Rendering services online has been a dominant trend for the last couple of decades. Every business, be it large or small, wants to enhance the buying experience of their customers; and in this effort, booking apps come as a handy tool. Whether you run a taxi service, or a travel agency, or any other business, having a booking app of your own has become a priority for you.
The success stories of Airbnb, Booking.com, and other such businesses have further created a demand for your booking apps and websites.
While it is true that every other business is trying to create a booking app based on its service delivery model, a majority of them are not able to get the desired results. While some of them are simply jumping the bandwagon without assessing the pros and cons of the trade, others are too scrupulous and are trying to reinvent the wheel.
Both these approaches won’t serve any purpose unless you plan meticulously and come up with a unique solution that adds value to the buying experience of your target audience.
In this detailed article, we will try to solve all your conundrums related to booking app development. By the end of this article you will be able to:
- Get a complete overview of the booking app market
- Understand how exactly you can benefit by creating a booking app
- Get a step-by-step layout of your app development process
- Find out how to choose the right service provider
Understanding The Booking App Development Market
To get a good perspective on the overall size, trends, and future prospects of the booking app development market, let’s consider these statistics:
- Online travel bookings expected to hit $817 billion by 2020.
- 700 million people will be booking their hotel rooms online by 2023.
- In 2021 approx 352.9 billion mobile app downloads are expected worldwide.
- According to Forbes, 11% of all individuals use a smartphone every few minutes and 41% use a smartphone a few times every hour.
- 85% of international tourists have a mobile device with them whilst travelling.
- By 2022 more than a third of European supplier-OTA bookings will take place via mobile websites and apps
If you analyze these statistics collected from various travel and hotel booking sources, you will find that the market for booking apps is growing at a rapid pace.
The most important inference that one can derive from these facts and figures is that customers expect a lot from these booking apps in terms of overall user experience. Another important insight that you can draw from these statistics is that mobile apps are going to rule the roost in the services sector. But one can never underestimate the value of a good web app that is more reliable and feature-rich.
Also Read: What It Takes To Develop A Winning Healthcare App
Benefits Of Developing A Booking App
Now that you have got a good understanding of how the booking app market is creating new avenues of growth for businesses across the board, let’s find out how exactly you as a business can benefit by creating a booking app. To understand this phenomenon let’s look at some more industry numbers.
- 95% believe the hotel has a responsibility to introduce them to local culture. (I-AM)
- 80% of customers make additional purchases when they undergo a positive experience with a company. (Accent)
- 52% of millennials want to manage loyalty on their mobile devices.
- 56% are loyal to brands that demonstrate a deep understanding of their priorities and preferences.
- 79% of customers only consider shopping with brands that show they understand and care about them.
As a business owner, you can easily identify the common thread in all these intricate numbers – customer experience. It has become a big priority for businesses of all sizes to enhance the user experience. And mobile booking apps can do this job for you with panache. In addition to the usual booking features, you can easily integrate customer engagement functionalities such as reward points, loyalty programs. Your mobile app could also act as a great brand enhancement tool for you.
In a nutshell, the benefits of developing a booking app can be summed up as:
- Ability to serve your clientele anytime, anywhere
- Enhanced buyer experience
- Better engagement with the target audience
- Positive communication with buyers through push notifications
- Simple and easy reward programs
- Easy delivery of loyalty benefits
How To Create An Online Booking App?
Having a good understanding of the booking app market does give you the confidence to develop one for your business. Now that you also know the benefits of having your own booking app, it’s time to get cracking on the process.
Let’s get started!
1. Identify the features
Booking apps are all about convenience for the target audience. It simply means the more you’re able to accomplish with the app, the better it is for your business. So it makes sense to have as many features as possible in your booking app. The features of a booking app simply define the success of your business.
Say for example you want to build an appointment booking app, it should be a complete solution to the target audience. So, sit down with your marketing team and make a list of offerings that you are going to make with your app. Be as exhaustive as possible in your deliberations and make the list of features with which you want to enhance the user experience of your target audience.
2. Do thorough research
Understanding your competition is the key to making a successful booking app. Once you have compiled the list of features that you intend to offer to your target audience, your next step should be to conduct thorough research on the market. Download some good booking apps from the app store and compare your features with them. Also, check their reviews and ratings to get an idea of their market performance. After performing this exercise, revisit your list of features and add some unique ones to your list to beat the competition.
At this stage of your booking app development strategy, you can decide whether you want to go for Android application development services, iOS application development, or hybrid app development.
3. Understand the behavior of your target audience
Mere identification of your target audience will not give you any favorable results unless you know their preference and behavior inside out. When you develop a good understanding of the choices of your target audience, it becomes easier for you to engage them with the booking app. In this effort, doing a few surveys on customer behavior can give you deep insights into what exactly your target audience is looking for in a booking app. Be as thorough in your surveys as possible as it is your only chance to meet the expectations of your target audience.
4. Make a monetization strategy
To make your booking app successful, you have to work on a monetization strategy well in advance. Apart from serving the interest of your target audience, the booing app should also fetch you additional revenue through ads and other monetization paths. Here are some ideas on how exactly you can monetize your booking app:
There are three types of ad revenue:
- Cost per Thousand Impression (CPM)
- Cost per Click (CPC)
- Cost per Action (CPA)
In addition to these ad revenue enablers, you can also leverage affiliate programs and sponsorship ads to boost the revenue of your booking apps.
How To Find The Best Booking App Development Company?
The mobile app development landscape gives you a lot of options to choose the right iOS app development services and Android app development services. But finding the best booking app development company can be a challenging task if you are not aware of the kinds of vendors that throng the marketplace.
To help you with this aspect, let’s explore how to identify the right mobile app development company.
1. Ask Google
Google, the world’s largest search engine is your ideal partner to find the right booking app development company. Type app development companies in the search bar and you will be bombarded with a plethora of options to choose from. Most of the businesses go for the top entries in the ranking system. But it is a good idea to check on the capabilities and service delivery models of these service providers.
2. Go for dedicated booking app developers
While a majority of holiday app development companies take up your app as a project and send you the finished app as a product. However, this approach not only excludes you from the development process but also gives you little control over the app developers working on your project.
The best way out of this tricky situation is to hire a service provider that gives you dedicated holiday app developers who work exclusively for you. Go for an app development company that gives you direct access to the resources working on your booking app.
3. Choose a scalable outsourcing model
When you outsource your booking app development to a third party vendor, you would want to stay in full control of the resources working on your project. Also, your need for resources may change depending on different market conditions and individual requirements.
If you choose a service delivery model that maintains the same number of resources, you may end up incurring huge development costs. A scalable service delivery model, on the other hand, allows you to optimize the number of app developers working on your booking app. It not only reduces the development cost but also empowers you to launch your app well before your competitors.
4. Launch the app and market it
Once your booking app is delivered to you, now’s the time to finally launch it in the market. However, before launching you must make sure that it has a seamless user interface and fetches you the desired results. After the proper testing is done, hire a marketing team to launch the app in the App Store and Play Store.
To create a buzz in the marketplace, leverage the skills of bloggers and marketing content writers. These valuable resources can add a lot of value to your app marketing effort. If possible go for a service provider that gives your app development and marketing services under the same roof.
Conclusion
In this exhaustive write-up, we have tried to explain every aspect of a booking app development strategy. Hope this blog proves to be a handy guide for businesses that are planning to launch their booking app. If you are still struggling to find your ideal mobile app development company, write to us at info@suntecindia.com or hire mobile app developers who have the expertise to build user-friendly, robust, and safe mobile applications.
