Apps like Instacart: How to test delivery apps

By Ran Rachlin, CEO and a founder and technology evangelist.

The world is changing at railway speed. Lots of new apps and technologies arise, providing customers with new opportunities. According to recent trends, local delivery applications are currently among the most widely used services for millions of people globally. Food delivery solutions that can solve lots of current issues in the food industry are considered to boost the market in the near future. Further, global circumstances such as the coronavirus pandemic, that changed the way we shop, even strengthened the need for food delivery apps. So, what are the perspectives of the food delivery area? What to expect from food delivery mobile testing? In this post, you will find tons of information about launching food delivery startups and testing online food apps.

Top food delivery services you need to know

The most popular food delivery apps are developed to fit the rising needs of the customers. Basically, all these services can be divided into several classes. There are three main categories of mobile delivery apps for the food industry.

Restaurant food deliveries

The applications from this category are developed to help you order delicious courses from various restaurants in your local area. You can choose a restaurant, choose the desirable dishes, and get them delivered right to your doorstep. The world-famous Uber Eats app is exactly from this class. However, there are also plenty of other apps like Uber eats that are meeting the clients’ needs in this field. These are the well-known DoorDash, GrubHub, and others.

Applications that offer grocery delivery services 

Grocery delivery solutions are also hitting the global market. Many of them offer fantastically fast delivery and are ready to provide you with your favorite products in less than one hour. Some apps are focused on specific delivery chains, while the others are ready to offer a broader range of goods, including books and cleaning supplies. Walmart Grocery, Amazon Prime Now, Shipt, and Instacart are among the leading alternatives in this niche.

Mixed deliveries (restaurant food and groceries) 

These are solutions that allow ordering food from both restaurants and groceries. In case you are looking for online fast food applications, these services are exactly what you need. The most famous brands in this type of delivery service are Postmates, DoorRash, Glovo, and Mercato.

Grocery delivery: The basic principles of Instacart 

Instacart is one of the pioneers in the field of grocery delivery. It is considered to be one of the most successful delivery services in the United States. Therefore, lots of smaller companies in the area are trying to implement business models similar to Instacart to succeed.

The entire business flow of this popular application is extremely easy. Generally, it is based on individual buyers and shoppers. Individual buyers are customers that place orders with the help of the app. Shoppers are those who make purchases according to the clients’ needs and are responsible for the delivery.

The entire process of using Instacart looks like this:

1. The client places the order on the app and selects the required grocery for shopping
2. The customer adds delivery instructions and pays for the purchase
3. The order appears in the internal Instacart system so that the local shopper can pick it up
4. The shopper goes to the store, purchases products according to the client’s list, pays with the preloaded card, and makes the delivery to the customer.

As can be seen, the operating principles of the platform are pretty simple. Therefore, lots of new solutions in the area constantly appear on the market. All of them require accurate and precise testing to ensure the best quality of the service offered to the customers.

How to test an app similar to Instacart 

It is a well-known fact that mobile app testing is a complicated process that should be definitely performed by QA professionals. As a rule, mobile apps are complex solutions that require implementing the best mobile app testing practices. This rule is surely working for food delivery apps, too.

When it comes to testing different mobile food delivery apps, you will surely need to keep lots of factors in mind. Factors such as determining the region of your target audience, the most common devices and carriers used by customers in the area, and lots of other necessary parameters to make sure that the ‘user journey’ is well tested and all possible scenarios are addressed and tested.

Most important testing stages for your food delivery app 

How to test an application related to the food industry? What are the main features of food delivery QA testing? Which application testing techniques should you choose? Explore the most necessary testing stages to ensure the best quality of your solution.

Functional testing 

This type of mobile app test cases is composed to make sure your solution is working according to your requirements and is meeting the expectations of the customers. As a rule, this stage includes installing, updating, and using food delivery app, device resources testing, and business functionalities testing.

Usability testing 

This type of testing is focused on customers’ satisfaction. It means, your app should have an understandable and easy-to-use interface, meets the industry standards, and performs its function in the most effective way.

Compatibility testing 

Examining the performance of your app on mobile devices with different operating systems, carriers, screen sizes, and other essential parameters is an inevitable part of testing mobile applications. On this stage, QA professionals usually perform various types of configuration testing (browser, OS, device, database, and network) This allows checking whether your delivery service is working properly on devices with various types of screen resolutions/sizes, versions, operating systems, as well as with various carriers, locations, etc.

Performance testing 

How to test an app under different conditions? Performance testing is designed exactly for these purposes. See how your app reacts to different conditions and workload. Stability, Stress, Load, Concurrency, and Volume testing are all handled on this stage.

Security testing 

This type of QA effort is developed to check the app’s security features. This is a vital part of the testing process that ensures your service is securely protected from viruses and other external risks.

Localization testing 

All big companies also perform localization testing to make sure the app meets the expectations of the target audience in the area of cultural specifics.

Don’t forget to start with writing detailed test cases to make sure you test all possible scenarios. What happens if not all required groceries are available in the store? What happens if the customer is not home during the delivery? Can the customer leave a tip to the shopper? And more and more different scenarios to address and test.

All in all, testing a food delivery application is a complicated process that requires a professional approach. In case you are searching for the best testing alternative, it is better to choose a reliable crowd testing platform with a brilliant reputation, great project managers to manage the entire process, and perfect customer feedback.