How to Start on-demand Home Services Business and Develop an App?

Home appliances, bathroom accessories, and other household works can betray you anytime and they have no mercy. Even more frightening is your air conditioner stopping working on a scorching sunny day or your house heating system going silent on a freezing winter night.

Home service business apps do a marvelous job of helping service seekers in the earliest possible way. Hence, if you are an entrepreneur, this is the time to seal the deal with a mobile app development company and build a customized tool that will rock the market.

Types of Home Service Business

Home service business ideas for 2023 can come with learning the categories or types of home service businesses. On the market are many such applications and, therefore, it depends on your uniqueness and design of your application to penetrate the market and lead the industry. Here are some of the commonest home service types to build an app on –

Home Cleaning and Repair

Home cleaning and repair is the most common type of business wherein all general services are included. Such services can be further divided into urgent services and timed ones. Depending on the distance, type of service, and urgency, the home services business model can be set. Here are a few repairs and cleaning services found commonly –

• Home cleaning along with the backyard and front yard
• Geyser repair
• Electric issues (fuse, wire, short circuit problems)
• Electric appliances fixing (fan, air conditioning, geyser, heaters, and so on)
• Plumbing services (pipe leakage, tap leakage, flush, faucet, etc.,)
• Laundry services (washing, ironing, dry cleaning)
• Carpenter services (fixing up pieces of furniture or making them from scratch)
• TV and home theater installation or reinstallation
• Washroom and kitchen deep cleaning
• Furniture (such as a sofa) deep cleaning
• Janitor services (floor, carpet, ceiling, or entire building washing)
• Gardening and landscaping (planting or removing trees, lawns, and so on)
• Solar panel installation and cleaning
• Movers and packers (shifting homes and offices)

Home Tutor and Education Services

Many parents and adults prefer calling professors, tutors, and teachers at their homes for several reasons. Hence, you can start a service business through an app that could have the feature to book such professional educationists and teachers to provide their services at customers’ doorsteps. Here are a few such services to include in the app –

• Tutor for general subjects such as chemistry, math, science, and humanities
• Professors for specialized subjects such as engineering and medical
• English and other language tutors (Spanish, French, Arabic, and so on)
• Music teacher (personal coaching for guitar lessons, piano, drums, keyboards, etc.,)
• Personal, professional, and corporate grooming

Home Design and Construction

A specialized home service business can include services for home designing and construction wherein customers can call specialized experts in making homes attractive and beautiful. Such specialists do include some constructions if needed.

• Exterior and interior designers
• Modular kitchen experts
• CCTV camera installation
• Painters
• Space specialists (experts who can makethe best use of every inch in the house)
• Architects
• Home renovation specialists
• Glass and mirror experts
• Swimming pool architects
• Horticulture specialists

Party and Event Specialists

These days event management companies and individuals are in quite demand. Such party and event experts can handle small to medium-sized to large events for individuals and/or corporate houses. You can include the following home services in your app –

• Birthday parties
• Baby shower parties
• Farewell or get-togethers
• Engagement and marriage anniversaries
• Weddings
• Retirement parties
• Event photography and videography
• Party makeup artists
• Special festival parties – Halloween, New Year, Easter, and so on

Health and wellness

Post-covid health consciousness has been observed throughout communities and therefore home service business apps can include jobs and tasks related to physical and mental well-being. Along with that specialists in providing healthcare for general well-being and syndromes or diseases are also in demand. Here are a few to list –

• Physiotherapists
• Speech therapists
• Yoga teacher
• Pet trainer and pet keeper
• Fitness trainer
• Massage therapists
• General or specialized nurses
• Baby and toddler caretakers (nannies)
• Elderly caretakers
• Regular checkup physicians
• Ayurveda or alternative medicine therapists
• Mental counselors
• Specialists in major medical problems such as cardiac, diabetes, neurological disorders (Parkinson’s), paralysis, and the like.

The Business Model of On-demand Home Service

Three major on-demand home service business models have been observed in the market. Depending on the research you had for your region, you can apply one or more than one such business model to earn revenues from home service apps.

Subscription-based model: in this model, customers can become members and get more benefits. The subscription-based services are more affordable and customers can order more frequently. For instance, a subscription to regular home cleaning services would help house owners to clean their rental apartments regularly and it would cost them much less.

Commission-based home service revenue model: in such a model, the commission is charged to service providers and at times even customers for the jobs provided on home service business apps. In another model, the charges are also applicable to each transaction done on the home service app platform. This is one of the safest and steady-income models for such apps.

Lead-generation business model for home services: in the lead-generation type revenue model, the customers are presented with several bids for the job as service providers could see consumers’ demands on the app. For instance, if a client is looking for a painting job, individuals and painting companies can see the job and bid their prices. The customers can choose the one that they think is worth.

How do Renowned Home Service Business earn?

The ultimate aim of most businesses through mobile applications is to reach the fastest breakeven point and then onward, earn profits in competitive markets. There is a gamut of app monetization methods to assure a steady stream of income; nevertheless, the revenue models may differ from app to app and industry to industry. Here, we shall discuss the ones apt for home service business apps.

There are several famous on demand home service apps on the market. Here is the list of a few and their business strategies –

TaskRabbit

Started in 2008 in Boston, TaskRabbit brought a powerful platform where task seekers met with service providers. Today, the home service business app is much more than just that. With 2 million active users, the app is spread across forty locations across the United States. In 2017, IKEA took over this, and now it has simplified its revenue model wherein task poster posts a job and taskers put their hourly rates. The posted tasks then get selected within a few minutes, and finally, the tasks are completed within 90 minutes of posting.

Thumbtack

Based on a simple lead-based model, the Thumbtack app simply charge the service providers a fee to quote their fees. The house service business app Thumbtack has been quite a popular application that most users have on their smartphones. It includes several home services listed earlier in this guide.

