7 Must-Haves to Consider While Developing Apps for Logistics

What is the Logistics Tracking App?

The word logistics came from the military. It refers to the movement of equipment and supplies from one place to another in a systematic manner. 

The logistics tracking app refers to the tool that keeps the record of your deliveries, payments, and orders all under one umbrella. It works to optimize your resources to get the maximum output with minimum efforts. The logistics app is not only suitable for on demand delivery apps but is equally effective for transportation, warehousing, truck logistics apps, and many more.

Any app that keeps the record of your resources and optimizes them for the best productivity could be considered as a logistics app. Apps for logistics don’t need to confine to the business owners. It is equally helpful for the middle-men and end-users that we will learn in a later section.

Importance of Apps for Logistics

When you are in the delivery, transportation, or warehouse business, you need to be in constant touch with what activities are being carried out. These activities directly relate to chain and supply management whether you deal in stocks or not. 

The good business owner should know where their services are being demanded, what is the action plan for it, and how their services are working for revenues. The logistics tracking app keeps the record of all this 24×7 without much of a hassle.

There is a sudden rise in on-demand delivery app and services, especially due to COVID19. Consumers want everything at home as it makes them feel safe and time-saving. With logistic app development, your app serves the purpose of efficient and effective delivery of product/service.

Let us learn about these reasons briefly and why you should go for the logistics app development.

1. Better Customer Service

With an on demand logistics app, you are able to attend to the orders of your customers quickly. This improves customer satisfaction levels. The customer can have easy access to their order with respect to tracking. Also, if they are not available to receive the order/parcel, they can simply communicate or reschedule delivery as per their convenience. 

Through the logistics tracking app, you would be able to manage all on demand requirements of the customer without disturbing the whole process chain.

2. Brings Assurity

In on demand delivery apps, people are afraid of failed deliveries. Customers do not want to buy the product or service from a brand that does not mention the details of delivery. 

With the transport and logistics app, you are able to share the data related to the route, order ID, and expected time of arrival. This gives customer assurance and chances of using your product and service more.

3. Continuous Attention

In one of the surveys by medium.com, it was found that more than 57% of people use mobile devices for business operations and on-demand logistics app is a great help. With help from them, the business owner can keep a constant eye over the current proceedings happening in the business.

 Logistics tracking app shows the complete detail of requested orders, attended requests, payments, shipment process, and revenues all under one platform. This makes the business owner confident with his product/service.

4. Professional Decorum

The logistics app development is done not only to optimize business activities but also to bring symmetry and professionalism to the nature of the business. With the logistics tracking app, there is a continuous update about the activities that are under function. 

Also, from the customer’s point of view, when they get all details about their order, its shipment, and the estimated time of arrival. It shows the efficiency of your brand. The continuous effectiveness and efficiency give the impression of a professional company to the users.

5. Cost Saving

Transportation and delivery is a hectic process. You need several people to act as a middleman between the customer and the dealer for smooth functioning. This often creates chaos and requires a big man force to handle the task smoothly.

With the logistics tracking app, you cut the middleman off. This keeps the communication clear and saves you a lot of money. 

6. Reduces Paperwork

Go green with your business. It saves time and also a tiresome journalizing process. In apps for logistics, you can track the invoices, receipts of payments, and your order records online. There is no need to feed everything written over the paper. The logistics tracking app does that all automatically.

Apart from tracking, the logistics app development is done to cater needs of the business and industry that includes lots of transactions and shifting of pieces of equipment. It is not necessarily restricted to the retail and food industry. Though, on-demand delivery apps for food are in a boom for demand. But apps for logistics is also heavily demanded in the following sectors

7 Must-Haves to Keep in Mind While Developing Apps for Logistics

According to Technavio, the logistics market has a big potential of growth up to 95 billion US dollars between 2020-2024. 

Now, as we know about the growing scope of logistics app development. Let us learn about some of the important things to consider while developing apps for logistics.

These things could be divided into 4 categories as follows

• Control and Usability
• Features
• Development
• Cost

Let us dig deeper and learn about each of them in more detail.

• CONTROL & USABILITY

Here are the prime things that are covered under the first pointer of control and usability.

Customer Application

In the customer panel, there should be all the features provided to the customer that give him insights about the products and placing of order. The panel should be proficient enough to guide the user from where to browse the product/service. How to book it and then do payment and tracking. It should also give the customer benefit of rescheduling the delivery date and time.

To include all the above in the panel. Here are the sub-features you require while doing logistics app development.

1. Easy Registration/Sign Up

The customer should be able to easily login into the app. Even for a signup, there should not be a lengthy process of manual filling of details. The person should easily sign up through email address, phone number, or social media platform. Also, this information should be saved. So that in the future when the person logs in, he directly lands on the main page of the app.

2. Convenient App Navigation

The app should have a friendly user experience. The graphics and placement of the features should be done in a way that the user does not get confused about where and how to lead himself over the app. 

3. Bookings

When a user goes over the app, he should be able to see details of the product that helps him to do the booking. The placed order with the Id and product description should be mentioned for customer convenience.

4. Schedule Delivery

Once the booking takes place, the user should have the facility to plan the schedule. He can decide the location and fill in details like whether it is an office location or residential space for delivery timings. Along with that, having options to reschedule delivery is a major plus point. 

