The challenge
PetShop MG is a chain of pet supply stores with three locations in Coquimbo, Chile. In 2019 every sale went through the counter, and the underlying decision was about architecture more than design: build the online channel on WooCommerce and grow it in layers, instead of rebuilding the store every time the business needed something new. That decision was put to the test later on: taking payments remotely, selling veterinary pharmacy products that require a prescription, shipping to other regions of the country, showing the stock at each store. Each layer went in on the same foundation, without starting over.
What I did
An online store that grew in layers, each one requested by the business, not by a redesign:
- 2019-2020: the online store on WooCommerce: quoted in October 2019, selling since May 2020.
- 2020: online payments with the WebPay/Transbank integration (in Spanish). Webpay is Transbank’s card gateway, the main one in Chile.
- 2021: full rebranding and redesign, including a feature the business asked for: uploading the veterinary prescription to buy pharmacy products.
- Integrated shipping with Chilexpress and Starken, two Chilean couriers, to ship across Chile from Coquimbo.
- Stock by store: a custom implementation that shows each location’s availability in the online store.
- SEO and ongoing maintenance since launch.
Result
Seventh year of the same store in production, selling every day since 2020 on the foundation built at the start: every layer the business asked for went on top, without migrating it or rebuilding it.
A full redesign (v2) is now in progress, built in parallel without interrupting sales, and it came out of a direct audit of the database rather than a hunch.
The service behind these seven years is described on the WooCommerce online store with Webpay page.
The starting point
Every sale went through the counter: no online store, no electronic payments, and a brand that no longer reflected the real size of the business.
