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Planning to Start Online Pharmacy or Mail-order Pharmacy in New York with a Mobile or Web App?: Try These 10 Pro Tips

Starting an online pharmacy or mail order pharmacy in New York is overwhelming, both strategically and technologically.

Defining a business model, hiring a tech partner, deciding on a tech stack, and claiming high ROI take a toll on your peace of mind and budget. It in fact tests your madness and passion for the healthcare industry.

While many brick-and-mortar pharmacies have digitally transferred their business practices with either mobile or web apps during the time of pandemic, only a few of them reach break-even-point and deliver value to their customers.

So to help you start an online pharmacy or mail-order pharmacy in New York with ease and that too successfully, we have listed out some tips revolving around business strategies and technology infrastructure. And we have also shared our favorite best online pharmacy in New York.

But before that, let us tell you the things which you have already nailed down!

Don’t doubt. You have already nailed down many things!

You are in that 1% who dare to do what the rest 99% just think of.

Not getting it?

Let us explain.

1. You’ve decided to start an online pharmacy. And that’s the big deal!

Let us give you a number. There are around 80000 brick-and-mortar pharmacies in the USA. But only around 800 pharmacies or pharmacists dared to launch online pharmacies through websites, web apps, or mobile apps.

Meaning, only 1% of total American pharmacies dared to adopt technology on a mass level; the best thing is, you are one of them.

2. You’ve decided to launch your mail-order pharmacy in New York. Another best decision!

New York is home to some of the big health tech brands. In fact, a unicorn online pharmacy named Capsule was also founded in New York.

Because of its very diverse population, high per capita income, high smartphone adoption, and high literacy rate, New York-founded health tech startups are more likely to acquire more customers and hire talented resources with ease.

Most importantly, New Yorkers have been habituated to ordering essential items online due to the presence of all sorts of on-demand delivery startups. Thus, New York is the business terrain where all on-demand startups are focused on!

3. You might have also planned your budget

Well, this is the tricky part and the majority of healthcare entrepreneurs fail here.

They either lack the budget for adopting technology or have the wrong impression of the capital cost required to build technology infrastructure for their healthcare startups.

What makes their situation worse is that they never have a plan ready for claiming high ROI after investing in technology. Because they believe in running things on autopilot after adopting technology.

But we have solid surety that you have worked on the budget part too.

10 Pro tips to start the best online pharmacy or mail-order pharmacy in New York with a mobile/web app

This is not our guesswork.

It is based on what we as a healthcare IT company have learned while building online pharmacy or mail-order pharmacy apps and having conversations with healthcare industry experts in the last 8 years.

Tip number 1: Be a customer of your competitors

Everyone knows about competitive analysis. But when it comes to the best way to do competitive analysis, people lock their lips.

So, let us tell you the best way. Be the customer of your competitors. Experience their online pharmacy services by yourself. And identify where they win the customers and where they lose.

That’s how you outsmart them!

Tip number 2: Sense the next 5 moves your competitors

Knowing what cooks behind the doors of your competitors is a breakthrough! And it is not difficult to sense their next 5 moves.

You can easily sense their next 5 moves by connecting the dots between market trends, their current focus, their recent technology adoption, new rolled-out features, new hiring, and most importantly changes in the business model.

Tip number 3: Prepare a value-driven business model, separately for each user group

Being an owner of a mail-order pharmacy in New York, you will have multiple ways to make money. But you must consider only those ways which deliver value to both you and your customers. You must make a deal that works for every stakeholder, including you.

And by preparing a business model separately for each user group such as parents, students, and seniors, you can seamlessly understand their user persona & their expectations, resulting in delivering equal value to every single customer landing on your app or website.

Tip number 4: Don’t rely on a single revenue stream

The most lethal mistake in the startup ecosystem is a high dependency on a single revenue stream. Divide your revenue streams into primary and secondary revenue streams and find different ways to keep adding new revenue streams. You must have a roadmap ready for this.

Tip number 5: Categorize the online pharmacy/mail-order pharmacy app features

Features influence the app development cost and user experience the most. Thus, be specific. Categorize the features into 3 major categories – common features, advanced features, and good-to-have features.

Common features are those features that need to be in the app at any cost. Whereas, you can skip some of the advanced features and skip all of the good-to-have features if you are falling short of budget.

Tip number 6: If mobile apps, opt-in for cross-platform

Building a cross-platform mobile app requires less development time, leading to development cost savings. Because a cross-platform app runs both on Android and iOS devices with a single codebase.

However, it cannot beat the performance delivered by native apps. Thus, opt-in for cross-platform if you have a tight budget. Otherwise, go for native apps. It is truly rewarding!