5. Easy Payments

Providing customers with easy payment options increase the chance of more business orders. Developing a mobile wallet for apps for logistics will cut the process of manual card filling details that will save time to the customer.

6. Location Search

The app should be capable enough of locating the user’s geographical location. With the help of geoFencing or GPS mapping, the app should locate the place of the user. This helps the user and the brand to filter out the searched results based on feasible locations around.

7. Ratings and Reviews

People value apps that value their user experience. By enabling feedback and rating features, allow your customer to share their buying experience with you. This brings authority to your app.

Driver Application

The driver is the bridge that connects you with the customer. Make this bridge rock solid with the foundation of a multifunctional smart panel. This panel is highly important for on-demand delivery apps. Go for an app development that provides smart solutions to all queries of the driver. This will bring ease of delivery and also, professionalism to your business.

You can lookout for the following sub-features to include while logistics app development of the driver panel.

1. Order Requests

The panel should be able to notify the drivers of the request of customers based on their geographical location. The driver should have the accessibility to either decline or accept the order request depending on their convenience.

2. Onboarding

Like an attendance sheet, the drivers should easily mark their attendance or availability to take orders. They can show their status online when they are ready to receive an order request and snooze off the notifications when offline.

3. Route Navigation

Enable app with a GPS integration system that provides the shortest, without traffic and right address to the customer. It saves their effort and time to locate the position.

4. Payments

Integrate an inbuilt payment system that allows the users to accept the payment that customers provide at the time of order delivery. This will also let you keep track of payments and an eye on any unfair practices.

5. Bill Approvals

The driver panel should have a feature of bill approval that allows drivers to submit their bills and ask for reimbursements that took place at the time of order delivery. It could be related to petrol expenses, toll taxes, and many more.

6. Order Details

In apps for logistics, keep a section in the driver panel where they can easily access information related to the order they are attending. Information like Order ID, the scheduled date, location of delivery, payment status, total bill amount, etc.

Admin Panel

The admin is the backbone of any business. Being the owner, you should be aware of where your orders, their shipment, warehousing, and revenues. Manage all that with mobile app development for logistics which includes an admin panel. The sub features that should list under it are as follows.

1. Dashboard

The panel should have a dashboard from where it is easy for the owner to access all information related to the warehouse, placed orders, and orders shipped.

2. Driver Management

This feature will allow the admin to have a track of drivers that are enrolled with the app. How many orders they have delivered, what are their ratings and feedback by the customer, and a lot of other information.

3. Fleet Management

This is a very important feature to consider while developing apps for logistics. Under this, the admin has access to know about the status of order shipped so that in case he needs to enquire about any of the orders, he could fetch information from here.

4. Bills and Tariffs

The ledger of invoices and bills should also be integrated into the app. It helps the admin to keep a record of all transactions that took place related to the business and middlemen involved.

5. Push Notification

This feature gives control to the admin to share the special messages and notifications to the drivers, middlemen, and users. The messages about offers, discounts, or any new introductory launch. All of this could be altered and sent to respective parties through push notifications.

• FEATURE

Extra Feature

Some extra features never hurt. Adding more features to your app would only make your app more user friendly and unique.

You can add features like options to chat. The customer and driver can have a chat and so could the customer or shipping authority. They can talk about specific requirements or preferences for ease of delivery.

The other feature you can add is for showing your app in multi-languages respect to different regions or countries.

Thus, adding more features will act like USP to your app for logistics.

• DEVELOPMENT

1. Front End Development

When it comes to mobile app development for logistics, you should go to the mobile app development company that is proficient enough to deliver what you are demanding.

The mobile app development company should have a skillful project manager that understands your requirements. There should be an intellectual and creative designer that designs UI which keeps the audience engaged as UI experience matters a lot.

Do not forget to look for developers that bring your idea into life with smart display and programming. 

2. Back End Development

Backend development is considered the backbone of any mobile app development. Go for the mobile app development company that has good experience in the framework over which you want to design your app. And if confused about which framework to choose, book free mobile app consultation to know. 

The backend developers code your app and turn your vision into smart reality. Try to reach out to smart back end developers that provide you multiple features easily over the single app.

Last but not the least, the testers make sure there are not any errors. They recheck and run your app through multiple processes to ensure the smooth working of it.

• Development Cost

When it comes to developing apps for logistics, the most important thing is to find the cost estimation for it. The costing of an app depends on your requirement and want to add or subtract features in your app.

The cost pricing also fluctuates from nature to the nature of the app. Means, there will be different costs for on-demand delivery apps for food and different for fleet management.

Also, the costing depends on how many panels you want to make for your app with the features as stated above. You can learn about the cost estimation of on-demand food delivery apps or Uber-like taxi apps in our previous blogs. 

Conclusion

Making apps for logistics is not a child’s play, though WhiteHatJr is changing this norm. But, for logistic app development, you need to focus on three things- purpose, need, and budget.

Introspect about the purpose for which you want your app. What features you want in it and how much budget you have for the same.

Once you are able to answer these 3 questions to yourself, then, you can reach out to a mobile app development company and ask them to make an app for you. But remember to discuss the features we mentioned as they are soul to your app.