Childcare App as a Business Option

Kids are a lot of fun. They are pure love and humanity’s big hope. Every loving and caring parent does everything they can for their child’s safety and happiness. However, modern parents are busy with work and try not to neglect their own lives as well. Daycare centers seem to be a tried-and-true method to be a parent and still have time for a job, hobbies, relationships, etc. 

The period of children’s development is extremely important. Record-keeping and observation processes can be significantly simplified by technology. With a properly built app, all the information will be organized, and sharing will become easier and fixed. A timesaving software for daycare specialists and parents is a modern solution. 

Such an application allows to get rid of old-fashioned paperwork and thus save lots of time both for parents and a daycare center. Payments, contacts, documentation, schedules — everything can be gathered in one place and processed with the help of the intuitive dashboard and user-friendly design. The important point here is that parents will be able to always be informed about their children, including all detailed insights regarding how a child feels, what it ate during the day, how it behaved, and what challenges a daycare specialist had to overcome with a child during the day. Isn’t it a perfect way to stay tuned about your child's day and still have time for yourself and all the things you have to do?

It doesn’t matter whether you have a childcare center and want to upgrade it with a new application or create an app that connects parents with daycare centers and babysitters; you will find this article informative.

 

The App’s Useful Functionality and Features

Every mobile app type has a basic set of vital functionality, such as registration, payment, reporting, etc. If you want your childcare application to be ahead of your business competitors, you need to load your app with maximum useful functionality and additional features that may include:

• Registration;
• New user validation;
• Profile creation or download;
• Filtering;
• Archiving, storing, and extracting data;
• Notifications and reminders;
• Information update;
• Payment;
• Tracking;
• Profiles of nannies and babysitters and booking;
• Ratings and recommendations;
• In-app messaging;
• Photo and video recording;
• Scheduling;
• Nutrition;
• Reporting (for users and app owners);
• Family account (that allows several family members to share one account);
• Games;
• Real-time monitoring (may require IoT system development);
• Weather, etc.

Daily Reports

Children tend not to tell their parents about everything happening during the day. There may be some behavior they want to disguise, or they can forget to tell about some things. There are lots of stuff important to you in your child’s everyday life that your kid doesn’t find that significant. Every parent distant to their child throughout the day needs a report, either at the end of the day or in real-time. Live reports are surely better, and it is very convenient when an app has this functionality to offer. 

Types of Reports

There can be reports on mood, learning and activities, meals, naps, and potties. All these aspects are really important though they seem to be just small daily stuff. However, these activities have a significant impact on a child’s personality development. If parents aren’t aware of how it’s all going with their child, they miss important information that can help to correct the situation if it doesn’t satisfy parents or harms a child in any way.

With the mood report, a user can see how their child behaved and what it felt during the day. It allows monitoring the mental health of a child and its stability. Knowing that a child was disappointed or sad during the day, parents can react in a proper way and assist their kid in overcoming the condition and reasons that evoked it. 

Learning reports show the intellectual development of a child and pay parents’ attention to certain aspects that should be pumped. For instance, in this type of report, a user sees that their kid was interested in music class but showed no enthusiasm during outdoor games. Moreover, such reports will allow observing the progress of each child. 

Meals report informs parents on what a child ate during the day and its reaction if there were any. For example, the child refused to eat cream soup but enjoyed an apple dessert very much. 

In the naps report, one can see how much time a child slept during the day. Sleep is vital for every person, but unlike adults, children don’t understand it and can’t control their sleeping habits by themselves. Naps reports help with creating, monitoring, and adjusting the sleeping schedule. 

Potties… A very delicate but extremely important issue when it comes to children. These reports help to find out about the problems with the kid’s eating habits as soon as they occur and manage them immediately so they won’t affect the child’s health.

 

Benefits for Parents, Childcare Experts, and App Owners

Parents 

Parents get the most important thing – knowing that their child is in good hands, and everything is okay while they are at work or busy. Even though parents cannot be with their kids 24/7, with childcare software, they get a chance to be informed about all important things that happen with their child during the day.

