Understanding Development Cost Of Packers Movers App And Why You Need It?

Being on the go always is not a choice. Sometimes, it’s more like a necessity, and that too, of “unavoidable” kind often for those looking at a brighter career. Almost 4-5% of the UK population is packing and moving to a new place every year, looking forward to a new life (or just a phase of it) in the new place.

No wonder, the removal business industry is thus inching towards exploiting massive opportunities. Shift (popularly referred to as The Uber of Removal services) is one such company which came to limelight for raising 2.5 billion Pounds as investments. More companies are coming up to meet the rising demand.

And to answer the competition, your business needs a thorough push up. To outshine them, you would require:

• Newer and better tools of trade
• Novel strategies to attract the target audience
• Keeping updated with the changing needs of that audience
• Employing digital aids as and where required

In the chain of adapting to the newer opportunities and addressing the needs of your potential customers as these arises, the business of moving and packing can get a great boost from a highly personalised mobile application. If you can keep aside packers movers mobile app development cost for starters, looking at the reasons why such an app is necessary comes naturally. Still, development of movers and packers mobile app can have many elements (and so does its cost calculation) so it can worry you.

The developer has to really understand the business model, the company USPs, the brand image and voice, the client expectations and ways to connect and convert them to loyal clients. Such understanding is needed to make the app really effective and useful for the company, clients and the people actually responsible for delivering the service in real-time.

Before delving into the development costs of a packers and movers app or its elements, have a look at why or why not you need the app.

Elements of a movers and packers mobile app

A movers and packers app can fundamentally have the three aspects as explained below. However, there’s always the scope to add or remove any functionality that you do not have as a company. Discussion with your project manager can yield an app that you roughly have in mind along with the finesse the manager could add to the product based on the understanding of your business model and brand. Since everything comes with a cost, decide wisely as to which feature you want to keep and which you don’t require.

Three aspects:

User-side

The current and potential clients can sign up or login to their profile to use the services offered by you through the app. He gets to make changes in his profile and send in requests for your services. He can also find the complete list of articles transported as recorded during survey and can report damage in the same app to claim insurance. When the services are fully delivered, he can pay through the app itself; alternatively he can login complaint if there’s some issue.

a. Sign up/Login
b. View Edit profile
c. Request for Survey
d. Raising Service request
e. Log complaint
f. Pick up/drop location settings
g. Track your driver
h. Online Payment
i. View order history
j. Write testimonial/review/recommendation
k. Contact help

Admin-side

A place for the service provider to monitor everything, beginning with the requests received and then acting on and managing each one of them. Several authorised people can be there. Driver and vehicle allotment can happen from here and a track on fuel consumption can be kept with the help of GPS installed on the vehicle. CCTV can also be used for notching up the security.

a. Dashboard/panel
b. Customer management
c. Driver management (Scheduling)
d. Add/Remove/Edit/Block Drivers
e. Payment Manager
f. Fuel consumption
g. Reporting/Analytics
h. Manage Notifications
i. Trip Tracking and Driver Evaluation

Driver-side

Drivers can have the app installed for the tenure of their work with your company. They can sign an agreement in the app itself that they would work according to your guidelines and if found guilty of not abiding by them, they could be deleted from admin side. Driver performance can also show up here to make it easy for them to calculate their incentive if such schemes are part of your employee satisfaction programs.

a. Sign Up/Login
b. Edit/View Profile
c. View History
d. Receive Payment

Features to include in the app

Necessary

Among many features (as hinted above), some are indispensible to have for the app to deliver as your business promises. These could be following:

• Communication via call/chat
• GPS Tracking
• Real-time issue log (For both the clients and the driver)
• Data centre
• Social Media integration with the app
• Customer Support
• Complete list of services offered (and their sub-menus)

Advanced

For the brands with a budget for a well-rounded app, they can have following advanced features to wow their customers and scale up their service delivery experience for them.

• Online Invoicing and billing
• Marketing and promotion
• Fare calculator
• COD
• Payroll manager
• Book now/schedule later (move/survey)
• Multilingual (for international movers)
• Reward/Loyalty Schemes

Technologies Used

• Cloud Technology
• GPS Tracking
• Database design
• Communication Ecosystem
• Payment Gateway

Costing

The blog is mainly about how much a packers and movers app development might cost a business. But that couldn’t be done without talking about the important issues surrounding the topic. The above explanation attempts to clear the scenario as to how much work goes in the making of such an application. The cost thus incurred is justifiable and you also get an idea as to the companies who are trying to extract more money that which you can save.

Below are the factors affecting the costing of the packers movers app development.

• Total time needed from start to finish (as most of the jobs are charged on per-hour basis)
• Location of the workforce (US-Based/East European/India- Since work outsourcing works wonderfully well for those who are cash strapped, developers from India are often the instant and first choice, rarely regretted if the services are taken from trusted brands like Ficode)
• Platform for which the app is being developed (iOS/Android/Both)
• Simple or feature-rich (a well-rounded app might be your first choice but not really a necessity so keeping the option of business scalability open, choosing a simple app could prove to a better decision for starters)
• Scope of business scalability (As explained in the point number 2, putting every penny at once can hurt the business so think long-term and discuss the possibilities with your project manager before starting out)

Standard charges (per-hour basis) as per the location of the workforce

App development is priced differently in different country mainly due to the reasons of mass production hubs. The Development cost of packers movers mobile app is no different. Based on the following three locations, you can estimate average final cost. The later estimates are based on the prices if you decide to go with the India-based developers.

• US-Based developers: $100-300
• East-European Developers: $50-200
• India-based Developers: $25-100

Time-based jobs and respective costs

Depending upon the complexity or the feature-richness of the app, the time taken for its completion may vary and thus cost you accordingly.
Here’s to give you some idea on the different aspects of packers movers app development cost.

• Front-end and back-end development : 400 hours ($10000-20000)
• UI/UX Designing: Needs around 120 Hours (amounting to $3000-7000)
• App testing: Needs around 150 Hours ($2000-5000)
• Bug-fixing: Needs around 80 Hours ($1000-2000)
• Technical documentation and reporting: Could take around 60 Hours ($1000-2000)

Rounding up the whole process, the packers and movers mobile app development cost can go up to $10000-$50000. Majorly, the difference is for a simple app and a full-fledged feature-bustling app.

What you lose by not having a movers and packers mobile app

• Loyal clients base
• Projecting a progressive brand image
• Presence in every space from where the clients may interact with you
• Opportunity to let your clients know that you value transparency
• Potential business because your competitors are in this space already

The biggest gains of having the mobile app

• All the above and…
• Another media to market your brand and services
• Clear intimation of all the services offered to make it easy for the clients to select as per their needs
• Availability of the resources in the location of their need.
• Allocating your digital brand representative to tell things you can’t personally to every single potential client
• Delivering digital services that are also in blank-and-white for anytime-reference for the clients, the move manager and the real service deliverers like surveyors, packers, drivers, storage unit managers and un-packers.
• Telling features that seem as clients resist learning about deeming them an uninvited sales pitch like subscription, loyalty/reward schemes, etc.
• Staying in touch after the first service so that the client thinks only about you when needed for another time.
• Leaving no scope of miscommunication, confusion or unintended errors.
• Better productivity, ease of doing the business because of real-time tracking.

With the information above, you are equipped to discuss your needs with the project manager while keeping an eye on your budget as well.