On-demand services have seen a rise over the past decade. On demand services require instant provisioning of goods and services. This has acquired a new dimension in these Covid times. Not only do people want to commute less but they also don’t want to spend more time in stores. So, to deliver orders on time, on-demand has turned to the hyperlocal model of delivery, which is to deliver products in the shortest possible time in the most optimized manner.
Hyperlocal isn’t new. Grofers, Dunzo, Urban Clap, Uber, Swiggy, etc, are all examples of hyperlocal applications. A study indicates that there were 44.8 million users worldwide using on-demand services such as AirBnB or Uber in 2016, and the number of users is forecasted to increase to 86.5 million by 2021. There’s a surge in the need of on-demand services in these covid times, and that’s leading to its extension and diversification to serve consumers as fast as possible, and one promising subset that wings out of on-demand economy is Hyperlocal Marketplaces. And, catching on with the wave, Amazon, Flipkart, Paytm and several other online businesses are all prepping up to launch their hyperlocal services.
The idea is to find a way to meet user’s demands with the demanded goods being sourced locally from different regional merchants operating out of their stores. In a country like India, only 10% of the internet users use online marketplaces, and the primary reason is lack of trust. You can leverage on the customer’s loyalty as the hyperlocal applications encourages purchases are from known stores. Also, features like Geolocation or Geo-tagging and contextual targeting tools have effectively driven the eCommerce sector into being pro hyperlocal.
If you invest in automating front- and back-end processes, it can enhance the robustness and quality of your on-demand services. This involves:
- Ensuring availability of an online/offline shop from an end-user perspective
- Monitoring of the operational status of the entire channel continuously
There are several probabilities of pathways between order and delivery, and each branching at the different steps in the process can potentially fail.
Get in touch with us if you’re looking to automate testing of your hyperlocal solution.