Tip number 7: Keep scalability in mind

For your temporary benefits, don’t put your future at risk. You must select a tech stack in such a way that it can support an increase in the number of users in the future. Otherwise, you will need to invest in scaling up your IT infrastructure more than you can achieve affordability now.

Tip number 8: Follow microservice architecture

This is a bit technical but very crucial. Historically, monolithic architecture was used to deploy applications. However, in monolithic architecture, every service or feature of the application is interconnected. Meaning, if one service goes down, the entire application goes down.

But in a microservice architecture, the application is hosted in many loosely coupled and independently deployable smaller components or services which facilitate faster development time and fewer maintenance efforts.

Tip number 9: Don’t overlook QA testing

We have observed that both IT companies and entrepreneurs are giving the cold shoulder to mobile app QA testing. But it is essential in 2023 to dominate the market. A small glitch in the app can kill the entire customer experience and brand reputation.

Thus, emphasize QA testing and carry out load testing, integration testing, performance testing, UI/UX testing, and most importantly security testing.

Tip number 10: Always hire a healthcare IT company, period!

Why? Because IT companies entertaining all industries severely lack healthcare-specific knowledge. They don’t have healthcare vision and passion. Their developers don’t have prior experience in dealing with HL7 and other healthcare interoperability standards. And most importantly, they don’t understand the gravity of HIPAA and the pain of patients and providers!

📌 Want to know more? explore our guide on: Pharmacy app development

What are the challenges that you may face when building an online pharmacy app or a mail-order pharmacy app?

Don’t worry! We’ve got your back.

These challenges play a vital role in the success of your pharmacy app. Let us understand each one.

1. Regulatory Compliance

Navigating between evolving and complex regulatory requirements can be tedious. This includes maintaining and obtaining appropriate licenses, ensuring compliance with dispensing and prescription requirements, and keeping up with the changing data protection laws.

Non-compliance with these requirements can often result in financial and legal consequences which include penalties, fines, and shutdown of operations.

2. Authenticity and Medication safety

Ensuring the authenticity and safety of online sold medications can be challenging. Online pharmacies may face some issues related to it like expired or improperly stored medications, counterfeit medications, or falsified drugs. This can pose significant risks to patient health and safety, and may result in legal liabilities for the mail-order pharmacy or online pharmacy.

3. Prescription Verification

For the verification of validity and authority of online prescriptions, online pharmacies should have robust processes like

  • Verifying credentials of prescribing healthcare professionals
  • Validating the prescription through telemedicine consultations
  • Ensuring prescription compliance with regulatory requirements

Managing these processes can be time-consuming and may require significant resources.

4. Security and Privacy

Online pharmacies can protect customer data by securing online transactions, protecting against data breaches, and complying with data protection laws.

Ensuring the security and privacy of customer information can be challenging due to the constantly evolving nature of cybersecurity threats.

5. Reputation and Competition Management

Maintaining a positive reputation in the online pharmacy marketplace is crucial for success. Feedback and reputation can spread quickly in the online market environment where you’ll be required to manage customer reviews, handle complaints, and maintain good customer service. Ensuring customer satisfaction and managing an online reputation require ongoing effort and attention.

In case you require a pinch of inspiration, let us share the best online pharmacy in New York

Capsule is what we consider the best online pharmacy in New York.

Here is why: 

  • Free, same-day prescription delivery
  • Private chat or text with expert pharmacists
  • Get and manage all medications from the phone
  • It is free. Users just need to copay
  • A very user-friendly and feature-rich mobile app (4.9 rating out of 5.8 ratings on the Apple App Store)

Capsule app

📌 You must also read: Top 20 pharmacy apps

You must be wondering, who are we making such bold claims? Well, we are the answer to your healthcare IT questions

We are an Ontario-based healthcare-focused IT company. We have been entertaining only healthcare IT projects for 8+ years.

Our team is healthcare-specific too. Our team includes business analysts, healthcare app developers, UI/UX designers, compliance specialists, QA engineers, and even healthcare professionals.

We understand healthcare. Be it online pharmacy apps, mail-order pharmacy apps, telemedicine apps, or mental health apps, we have on-hand experience in designing, building, and managing robust solutions from scratch.

What our healthcare clients find most useful is our passion for the healthcare industry. Because of our intense level of healthcare passion, we run extra, think outside of the box, and don’t act like a typical IT company with a restricted mindset.

With our healthcare IT expertise, experience, and experts, we deliver two rare things – peace of mind and clinical value!

So, let’s have a discussion on your pharma tech vision and find not endless but only one game-changing possibility!

📌 You must also explore our: Pharmacy inventory management software