How we build a new generation taxi
Hello to all the Habr community!
In this article, we finally got our thoughts together and decided to share what many habrayusers asked us about - more technical and software aspects of the development of our service. In this post you will learn how the formation and development of the taxi service of a completely newpost-Soviet generation is going on.
')
Having received strong feedback (to all habrovtsy who follow our development and leaves feedback, a special and very big thank you!), We made some improvements and convenience in the process of ordering a taxi.
Not all people know the area of ​​the city, where they are located, and choosing it from the list takes time. Therefore, we have removed areas from filling out the application, having developed a technology for determining your coordinates, in order to send your application only to the nearest drivers. On the one hand, we have done better to our clients - only the nearest drivers will receive the application, which means they will come for you faster. On the other hand, the drivers got a plus - no need to look through all the applications in a row, you can only receive the closest ones. About exactly how we did it - see below.
Now you can literally in 2 clicks choose from the history of your trips an already prepared address, and you will not have to enter it again - it is very convenient and now it will actually be faster than calling a taxi.
Taking care of the convenience and time savings of our current and future customers, we have created a convenient auto-filling of the streets - just enter the first two letters of the street, and the system will offer options. The same database includes various well-known institutions in your city. For the freshness, relevance and fullness of such a base will follow our official representatives in the cities.
On some days (bad weather, holidays, etc.) taxi services have a large load and you, as a rule, are either ignored (do not pick up the phone), or politely fed with promises, or they honestly say impressive waiting time. We decided to meet the users in such a sensitive issue and made transparent statistics of drivers in the network - how many of them are online at all, and how many of them are now free to take your order.
Now you can realistically assess the situation - whether to wait for an answer or use the services of some other company. Or even “score” and not go anywhere. :)
In order to visually see the process of downloading the application, despite all the hardships of the harsh Russian cellular communications and unpredictable mobile Internet, we made the following progress bar:
In traditional taxi services, the city is conditionally divided into so-called "parking". The driver notes which one he is on in order to receive only near orders from dispatchers. Or, the driver installs additional equipment in order for the dispatcher to determine his location via GPS using rather expensive software.
We did everything differently - by introducing the technology of dividing the city map into squares with a width of 700 meters and having the driver's coordinate, we determine its square, and the system offers applications only from this and the nearest squares, without showing it more distant requests. If a request has failed to determine a coordinate or fewer than two drivers within a given radius, the application is sent to everyone.
In this way, we optimize the distribution of orders, offering drivers the most immediate orders, and clients of the closest drivers. Convenient and advantageous to both.
So that the driver, in order to determine his location, did not burden himself with wastes on the GPS device, we decided to introduce into the application the entry point for the nearest address (street + house). Thus, the driver sets your location on the map manually. When the driver takes the application, then the final point from this application is copied into this field, significantly automating the input of the reference point to determine its location. Such is a little trick.
In the near future we have a task to finally make an Android application for drivers. It will be cool and comfortable, we promise.
Having turned on logic, common sense, economy and wise advice of the havbrovtsev, we collected all our software good and transferred it to European servers, away from Russia. Now, all countries' application processing servers are located on one European server.
In addition, the server has more performance than the previous one, which greatly affects the speed of data processing, as well as other parallel tasks (batch processing of statistical data, automatic assembly of applications for dealers / partners of the system, as well as other software functions).
Innovations in our company also touched the service site ( Taxofly.com ).
We resolutely and cardinally changed the logo (partly, we were affected by your advice and disapproval of the previous logo). Then the whole site design changed and this process, by the way, is still underway. Along with the change of name, the address changed from taxolet.ru to taxofly.com.
Having set as a goal the optimization of all processes, we also created a single point of entry (authorization to personal accounts). In the near plans, we have the task to add there also the client’s and driver’s office. But we still will not tell you about them. :)
We designed the main page of the site in such a way that our essence, advantages and opportunities are clearly and focusedly conveyed to visitors. Did we succeed in this - it is up to you to decide.
In the section “About the Company” we have definitely decided to include such important points as the goals of the company's existence, its mission and a short history of development. We also decided to write about our team, adding photos and a short description of the staff to the site so that people could see who exactly is working on the implementation of this project. In our opinion, it is important for any company to be open and transparent for its customers, as well as to know its mission and convey it to customers. A little later we will add to this section the heads of our branches in other countries.
Having seen enough of the terrible and huge web forms of ordering a taxi, we once came into confusion. On the one hand, a web form should of course give many features and functions, but it feels like all companies in this matter have gone too far.
Our motto and mission is simplicity and quickness of ordering, so the web form we got is very simple, but surprisingly, more functional, providing not just sending your order somewhere to the control room office walls, but directly to drivers and giving you the right car selection - feedback in real time. Still, the 21st century.
In addition, we also made it possible to remember the phone number you entered, the selected city and the last address you entered, greatly facilitating your next taxi order. In the "Street" field, the system will offer you options from the database after entering at least the first two letters, reducing the taxi order process a little more and simplifying it.
The design also improved a little, making the whole process of ordering a taxi more convenient and intuitive.
How we manage to modernize and improve the scope of taxi services - to judge you. We are happy to hear all your wishes and suggestions that could help us in this.
In the next post we will tell you what changes have occurred in our cooperation schemes, without which the development and promotion of such a project in many cities of any country is impossible. We will also tell you about how improved the working tools for taxi services — service partners — and what new opportunities they have now.
