Taxi apps are mushrooming everywhere. With the popularity of Taxi apps like Uber, investing in a nice taxi app, is on the mind of almost every other businessman, whether small or big. You can be either a first-time investor, who wants to foray into the taxi business; or a established taxi business owner who wants to revamp his business.
From the customer’s point of view, taxi apps have come as a huge boon in terms of ease of commute and flexibility. Naturally you as the owner would try to entice the common man with great customer service and earn huge profits.
With the rise in competition, arises threats and challenges. Recently one of the Taxi app company was in the news for all the wrong reasons. The cab drivers were using a driver app solution to dig up freebies offered by the company without serving any passengers and raking moolahs in the process!
You don’t want your taxi business go through a similar fate and would like to make your app extra secure. At the same time you would like your app to be as popular as Uber, if not less.
Before jumping the bandwagon, know that the app is actually composed of three different parts. Uber comes with a driver, passenger and owner’s admin dashboard.
Passenger app – required by customers to book a taxi.
Driver app – required by drivers to get orders from passengers and ride them to their destination.
Admin dashboard – required by the owner to schedule the dispatches.
The taxi app solution should be compatible with both iOS and Android platforms. Additional, the server has to be bought.
Features a taxi app should have
Below are the features that the app should have. Needless to say, the cost will rise as you keep adding more features to your app.
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1) Real-Time Tracking
Having a real-time tracking solution, is the primary requirement for an Uber-like app. The technology of Google maps and GPS tracking is used to identify the current location, find cars & track the route. Besides, the perfect route tracking, gives the actual fair and distance estimation.
2) In-app Payments
Next comes requirement of a fully compliant payment gateway solution. Inbuilt payment system allows a user to pay the exact amount for the ride, right from the app. You may also make payment to your drivers through the mobile.
3) Built-in Collector
Collection of fee from the drivers should be a paperless process and one way of doing this is to pay them in cashless installments. You may ask your drivers for subscribing to a plan and then choose a billing cycle. The built-in fee collector allows you to automatically collect the fee from the drivers and minimize the human interaction between drivers and the company for fee collection.
The driver in turn gets access to current balance in his account, subscription details, top-up features and the list of transactions.
4) Smart analytics
You should have proper information about your entire business to see where your business needs some improvements and where it is doing good. Smart analytics, helps you to track number of orders, booking sources, assigned vs missed orders through various reports.
5) Communication
Your app should have push notifications and in-app messages facility, to inform passengers and drivers about news and campaigns you may have for them.
6) Profiles
Your app should have an authorized profile. This is required for a number of reasons. First, for online payment it is a necessary. Other details like, driver name, his contact number, profile pic, license details can be added. This will help in making the ratings & reviews more personalised both from driver and customer end.
7) Dispatch and Tracking Panel
A fleet management system should be created to take phone bookings, manage the taxi drivers, assign them trips by tracking orders created from the passenger apps and web desk.
Image source: taxistartup.com
8) Maintenance
Lastly comes the maintenance part without which the app is not complete. A team of dedicated developers should be available for maintenance of your app, apply changes related to new interfaces, SDKs etc.
Here are some additional features that you may include in your app:
- Fare calculator
- Split payments
- Vehicle selection
- Interactive map and taxi tracking
- Referral program
- Trip history
- Coupons
- Extended analytics
- Reports
- Navigation
Conclusion
To be or not the next Uber is your choice. But the fact is – you cannot make an Uber-like app overnight. If you really want to make it successful, you have to look at the technology stacks that your taxi app developer uses.