Shaping Up On-Demand Taxi Booking App Development

Despite Covid-induced lockdowns keeping a large number of vehicles off the roads in 2021, major metropolitan cities are ranking high in urban congestion, according to a report by a global location technology company. However, the congestion level is decreasing by a certain percentage over the years, the water-logged pockets are causing widespread traffic logjams and an increase in congestion levels. Traffic peak hours are directly proportional to working habits (with work from home becoming predominant, and online conferences replacing physical meetings).

Taxi App Development Solutions help start-ups, taxi/cab companies, and corporations to automate taxi operations. Taxi booking mobile apps like Uber, Lyft, Hailo, Gett are designed to commingle passengers with drivers. Taxi Booking App development services allow cab businesses to manage their fleet operations in real-time. Leading service providers in Taxi App booking offer a wide range of services from ridesharing/carpooling/taxi sharing based on a business model by enabling: High-End Security, Fastest Time to Market, Multiple Payment Gateways, and customization.

Mobility Aggregators

Different mobility aggregators for flexible, scalable, and customizable taxi app development services include – Startups and Enterprises.

Taxi booking app development solutions can be designed to cater to a locality or a wide area network. It also aggregates many smaller groups working in unison, summing up activities to add drivers in the network, assigning them automatically, pick-up and dropping customers to the exact location using GPS services.

A Taxi Booking App mainly comprises three elements – An app for passengers, an app for drivers, admin panel.

General Features in a Taxi Sharing App

• User registration, a login page, user profiles
• Notifications
• Cab booking
• GPS-based vehicle tracking
• Payment integration
• Fare calculation
• Booking history
• fare estimate
• Navigation
• secure Payment
• AWS Cloud Hosted
• 256-bit encryption
• Easy Cancellation
• Easy sharing
• Multi-lingual
• Multi-Payment
• Integrated Analytics
• One-click Support
• Highly Scalable

Features in Taxi App for Passengers

• User sign-up & login
• Create/Edit profile
• On-demand and scheduled cab booking
• Notifications via email and SMS, as in-app messages or push notifications.
• Flexible payment options
• Real-time GPS-based vehicle tracking system
• An option of choosing a cab type
• Automatic fare calculation
• Booking history tracking
• Feedback
• To find the closest driver
• To get the exact arrival time
• To make simple payments (save credit card details safely)
• To save locations to simplify repetitive rides
• To book rides ahead of time
• Improved GPS to automatically track the user location without manually entering pick-up and drop-off locations.
• Joint Rides to take 2-3 passengers at a time.
• Selecting Vehicle according to customer’s preference.
• Navigation
• Order Alert
• Multiple Vehicles
• Ratings and reviews
• Multiple Payment Options
• Coupon Code/Discounts
• Emergency Contacts
• Panic alerts
• Ride details
• Referral Code Generation
• Add Locations
• Settings and options
• One-Click Chat
• Ride History

Features in Taxi App for Drivers

• User sign-up & login
• Edit profile
• Booking confirmation/Booking history
• Real-time GPS-based tracking
• An earnings tracker
• Notifications
• Feedback
• Registration
• Trip Booking
• Payment
• Trip History
• Accepting requests from passengers
• Rejecting requests from passengers
• Multiple language support
• Contacting Passengers
• Vehicle Tracking System (GPS)
• Email and SMS Alerts
• Transaction History
• Automatic Fare Calculation
• Managing reviews
• Insights and Reports

Features in Taxi App for Admins

• Notifications
• Trip details
• A live map
• Reports Tracking and analytics
• To manage drivers
• To manage passengers
• Multi-Language support
• To manage complaints
• To track drivers
• To manage vehicles/rides/users/zones/profiles/tariff
• One-Click dashboard
• To manage categories
• To monitor payments
• To connect to Google Analytics
• To store databases
• To make extraordinary offers or promotion codes
• To work out flood evaluation
• To provide a total outline of driver and passenger activity
• Email and SMS Campaign
• To generate insights and reports
• To manage salaries and commissions

Technology Stack to Code Top Taxi Sharing App

Native Development (Android and iOS)

