A complete guide on how to develop a D2C Pharmacy Business

We are living in a digital era where we can have almost anything at our doorsteps by just making a few taps and clicks on our phones and devices. Pharmacy demand would always be evergreen, worldwide. Medicine delivery at home is a key element that plays an important role in one’s Pharmacy Business. The pharmacy industries are adopting new methods to reach out to their customers and it involves developing a feature-rich medicine delivery mobile app.

Over the years, on-demand medicine delivery apps have emerged as the perfect solution to overcome all the hassles of waiting in lines, not finding the required drug at the store, or not finding the appropriate pharmacy to buy the drug from. With these apps in place, pharmacies can enable their customers to buy any medicine or drug from any pharmacy, at any time and have it delivered anywhere. As for the retailers, they are also experiencing a great work balance with the help of these interfaces as they can reach a larger number of people and cater to their needs on a wider scale.

• The need of the hour in times of COVID-19.
• Why invest in the D2C Pharmacy Business? Check out the stats to know more!
• Medicine Delivery: Where there are benefits, there also are challenges to prepare for!
• Want to keep a track of Pharmacy Business Competitors?
• The ‘Must Have’ Features in Pharmacy Delivery App.
• Build your own D2C pharmacy application in no time.

The need of the hour in times of COVID-19.

In the days of Covid-19, especially during the 2020 lockdown phases, people have turned to online medicine delivery systems as one of the biggest support systems. The availability of medicine is the most important thing, of course! With the pandemic leading to lockdown and stay at home orders, it not only became difficult for people to go out of their houses to get medicines but also brought a decline in the availability of medicines at a later stage, as people stocked up their medicines and hoarded chemist shops for masks and sanitizers. On-demand medicine delivery has empowered pandemic-struck customers to order medicines at their homes with the safety of contactless delivery. This is how the pharmacy industries faced a boon from the medicine deliveries in the pandemic and are still benefiting from the same.

Why invest in the D2C Pharmacy Business? Check out the stats to know more!

According to the statistics, the healthcare and pharmacy industries are some of the top business industries to accelerate the development of mobile apps. As per Statista, the projected growth for mHealth applications is estimated to grow at around US$ 332.7 billion by the year 2025. The below graph clearly shows how the market size for mHealth applications is increasing each year. 

A few more numbers to look into:

• As per stats, there are more than 325,000 health-related mobile applications present on the various app marketplaces.
• Around 60% of the total mobile phone users have downloaded a mHealth app to their devices.
• mHealth apps are also responsible for increasing the productivity of healthcare workers and saving more than $200 billion on remote patient monitoring.

Medicine Delivery: Where there are benefits, there also are challenges to prepare for!

Starting with a positive vibe, the on-demand medicine delivery app not only benefits the customers but also benefits the pharmacy owners.

Customers-

• Saves Precious Time
  • Customers find it easy to get their necessities delivered to them at their doorstep which saves them time finding a pharmacy, going there, showing the prescription and then asking for the medicines and carrying them back home. With the online app, they are just good to go sitting at their homes.
• Discounts and Offers
  • Attractive discounts on the medicines attracts more customers to buy online which saves their pocket and gives them ability to earn loyalty points to buy more and more online & keep them engaged.
• Descriptive and Interactive
  • With structured hierarchy and navigation among the various medicine catalogs, customers can browse and search for the desired medicine with a few taps and have the order placed.
• 24×7 services
  • Customers can buy and place orders anytime and from anywhere and get them delivered as per the availability schedules of the pharmacies online.
• Availability of medicines
  • No need to physically visit pharmacies to check the availability of the required medicines, the customers find the online medicine delivery app beneficial to update them with real-time inventory information of the pharmacy.
• Easy interaction with pharmacies
  • Customers can upload their prescription with just a click along with their order, for the pharmacy to review and deliver medicines, which helps avoiding communication gaps. Also, effortless availability of the chat feature between customer and the pharmacy makes it more convenient for the customers to get confidence in their deliveries.

Pharmacy Owners-

• Improving Customer Base
  • Increase and improve your customer base by knowing them better, offering discounts, keeping them engaged, and having a clear conversation.
• Automated Updating Of Inventory
  • You just have to stock up the inventory once, manually, and then you are good to go, rest inventory updates are looked into by the platform itself. Real-time inventory updates will allow the customers to make orders and zero inventory will result in ‘Out of Stock’ descriptions to avoid any kind of ambiguity.
• Offer Services Beyond Geographical Constraints
  • Operational Geofences are the way you can expand your deliveries upto the otherwise unreachable areas as well. Online apps will directly help your customers reach you and moreover, place the order for medicine delivery too.
• Easy interaction with customers
  • You can easily view the prescription uploaded by your customers along with the orders to ensure the demand of medicines, which helps avoiding communication gaps. Also, effortless availability of the chat feature between you and your customers makes it more convenient to update your customers or interact with them.

