Mobile app for reservation services is getting more and more popular these days because in, 1998, OpenTable appeared to be innovative restaurant reservation service. So, from that moment, the entire US outdoor dining was brought the whole food service industry. Chuck Templeton, the founder of the service, come up with an idea of an essential online tool which now takes some of the best world’s dining venues to one place. Ever since its inception, OpenTable has taken over a monopolistic market dominance guaranteed a continual growth to the company. So, during the 2009–2014 periods, OpenTable made 8 acquisitions of rival companies, and in June 2014 the company itself was bought by Price Group, and an online travel giant whose other brands include booking.com, prience.com, KAYAK, and agoda.com. Today, having broadened its service geography to 18 countries, OpenTable is still at leading positions as a restaurant reservation service with its most considerable market share. However, with the growth of mobile application development, the creation of numerous table reservation apps and systems started losing its dominance, even though the company was the first to reach the mobile frontier.

OpenTable provides various channels of customers to their service because these channels include website apps for iOS, Android, and Windows platforms. So, the OpenTable restaurant, reservations, reviews, menus, local food, and dining app was initially launched for iPhone in 2008, but in 2009 it comes to Android, and as per the report from OpenTable, the first quarter of 2015 it seated more than 220 million dinners worldwide by using its mobile solutions. Below are the given technology and functionality that OpenTable app provides for dinner as well as the number of features named as restaurant discovery features, rewards, and online payment:

Restaurant discovery

Location-based search, user-generated reviews, and history of booking are the significant features that the OpenTable apps use to provide its customer discover restaurants.

Search

To use OpenTable mobile app, you need to create an account using your email id and a password, or you can log in with the help of any social account. So, the first screen will give you a number of suggestions based on your current location where the suggestions will include a list of restaurants in a given area and their rating based on user’s reviews and available reservation time. So, all you need to search for a specific place, city, and neighborhood then filter suggestions by locations, cuisine, rating, price, etc. Besides, you will have to choose the time and number of people attending a restaurant with you.

History of bookings

Apart from a restaurant search users can see the history of bookings which they have made. Therefore, this feature provides users with quicker access to the places they have already visited.

User-generated reviews

Customers can post a review on OpenTable.com or can use a mobile app for the same. So, that they can leave comments and rate a restaurant as per the food, ambiance, and service from 1 to 5. Besides, a user-generated review is also a valuable feature which can help you to contribute a positive user experience and serves as effective bait for initial customers.

Reward Program

A system rewards in the mobile app helps to makes users feel engaged with its functionality of an application so that OpenTable can use a Dining Rewards program or a system of loyalty points which means that every user will get 100 points to his or her account for each reservation made through the service. So, that they will get additional 1,000 points or a chance to get a special off-peak table in case a restaurant participates in the pay for a performance marketing program. Additionally, the amount of money on a dining cheque depends upon the country.

Online payment system

OpenTable has launched a “Pay with OpenTable,” which allowed iPhone and Android users to pay their check using the app as well as customers can also add their credit cards to the mobile app and can pay whenever they need to use Apple Pay. Besides, the partnership with Braintree also allows OpenTable to process their payment, which goes through the mobile app securely. Further, it has also implemented its industry-leading NCR’s Aloha points of sales system, where the NCR provides an API platform, which is a cloud-based gateway so this helps to enable an app like OpenTable to connect to the NCR’s servers to provide their customers with an easy way to pay on their smartphones. However, restaurants which work with NCR Aloha POS system can also drive loyalty and engagement program by letting their customers pay whenever they want to use the OpenTable app.

So, for wrapping up mobile app industries is continually evolving. Therefore, the only chance for app development companies to survive is to keep up with the modern trends as well as always search for the new growth opportunities. However, find your unique vision and strive to make the world a better place.

Source URL: https://medium.com/@wishvite/how-to-build-an-app-like-opentable-d6d64b79ac39