5 Smart Hacks for Taxi Apps to Attain Higher User Retention

Apple’s App Store is home to over 2.2 million apps and Google Play hosts over 2.6 million apps with a quarter segment occupied by ride-hailing and transport app, but the no. of apps that actually get installed and used on customer’s device is quite small.

Based on data from the Business of Apps, user retention has tumbled down from the consistent retention of 37-38% in previous years to 32% in 2019. With a 4% plunge in app abandonment rate that accounts for 25%.

Clearly, the impression shows the competition is increasing and so is the app abandonment.

Where the taxi app market is struggling to attract customers and catch users’ attention in any way.

If you also own a taxi app or are looking for a taxi app development with a focus on user retention and delivering quality service from the ground up, then read on.

What are the activities you should do to avoid the migration of customers to other app platforms?

Based on the case study of ride-hailing apps like Uber, Ola and others.

1. Pricing

The first thing that pinches customer is pricing. Everyone wants quality service along with cost-effective prices.

So, when you outline the pricing strategy keep two factors on roll:

a. Cash Back/Discounts?

Lure your customers through interesting cashback on doing ride payments, this captivates riders’ interest and increases customer loyalty.

b. Competitive Pricing

Study the?pricing?history of your?competition. Measure their price-performance to check how they are performing compared to other taxi companies.

Monitoring their prices will give you an idea about their margins and parameters in which they are performing better than you.

Note that if you’re planning to set the price above the price of your competitor, then you’d need to bring in new features and improvements in your product that would justify the increased price.

And pricing below your competitor’s price can be a good strategy for you but it depends upon your resources to a great extent.?

2. Switching Cost

Dynamic pricing strategy; Taxi app companies generally price according to the distance covered and time taken for the trip aka fixed cost strategy. But you see that a lot of ride-hailing companies keep their price fluctuating on certain events; these types of companies have?time-based pricing strategies?as well as?discounting strategies at work.?Like for an instance, increasing fares to the areas with few potential passengers, discount trips to locations containing many potential passengers and so on.

Alike Ola, you can also do this by rolling out:

a. Weekly/Monthly/ Yearly Pass

b. Giving discounts to premium customers

c. Offering cross services

3. Taxi App Automation

An important weapon for user retention!

While serving passengers you cover all types of demographics and age groups. Your user can be a millennial or a middle-aged man or an old-age person. Hence, you must keep your app interface as simple as you can for your user.

Not everyone is a tech geek or a tech-savvy person. Senior citizens are naive to smart phones and rising digital technologies.?

So, the point is to keep clean and simple user interface that takes the user quickly and easily to onboarding procedure.

You should also offer them multiple payment options with a pre-booking or ride-scheduling option.

Related Reading: Is Your Taxi App Missing The Right UX? Here’s a Checklist!

App Takeaways:

· Faster app

· Simple UI

· Automation

· Proactive Personalization

· Customer Support

4. Include the Geo-Location Targeting Feature

Accurate Geolocation data is vital for your app’s success. It helps the driver in reaching the location faster, helps you in creating customized market campaigns, and the geo-location data can be further used in running in-app message campaigns and establish communication with targeted people that are more likely to convert into customers.

5. App Operations

Driven by the customer reviews and experience here are the conclusions drawn that can help you in improving customer retention strategy.

a. Accurate Estimated time of arrival (ETA)

Show accurate time of taxi arrival to your customers so that they can organize their leisure time accordingly and will not keep waiting.

b. Professional/Trained Drivers

Well trained drivers are safer drivers as they are highly experienced, drive in a speed-limit, know optimized routes, have good behavior and hospitality which in turn ensures customer’s security.

c. Good Condition Of Cab

Picking good cabs ensures a safe trip, raises the level of comfort and increases customer’s trust.

d. Ensuring Safety Of Passengers

Make taxis safer and secured for passengers by employing safe drivers, safer vehicles, providing 24X7 help and support.

The Bottomline:

These were some of the smart hacks derived from the case study of renowned taxi apps. If you’re looking for a taxi app development; than do not let the vital features like simple user interface and user experience, geo-location, dynamic pricing, multiple payment gateways, etc. slip through the cracks.

Read Also: How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Taxi Booking App? A Beginners’ Guide