How are app makers responding to the coronavirus pandemic?

With some people facing self-isolation and quarantine, food delivery apps Deliveroo and JustEat have been busy. Deliveroo’s founder Will Schu took to email on Thursday, reaching out to all customers to explain that while everyone’s daily lives have been impacted by the virus, the delivery service has taken steps to ensure the safety of customers and riders. 

His message detailed measures such as additional packaging and instructions for restaurants along with two new services designed to help; one is a no contact drop off service, which means app users can now request their food be left outside by the rider with no face-to-face contact required. 

The second is that while it continues to be difficult for some customers to access items such as cleaning products, the app will now allow customers to order kitchen and household products from local stores and supermarkets, to be delivered via the app. 

Both Deliveroo and JustEat say they have met with government ministers to discuss how they can help get food packages to the elderly, vulnerable and isolated people. 

New data suggests that more and more shoppers are heeding advice to stay home with grocery delivery apps experiencing a spike in downloads. According to Apptopia which analyses app store performance, several US grocery apps have been installed a record number of times. Its research shows that daily download figures for the app Instacart have increased by as much as 218% compared with last month, while Walmart has posted a 160% increase and both Grocery and Shipt 124%. To put those numbers into context, they translate into 54,000 brand new downloads on Sunday alone for Walmart and 38,500 new downloads for Instacart.

The US chain store Target has also seen record downloads, with 53,100 downloads on Sunday (it owns Shipt). 

Google has been working with the US government to coordinate access to the coronavirus screening information and published a blog post detailing how it intends to help users access reliable information. This week is also announced that it will make its premium video conferencing app, Hangouts available for free during the crisis. Valid until 01 July, it says the move is intended to help the business and schools now working and studying remotely to stay productive and connected while they can’t go to the office or to school.