In this article, we finally got our thoughts together and decided to share what many habrayusers asked us about - more technical and software aspects of the development of our service. In this post you will learn how the formation and development of the taxi service of a completely new
')
Innovations in applications for ordering a taxi
Having received strong feedback (to all habrovtsy who follow our development and leaves feedback, a special and very big thank you!), We made some improvements and convenience in the process of ordering a taxi.
We have removed the choice of the area of ​​the city
Not all people know the area of ​​the city, where they are located, and choosing it from the list takes time. Therefore, we have removed areas from filling out the application, having developed a technology for determining your coordinates, in order to send your application only to the nearest drivers. On the one hand, we have done better to our clients - only the nearest drivers will receive the application, which means they will come for you faster. On the other hand, the drivers got a plus - no need to look through all the applications in a row, you can only receive the closest ones. About exactly how we did it - see below.
Added travel history
Now you can literally in 2 clicks choose from the history of your trips an already prepared address, and you will not have to enter it again - it is very convenient and now it will actually be faster than calling a taxi.
Street Database
Taking care of the convenience and time savings of our current and future customers, we have created a convenient auto-filling of the streets - just enter the first two letters of the street, and the system will offer options. The same database includes various well-known institutions in your city. For the freshness, relevance and fullness of such a base will follow our official representatives in the cities.
The ability to see the service load
On some days (bad weather, holidays, etc.) taxi services have a large load and you, as a rule, are either ignored (do not pick up the phone), or politely fed with promises, or they honestly say impressive waiting time. We decided to meet the users in such a sensitive issue and made transparent statistics of drivers in the network - how many of them are online at all, and how many of them are now free to take your order.
Now you can realistically assess the situation - whether to wait for an answer or use the services of some other company. Or even “score” and not go anywhere. :)
Android users, we gave a progress bar
In order to visually see the process of downloading the application, despite all the hardships of the harsh Russian cellular communications and unpredictable mobile Internet, we made the following progress bar:
Innovations in applications for drivers
Off parking and areas
In traditional taxi services, the city is conditionally divided into so-called "parking". The driver notes which one he is on in order to receive only near orders from dispatchers. Or, the driver installs additional equipment in order for the dispatcher to determine his location via GPS using rather expensive software.
We did everything differently - by introducing the technology of dividing the city map into squares with a width of 700 meters and having the driver's coordinate, we determine its square, and the system offers applications only from this and the nearest squares, without showing it more distant requests. If a request has failed to determine a coordinate or fewer than two drivers within a given radius, the application is sent to everyone.
In this way, we optimize the distribution of orders, offering drivers the most immediate orders, and clients of the closest drivers. Convenient and advantageous to both.
"Pseudo-GPS"
So that the driver, in order to determine his location, did not burden himself with wastes on the GPS device, we decided to introduce into the application the entry point for the nearest address (street + house). Thus, the driver sets your location on the map manually. When the driver takes the application, then the final point from this application is copied into this field, significantly automating the input of the reference point to determine its location. Such is a little trick.
Give Android!
In the near future we have a task to finally make an Android application for drivers. It will be cool and comfortable, we promise.
Server optimization
Having turned on logic, common sense, economy and wise advice of the havbrovtsev, we collected all our software good and transferred it to European servers, away from Russia. Now, all countries' application processing servers are located on one European server.
In addition, the server has more performance than the previous one, which greatly affects the speed of data processing, as well as other parallel tasks (batch processing of statistical data, automatic assembly of applications for dealers / partners of the system, as well as other software functions).
Our site is our face.
Innovations in our company also touched the service site ( Taxofly.com ).
We resolutely and cardinally changed the logo (partly, we were affected by your advice and disapproval of the previous logo). Then the whole site design changed and this process, by the way, is still underway. Along with the change of name, the address changed from taxolet.ru to taxofly.com.
Having set as a goal the optimization of all processes, we also created a single point of entry (authorization to personal accounts). In the near plans, we have the task to add there also the client’s and driver’s office. But we still will not tell you about them. :)
We designed the main page of the site in such a way that our essence, advantages and opportunities are clearly and focusedly conveyed to visitors. Did we succeed in this - it is up to you to decide.
In the section “About the Company” we have definitely decided to include such important points as the goals of the company's existence, its mission and a short history of development. We also decided to write about our team, adding photos and a short description of the staff to the site so that people could see who exactly is working on the implementation of this project. In our opinion, it is important for any company to be open and transparent for its customers, as well as to know its mission and convey it to customers. A little later we will add to this section the heads of our branches in other countries.
Booking a taxi online is now really convenient.
Having seen enough of the terrible and huge web forms of ordering a taxi, we once came into confusion. On the one hand, a web form should of course give many features and functions, but it feels like all companies in this matter have gone too far.
Our motto and mission is simplicity and quickness of ordering, so the web form we got is very simple, but surprisingly, more functional, providing not just sending your order somewhere to the control room office walls, but directly to drivers and giving you the right car selection - feedback in real time. Still, the 21st century.
In addition, we also made it possible to remember the phone number you entered, the selected city and the last address you entered, greatly facilitating your next taxi order. In the "Street" field, the system will offer you options from the database after entering at least the first two letters, reducing the taxi order process a little more and simplifying it.
The design also improved a little, making the whole process of ordering a taxi more convenient and intuitive.
Total for today
How we manage to modernize and improve the scope of taxi services - to judge you. We are happy to hear all your wishes and suggestions that could help us in this.
In the next post we will tell you what changes have occurred in our cooperation schemes, without which the development and promotion of such a project in many cities of any country is impossible. We will also tell you about how improved the working tools for taxi services — service partners — and what new opportunities they have now.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/113185/
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