• Android: Java & Kotlin (Programming Language), Android Studio (IDE)
• iOS: Swift & Objective C (Programming Language), Xcode (IDE)
• Programming languages — Python, and JavaScript
• Database — MongoDB and PostgreSQL
• Clouds — AWS, Azure, and Google
• Payment gateways — Stripe, PayPal, Braintree
• Analytics — BigData, Apache, Hadoop, IBM

GPS-based Tracking

The topic of real-time GPS-based tracking should also be touched on here. This feature implies the use of APIs and frameworks:

• OpenStreetMap API for Android and iOS
• Google Maps and Google Location Services APIs for Android
• MapKit and CoreLocation frameworks for iOS

UI/UX Design

Taxi booking apps thrive on their target audience. They require to be flawless in their appearance, with attractive wireframes, mockups, and clickable prototypes providing near-real experience helping users give it a try at first glance.

Backend Development

The backend of a taxi app should offer a connection to data sources for reserving data, and a connection with payment services. It should provide a standardized information interface, back-end systems to link drivers with passengers.

• Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Riak, Cassandra, Schemaless
• Languages: Python,  Java, and Node.js

Web Development

The web development panel for taxi booking applications should provide adequate permissions to registered users – admins. Python with Django open-source framework helps manage such registered users.

The remaining efforts go into – Testing and Quality Assurance, Deployment, and Technical Support and Maintenance stages of the software development lifecycle.

Sources of Revenue for Taxi Booking App Development

It is good to be aware of the possible ways to monetize your taxi booking app. You can earn via commissions on rides, waiting for fees and cancellation charges, in-app advertising charges, surge pricing during rush hours,  premium subscription (if passengers avail of a premium account).

Online Taxi Booking Service Types

• Taxi Booking Services – To automate taxi booking services, expand the customer base, hiring experienced taxi app developers.
• Car Rentals/Hire Cabs – To manage, track, automate cab hiring services and car rental solutions.
• VIP Corporate Taxis – To create a reliable corporate taxi app with dedicated experts to match the challenging requirements.
• Limousine and Chauffer services, Air Taxis, and Paratransit Taxis are additional service types for specially challenged people.

Blockchain in Taxi Booking App Development

• Building Taxi Booking Applications with crypto-currencies might seem overwhelming, to a first-time developer or a start-up, but it can be an emerging technique for enterprises who are wishing to expand their operations across verticals.
• Blockchain is highly popular because of its use cases. Creating a taxi booking app with Blockchain can cut development costs as it diminishes the need to have a third-party or intermediary, and puts you (as the business) in complete control of all your data.
• It ensures that all transactions are secure and transparent, brings greater stability, trackability, and accountability.
• Blockchain makes use of blocks of data about all transactions with timestamps for upcoming blocks.
• It employs encrypted keys, a decentralized ledger of chained data that is highly secure. Passengers and drivers can talk straightforwardly.
• Blockchain tracks and monitors every transaction. It easily complies with Taxi Booking Apps to integrate digital solutions to manage all business operations.
• A taxi booking mobile app should be well-optimized but has to be reasonably priced with a competitive advantage.
• It should be customizable, scalable, and reliable.
• Blockchain eliminates the need to have fiat currency and payment channels provided by third-party operators for any operation.
• It also conducts transactions without the need to have any third-party payment gateway.
• This helps administer all app operations like managing distances, live vehicle tracking, estimating fares, calculating travel time to the desired location, checking driver profile, push notifications, coupons, payment transparency.
• Blockchain-based taxi booking app also features – Social media sign-up, efficient email templates, ratings and reviews, real-time tracking, fare breakdown.
• Blockchain also facilitates booking rides easily, getting detailed information about their trips, communicating with drivers/passengers, simplifying the whole process, transparent pricing method, safe and secure, clean environment, and low-cost ride for a rider.

The Cost to Build a Ride-Sharing App in 2022

Expect it to come around $1,959 – $12,999, depending upon the features, technology stack, availability of developers, geographical location, client testimonials, reviews, and ratings.

Conclusive

If you are an app development company, planning to build a Taxi Booking App or any other related services, this article might be handy. Blockchain technology is wonderfully independent, decentralized, and does not accept a business monopoly. Coupling with transportation and commuting apps, these have a chance of ending up far and big. Follow us for related reads on on-demand taxi app development or Blockchain app for ridesharing app development!