The biggest challenge for any small business is to reach their audience by filtering the noise made by big brands. If you have started your own business, you must know how hard it is to make your business get noticed, even when you try to provide a good discount through coupons to the end-user.
For example, if you have started a cloth business, you might be thinking about how you can reach with your audience without spending too much money? This is where Groupon like apps come into place. So, what is a Groupon app? How to develop an app like Groupon? Let’s explore.
What is Groupon?
Groupon is a platform or service that offers coupons for goods or services. A customer instead of better discounts can buy the coupons. This helps both consumers and businesses to get better deals where Groupon acts as a mediator to promote businesses.
Groupon aims to get customers motivated by the use of coupon codes. It works by selling a set number of coupons by the business. If it can do so, then only it gets the commission. If the target is not met, the partner can deny any commission to the service. In reality, Groupon works and can meet its target and can gain as much as 50% commission.
The main reasons behind Groupon’s popularity are because it targets the younger generation who are willing to spend it if they get a discount. The coupon or discount acts as a way to motivate them to take action. The marketing model also works wonder considering anyone who is sharing the deal also gets some cut.
Source: Cleverroad.com
The above pic clearly explains how a Groupon service works. There are many websites like Groupon. Examples include Yipit, Fab, Woot!, LivingSocial, and so on.
Deals App Development Challenges
Creating an app like Groupon can be a challenging task. There are many Groupon-like apps already floating in the market. This means that you already have a tough competition to beat.
Also, it becomes hard to offer big discounts as most of the platform users will be small to medium businesses. They would not be able to give a discount as the customers generally require more than an average discount. The initial advertising of the app can also pose a challenge.
How to Develop Apps like Groupon?
Now that we have a basic understanding of Groupon, we can now start with our app creation process. Groupon-like app or website is similar to a normal e-Commerce store but can sell coupons. With this in mind, let’s discuss some of the main components of the app that you should focus on.
Prepare App Development Strategy
Before you dive deep into the app-building process, you need to establish your mobile app development model. The factors that you should take care about is the cost that is required to attract customers, service improvement overtime and improve customer intake.
You should also take about the following things:
- Product testing and app creation according to your niche.
- Have a proper strategy for user retention.
- Properly market your app after its release.
- Banner monetization.
- Day-of-the-deals and sponsored offer.
Admin panel
The admin panel is where you will be managing your website. There are two approaches. The first approach is to manage all the coupons yourself. For this, you need to have a proper content curation process. Your content management team can manage this. The seller, on the other hand, will provide the raw data including content and pictures. You need to make sure that your app or website can manage the requirement.
Another approach is to have a moderated content where sellers can upload and manage the content themselves. All you need to have a team that manages the content and ensures that quality is maintained. The moderated content approach is more complicated than the other one and hence would require you to have multiple features in your app.
UI/UX
Just like how important it is to have featured on your app, you should also take care of the user experience and user interface. A well-thought user interface can impact how the user experiences the app. You must have some countdown timer or badges that distinguish different types of coupons on your platform. The structure and hierarchy of the badges should be defined carefully and clearly.
Terms of use
Always have a properly drafted and clear term of use on your channel. Customers can confuse what you are trying to sell and the service you provide. By having a dedicated term of use page can help you save a lot of issues down the road.
Required Features For Deals App Development
A Groupon/Nearbuy app should have proper features before it can be ready to use. The basic features that the app should have are listed below.
1. Registration login.
2. profile page.
3. ‘Invite a friend’ feature
4. User location detection
5. Offers based on location
6. Different types of offer
7. Support for major cities
8. Meaningful categories.
9. Payment gateways
10. Order management modules
11. Seller’s account
12. Support for different kind of currencies.
13. Multilingual for boosting regional content
App Development Cost for App Like Groupon
Groupon app development is costly and can easily cost you thousands of dollars. It can range from anywhere from $2500 to $16500. The cost depends on the platform and the features that you are looking for. Also, there is an additional cost associated with the marketing of the app. Overall, it can get costly to make a Groupon/Nearbuy app.
So, what alternatives do you have? You can use our pre-built platform with iOS, Android and complete backend systems to start quickly. Plus, our system is multi-lingual by default so you can reach multiple demographics with regional content too.
It provides a practical and manageable way to create your app. You can use it rather than creating one from scratch.
Conclusion
This leads us to the end of the article. Creating and managing a Groupon like app or website is good business. However, your approach should be calculated, and you should know what you are trying to do. So, what are your next steps? Comment below and let us know.
If you are looking for an excellent mobile app development company for developing an app like Groupon contact us at sales@citrusleaf.in