How to Develop A Car Rental App

Published by Jayant Sharma at 4th November 2020

Pitfalls to be aware of when developing your car rental app

Although you can hire an amazing team of developers and designers to work on your app as well as a marketing team to help you with the expansion. However, there are a few things that you should be aware of when entering the market.

Don’t underestimate your competition

The competition depends upon the country and city you want to target. However, if you are launching a new service then chances are you are going to start with a major city. In this case, the competition will already be there. So the wise choice will be to collect information about your competition. Information like how much they charge, offers, availability, target audience, as well as their strength and weakness. If you plan your route while considering your competition chances are you will be able to beat them or at least make gain a certain percentage of the market.

How to collect user data

Collecting user’s data is another important step to plan. Although, digital marketing can help you to build your target audience but do not underestimate the power of emails, and SMS. Many on-demand services, even big companies like Myntra, Zoom car rental, Amazon uses customer data to add new customers into the database. You can also use CRM services to build your user data collection.

How to secure your data

The 21st century is all about the Internet and mobile applications. However, with this great opportunity, there is a security issue too. Since you are owning a car rental app which means, your customers are going to upload their sensitive information like Adhar card, Driving license, Credit card, and debit card into your database. You have to use the best available options to make sure that your user’s data is secure and won’t be stolen by hackers.

How to be at the top with the car rental app

In the year 2019, the global car rental app industry was estimated at $86.3 billion. In addition to this, according to forecasts, the market is going to rise at a CAGR of 6.9% and will reach $131 billion by the year 2025. You are going to need a few ways or tips to grow your business.

Make a goal regarding your car rental app

Unless you know where you want to reach any journey is a waste of time and resources. So before you do anything, make a clear goal about your destination. A few things to consider areas

How to monetize your car rental app?
What platform would you choose for your app?
Do you also want a website or just a mobile app?
Do you also want a desktop version of the app?
Which cities would you target first?

Choose a software development company

Once you have to figure your plans with your car rental app, now it is time to hire a software development company. Here you would want to hire one of the best you can find under your budget, this means going with international companies that charge you more for their name rather than their services is a waste of time. In addition to this, finding a company from a country like India is also important. This is because development companies from countries like India are way cheaper than companies from the USA or Europe. Also after some research, you will find that Indian companies are in no way lesser than American companies in terms of experience and expertise.

Let’s check who to hire for your car rental app development: A Software developer, Mobile app designers, Testing and quality team, Digital & traditional marketing team, Business Analytics.

The nice thing about this list is that once you have found a decent development company, they can provide you all of the services.

Choose your Technologies

Once you have hired an app development company, it is time to select which programming languages, frameworks, APIs, and other technologies you will be using. Choosing the right tech for your app is important to make it secure, efficient, and smooth. You can also decide to go with Hybrid apps or simple Native apps. If you decided to go with the Hybrid app then the development cost will be lesser because developers won’t have to spend much time on the app to create it for different platforms. On the other hand, Native apps are strictly limited to the platform they were created for. This means app developers would have to develop the app for both Android as well as iOS separately.

Things to keep in mind

Let’s discuss some of the keynotes to keep in mind while instructing your team to develop the car rental app.

Design

Try to go with customized design as well as animation and transitions. Do not cheap out on the design of the app. Your customers are going to spend all of their time on the front end of the app, this means unless you have an attractive and compelling design for your app, it customers will have it.

2. Compatibilities with different devices

iOS is only limited to Apple smartphones so once you have developed the app for this platform you do not need to worry about anything else. However, since Android is open-source tens of companies use it in their hundreds of models. Every model is different in specifications as well as nowadays companies are also using different sub OS on the device. These things make it confusing and complicated for developers to design an app that will support every single device. Whenever you are about to deploy your app on the Play Store, check whether there are any bugs or not. In addition to this, regular maintenance is also important since it is almost impossible for anyone to develop an app without bugs in their first version.

3. Simplicity

Make your app simple to navigate. Customers should be able to find what they are looking for without getting distracted or confused by other options. In addition to this, try to make the process simple, like authorizations, finding a car or city, selecting timelines all these features should be easy to find and complete the process.

Key features to add to your car rental app

User panel

Registration: Users can register on the platform using their mobile number and email ID.
Sign in: Once the registration process is completed they can sign in using their credentials.
Push notification: This feature will allow users to receive push notifications from the admin. These notifications may contain information, cashback, deals, or other important notifications.
Timeline: Depending upon how long you want to rent the car, you can choose from here.
Full model mode: Full model mode will allow the customer to check their desired car in full 360- degree mode to decide whether to rent or not.
In-app GPS: In-app GPS will help customers to check nearby available cars based on their location.
Payment methods: Your application shall have different payment methods to allow user-pay using their debit card, credit card, net banking, or pay on the pickup.
In-app customer care contact: This in-app customer care contact feature will allow the application’s users to connect with customer care whenever they require any assistance.

Admin panel

Dashboard: Dashboard will allow admin to access all the features of the admin panel.
Manage payment: The admin will be able to manage all the payments from here.
Analytical tools: Analytical tools will allow the admin to check the application’s growth and activities of users on the application.
Content management system: The Content management system will allow the admin to access and change the app’s content.
Push notification management system: The push notification management system will allow the admin to send notifications through the app.

How much it cost to develop A Car Rental App

The country location of the company- Depending upon the country of the development company that you are choosing the per development rates will be different. For example, if you hire a company from the USA then they will charge you about $200 per hour whereas a company from India will only charge you about $40 per hour.
The quality of UI & UX- Depending upon the quality of UI & UX you want in your app the final design cost will change. If you want to add customized animations and transitions into your app then you will have to pay accordingly.
The total number of features and panels- The total number of features, as well as the number of panels you want in your app, will also affect the final development cost. The more features and panels you want the more you will have to pay.
The total number of the supported operating systems- If you want your app to support both Android as well as iOS mobile phones then you will have to pay more. Although you can always choose hybrid apps that too have their share of hurdles.
Website connectivity- If you also want to design a website or connect the existing one with your app then you will have to pay for that too.

Looking for a company to hire

If you are looking for a app development company to hire to create your on-demand car rental app, then Phontinent Technologies can be a great fit for you. We are India’s one of the top leading software development companies that have served over 100 clients across the globe. In addition to this, we have also helped startups develop on-demand car rental apps and grow their business from the ground in the past. So by hiring us you not only gain expertise of our developers but also our experience. You can contact us today to get an estimation of the cost of the car rental app.