Daycare managers and babysitters

Daycare managers and babysitters also get plenty of benefits from childcare applications. These specialists can have better communication with parents and don’t be afraid of their reputation. In case your app is an aggregator connecting parents and babysitters, these specialists can receive more information about people hiring them and get an advanced communication channel.

Daycare/Daycare application business owner

The application owner benefits in at least two ways – covers an audience bigger than the offline childcare business has and creates a solvent community interested in their services. Good-quality products quickly gain loyalty from their audience, and in this case, loyalty goes side by side with revenue.

 

App Development – Technologies, Design, Time, and Costs

Depending on the type of your childcare app and its goals, you’ll need:

• Admin panel;
• Mobile app for end-user;
• Mobile or web platform for babysitters, childcare agencies where they can place CVs and recommendations. However, you may collaborate with trusted companies and integrate data from their database;
• Data storage solution (you can choose physical servers or cloud solutions like AWS).

Technologies. Instead of suggesting to you the best stack of technologies for your application, we’ll give you even better advice – choose a good development team, and they will offer you the most fitting variants. We could tell you that Python is the best programming language for the back-end, Angular for the front-end, and React Native for mobile development, but your development team may be excellent experts in other equally great technologies like PHP, React and Flutter. So, the best way is to find a professional team and rely on their expertise. 

Design. Never underestimate the importance of UI/UX design because your app may have the best functionality imaginable, but no one will want to use it if it is not user-friendly. Your app’s design should be more than just eye-pleasing pictures and colors. It must be convenient and understandable for daycare managers and babysitters for placing information as well as have a user-friendly and simple interface for parents.

Time. Time on development always depends on the complexity of your application and the expertise of the team. For example, an expert can accomplish a task within a month, while a junior developer will need three months to do the same. Only your development team can tell the actual time period, based on your app specifications.

Costs. Software developers and designers from different countries have different price lists for their services.

 

Advertising and App Monetization

Advertising 

You will need more than sharing over several social media channels. You can place ads in some gaming apps that your target audience is interested in. Find out what ad format is more effective for your product type but don’t underestimate the use of having additional ad formats and sources – YouTube, influencers. 

Monetization

Freemium and membership, partnership with daycare centers and agencies are the best options for childcare applications. Freemium will help you gain your users’ trust and loyalty while offering full membership (monthly, yearly, or lifetime) will tell your users that the app is created by professionals. If you have a partnership with other companies that provide goods or services for children, you can also include in-app purchases. As for showing users the in-app ads – it is a bad choice unless they all are relevant to parenting.

 

Popular Babysitting Mobile Apps 

To create a market-winning app, you need to know what your competitors already offer your target audience and whether they are successful or not so much. Include the following babysitting apps into your market research.

UrbanSitter. This web and mobile platform is a network where families can book trusted local babysitters, nannies, and tutors. The app offers parents filtering search results by experience, certifications, skills, etc. If a babysitter wants to receive a background check and access to useful features, they need to subscribe to a membership.

Sittercity. This app connects millions of families with local nannies and babysitters they can afford. Using the app, families can post a job, receive applications, filter results, book interviews, and more. Nannies and babysitters can create their detailed profiles, apply to jobs, chat with parents, receive notifications about new jobs in their specified area.

You can find other similar applications such as Bambino, Helpr, Sitter, Bubble, Zum, and others on the App Store and Google Play as a part of your market research.

Hint: Browse the comment section! You can find valuable information on your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses placed by their real users and use them for your future product. 

 

Final Words

The childcare services industry continues to increase its revenue in the US and is expected to amount to more than $50 billion by 2024.

This means that the demand for digital childcare products also increases continuously. So, if you choose to dive into this market with a good-quality, safe, and unique product, you can become the top player on the market. Knowing what your target audience knows and needs and having professional development and marketing teams will make this goal come true really fast.