Starting an on-demand medicine delivery business is not that easy. Along comes the challenges which require sharp attention too:

• HIPAA Compliance Affecting App Development
• FDA Regulations

Want to keep a track of Pharmacy Business Competitors?

It is always advised to keep an eye on the overall performance and growth of the competitors of the same business as well because it’s always good to grab the good things that come along the journey.

Here are a few names for reference:

• Capsule Pharmacy Delivery App
• NetMeds
• NowRX
• CVS
• PillPack

The ‘Must Have’ Features in Pharmacy Delivery App.

The D2C pharmacy/medicine delivery platform must be designed in such a way that should provide ease of usage to customers and accessibility of management to the pharmacy owners. With Yelo on-demand pharmacy, the businesses can get an extensive feature set for all the stakeholders.

Customers-

• Maintain Profiles
  • The customer website and applications should enable the users to create their profiles on the app which would offer a rich and seamless experience.
• Upload Prescription
  • Customers can upload their prescription with just a click along with their order, for the pharmacy to review and deliver medicines, which helps avoiding communication gaps.
• Search Medicines and Nearby Pharmacies
  • You and your pharmacy are just a click away from your customers. Customers can put in the location to browse the pharmacies and then search for the desired medicine with an elastic search functionality.

• Multiple Modes Of Payment
  • Allow your customers to make payments as they wish. Cash, Credit card, Debit card, UPIs and what not? Take the payments from the customers during checkout of order or after the delivery of the order.
• Track Order
  • Real-time tracking of the delivery agent on a map allows the customers to keep track of their order along with their delivery agent details.
• Review And Ratings
  • Customers can express their gratitude by rating the pharmacy and the delivery agent through the star rating functionality within the app and also, provide feedback and reviews.

Pharmacy Owners-

• Manage Catalog of medicines
  • Keep hygienic management track of your catalog, categories and medicines and update them timely to keep it with the latest standards anytime without any hustle.
• Order management and notifications
  • Simple way to manage incoming orders, filter them by status and receive relevant notifications reduces manual work by 70%.
• Manage prices and inventory
  • Easy management of medicine prices and their inventory.
• Discounts, Marketing and Promotions
  • Enable your sales occasionally or generally through attractive discounts and promotions.
• Reports and Analytics
  • Real-time tracking of numbers and figures on a daily or weekly basis is most important to analyse what you’re doing. Filter the data and download the reports easily.

Delivery agents-

• Quick Order Notification
  • As soon as the order is placed, the delivery agent gets onto the application in seconds to ensure the quick ETAs.
• Complete Delivery Information
  • Agents can view all the customer and order details needed to fulfil a seamless delivery.
• Share Availability
  • Easy management of shifts and schedules make the order assignments more efficient.
• Real-Time Navigation
  • Head towards the pharmacy and to the customer’s address through Google maps navigation to ensure fastest delivery.
• Track Earning & Performance
  • Swift way to check the daily earning report and ratings.

Build your own D2C pharmacy application in no time.

If you are worried about hiring a developer to get a platform developed and designed, then change your thoughts and be smarter today! With zero codings and in no time, set up your own SaaS medicine delivery platform and be ready to outshine in the business.

Why SaaS or out-of-the-box solution? Trying to answer your question:

• Quick And Easy To Brand
  • Customizable and fully-responsive mobile apps and websites that allow customer ordering on the go
• Advanced and Robust
  • Robust inventory management that ensures you’re never out of medicines that are on-demand at a given time.
• Attractive customer interface
  • Stunning marketplace themes that can be modified as per your requirements. You get to decide the look and feel of your online store.
• Online Payments
  • Safe and secure payment process that includes over 100 external payment gateways from around the world.

And a lot lot more….!

Yelo is a smart way for all your Online D2C Pharmacy application needs, packed with all the tools and features that you would need. You are just a click away from setting up your own D2C Pharmacy platform and compete with the Pharmacy businesses out there!

Power your business with the right tools and give your entrepreneurial dreams the wings they need to soar.
Hop on a Free Yelo 14-day trial to check out the platform, now!