to calculate the estimated cost of an app like Uber. The cost may depend on different aspects of the app. For instance the app functionality, complexity, and feature that you want to integrate into your app. Taking into account these features the app cost may be estimated between $60,000 to $120,000. There are a lot of factors that contribute to the estimated cost of an app. In the USA, the average cost of app development services is around $100/hour.
Technologies required to Building An Uber-like App
Geolocation
Geolocation is very important similar to Uber. Therefore, an app similar to Uber would rely heavily on navigation and mapping technologies. That can identify the location of the user’s device, using Google’s API locators in Android devices and CoreLocation framework for iOS mobile devices. GPS technology is mandatory to detect someone’s location.
PAYMENT INTEGRATION
Uber provides a fare calculator feature. That provides an accurate fare and gives the user a highly accurate estimation of how much the ride would cost according to the distance covered by the driver. In addition, to facilitate a customer, an online card payment option for the fare is mandatory. Every country’s payment policy methods tend to vary.
COMMUNICATION CHANNEL
Furthermore, to retain a smooth flow of service a proper communication channel is very important. Therefore, messages and direct communication between passengers and drivers are very important that should be insured by the app. It keeps both parties updated with the recent situation during the period of the ride. A passenger can text the driver at any time during the ride to know the current location and the estimated time of arrival. Similarly, if the driver faces any problem in finding the pickup location he can confirm the exact location of the passenger via text message.
UI/UX Design
Usually, the cost of app development varies from design to design. Ridesharing apps are client-based so, they have to be designed with beautiful and easy-to-use UI/UX. The design is representative of the whole app, if it is user-friendly and hassle-free it would go beyond. The visual aspects and graphics should be attractive, eye-catching, and stunning.
SIMILAR CASES THAT FOLLOWED THE STEPS OF UBER
After Uber gained sudden popularity many apps started to follow the steps of Uber. some of them are given below.
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- food delivery services from local restaurants
- Transportation services
- Delivery services for online products
- On-demand home repair and cleaning services
CONCLUSION
The first thing is to determine which features can distinguish your app from other existing apps. Connect with highly skilled and experienced developers to code your software. Look for experienced development companies that can provide you with an innovative idea to develop an app. In order to compete with the competitors, a robust overview of existing apps is mandatory to prevent any negative feedback.