Alfred

Hello Alfred, a New York-based home service business app, that offers the best services for home maintenance. In 2014, the business fetched USD 60 million from Marcela Sapone and Jess Beck for their astounding business idea and promising revenue model through providing a powerful platform for home services. Majorly based on a subscription model, Alfred’s home service business app typically identifies the pain area of users and provides quick and efficient services to those tasks for which users don’t have time.

Home Service Business App Features

Customers’ engagement and visitors’ retention essentially depend several factors, mainly the user experience a product offers. While a thorough market research shall help you achieve this, there are general guidelines you can read on having the best features in mobile app to make sure that your software tool also houses them.

The features of home service business app depend on the users and the panels of those users would typically include tasks related and useful to them.

Admin panel

The admin panel could have total control over all the entities and registrations. Moreover, the admin panel would also have the privilege to add, remove, or edit any profile. Here are a few features of the admin panel –

• Interactive dashboard
• Manage/verify profiles of all kinds
• Loyalty management
• Manage ratings and reviews
• Analytics
• Accept and reject requests
• Promotions and marketing
• Push notification and design change

Customer panel

The customer panel would be the focus area because the customer is the key element in any home service business app. The customer panel user interface is designed with utmost care to provide the best possible user experience. Here are a few features you would have in your app –

• Register and login through multiple ways
• Quick search and filter
• Real-time approval notification
• Book services and get an estimated time to finish the tasks
• Rating and reviews
• Secure payment gateways
• Mark favorite vendor or service provider
• Help and customer support
• Raise complaints and track it
• Comparison of prices, fees, or charges
• Track service providers’ whereabouts
• Spread a word – social media sharing and recommendation

Service provider

Another important entity in the home service business app is the service provider. Here are a few features to name –

• Registration
• Accept/reject orders
• GPS-enabled location of service seeker
• Feedback
• Listing of services
• Offers and discounts

How Much Does it Cost to Develop on demand Home Service App?

The budget range to build an app may depend on several factors such as the complexity of the app, the number of features and third-party API integration, and the research conducted for UI/UX. There are general guidelines on the mobile app development cost that you can refer and have a rough idea on. For this niche, it could be different.

Here, experts from home service industry opine that home service app costs may start at 40000$  to 100000$ and even beyond.

How to build a Home Service Business App?

You may have various ideas on how to start a home service business, but developing a handyman’s app is a daunting task. Following a standard app development guide can help you sail through the journey easily, you can have a brief idea about it here.

From choosing the right service at the right place (region) and offering them through a fully-developed customized app for home services requires intense research and carefully taken steps. Here is a guide on how to build a foolproof strategy and follow the steps for the same –

Identify the gray area

Before you start on-demand app development, it is crucial to identify the gray area of the target users or customers. Their needs should be matched with your app’s features and facilities, and therefore, ultimately your budget. You cannot have a small budget to develop the best home service business app that contains dozens of features and hundreds of listings. Hence, the on-demand industry needs to be identified before going for mobile app development.

Study peers and competitors

After identifying the pain area of customers, it is time to study peers and competitors. You may start up a home business for various services in your region by studying common functionalities and features. Keeping an eye on major players in the market would help you develop a competitive app for the home service business. The latest market trends and consumer demands are quite crucial to understand and analyze before you list down the features you want in your on demand home service app development.

Special care for punctuality

On-demand home service businesses completely depend on punctuality because the customers are bound with time. For instance, if there is an order to seek plumbing services, it could be an urgent call because of leakage from a pipe. Procrastinating services by allotting a plumber late would make it disastrous for the customers and, therefore, they would simply give up on your app services. Hence, it is important that your app should provide quick home services in time. In fact, there are renowned home services businesses in the market that are in the race to have a 10-minute delivery app for almost everything.

Utmost care for UI/UX

Home service business applications for Android and iOS heavily rely on their user interface to provide the best user experience. Special attention is required to assure that the handyman’s app is attractive yet simple enough to navigate through. Used by a professional person to a housewife and people from all age groups, home service mobile apps for household chores and domestic help must have an intuitive UI so that it is easy for users to find the services they want. Simple components with icons and labels would make UI/UX fair enough to stay on users’ mobile and not get uninstalled.

Approach home service app development company

Once you have jotted down the studies, analysis, and requirements of the home service business, now is the time to search for the best on demand home service app development company to outsource your project. You may take the help of online directories of mobile app developers worldwide or simply search by yourself and contact them for project outsourcing. You may need to mind a few factors before you hire remote developers to build home service apps –

• Industry experience, preferably niche
• Competitive cost to develop home service business apps
• Time frame and milestones (so to know time-to-market)
• Portfolio and case studies of their previous work
• Experienced iOS, cross-platform, and Android app developers to hire
• Affordable costs through decent hiring models for developers
• Solid after-sales support for deployment and maintenance

You must go through the step-by-step mobile app development process and have a meeting or two with business and technology consultants from the best offshore mobile app development companies before you kickstart the project. You may convey your business ideas depending on which they may work on helping you with wireframes, prototypes, designing and development, and finally quality assurance for deployment, and finally maintenance.

Let’s Develop a Home Service Business App now

This is the time! Hit the market with the best home service app as you hire a dedicated team of app developers from a renowned mobile app development company to outsource your project. You can take the best benefit of their experience and consult their technology experts to make your dream come true.

Avantika Shergil   |  Dec 21, 2022

An enthusiastic Operations Manager at TopDevelopers.co, coordinating and managing the technical and functional areas. She is an adventure lover, passionate traveler, an admirer of nature, who believes that a cup of coffee is the prime source to feel rejuvenated. Researching and writing about technology keeps her boosted and enhances her professional journeying.