Pets Corner Ecommerce Case Study

Omni-channel Ecommerce for nationwide pet care retailer.

Founded in 1968 with a single store in Haywards Heath, Pets Corner is now the UK's largest independent Pet Care retailer with over 160 stores nationwide. Backed by their vision of best product & best practice, they're the destination store for great pet care advice, nutritious food, and a friendly face.

"We wanted to move the Pets Corner website away from an open source ecommerce platform where we've been vulnerable to security risks, performance issues, and costly developer time/upgrades"

Director of Ecommerce & Marketing, Pets Corner

Project Highlights

Click & Collect

Real time store stock updates means Click & Collect is available from any of their nationwide stores in as little as two hours or less
Store stock checks

Integrated store stock checker means the availability of stock of any product, at each store, can be checked based on nearest location or favourite store
Store locator

Dedicated store information such as ranges & brands stocked, opening hours and additional services (e.g. grooming, tag engraving, vet surgery, puppy hour, free parking and much more)
Fulfilment

Multiple fulfilment options based on destination, weight and type of products (frozen or non-frozen) including delivery countdown timer and availability of collection from store
Product subscriptions

Products can be set so they are available on a subscription basis via differing timescales right down to a product level (e.g. fortnightly on one, monthly on another etc...), and available for both delivery and collection from store
Advanced search

Advanced search tools including predictive, fuzzy search, support for inflections, weighted & boosted search passes, and much more
Call centre

Built-in call centre allows admin users to setup/view customer accounts and process orders on their behalf as well as aiding customer service to provide support
Triggered emails

Number of triggered email programmes for abandoned baskets, subscriptions, replenishment, loyalty, product reviews, stock notification, and lapsed customers
Integration

Bespoke integration between tradeit and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP to suit business requirements

Project Integrations

Project Overview

As an integral part of Pet Family, Pets Corner was among the numerous websites housed on various different platforms within their previous structure. Their aim was to streamline operations and undertake a significant replatforming project to transition each site in their extensive portfolio to tradeit and progress to an ecommerce agency well-versed in projects of this scale and complexity.

Mounting problems

Facing a cascade of challenges, from recurring subscription errors to escalating security risks, a reliance on third-party apps for functionality, and persistent performance issues, the situation was far from ideal.

With a huge value understandably placed on product subscriptions, these recurrent errors were eroding customer trust and damaging their bottom line. Moreover, the looming threat of security breaches, including fraud, posed a significant risk to both the business and its customers.

Replatforming from Magento 2

Faced with this mounting frustration and dwindling confidence, they realised that replatforming was imperative. Given Pets Corner's prominence as the most popular and highest revenue-generating site in the group, it was strategically earmarked for migration towards the latter stages of the replatforming endeavour. With over 30 sites successfully migrated across their brands and international channels first, the time had come to focus on transitioning Pets Corner off Magento 2 to its new home on tradeit.

Allied to the wider issues mentioned above, Pets Corner faced further challenges specific to its previous platform including sluggish page load times, a cumbersome checkout process, and limited functionality for Click & Collect orders caused by integration issues between Magento and their ERP, all of which needed to be addressed as part of the move.

The Solution

The performance and security issues often associated with open-source platforms have been mitigated by the move away from Magento, whilst there have been significant enhancements to the production of in-house content through tradeit’s rich CMS, marketing and personalisation tools.

Subscriptions

Subscriptions are inherent to the platform so have replaced the clunky, malfunctioning app previously in place, whilst also providing additional flexibility so they function exactly as Pets Corner required.

Click & Collect

With over 160 stores nationwide, addressing the issues with Click & Collect was the other main priority during replatforming. Issues with their live stock feed meant that the previous site would show availability in stores, but caveat that with a message informing customers they couldn’t guarantee availability. This resulted in a confusing and poor user experience, adversely affecting both conversions and customer confidence, and often resulting in lengthy delays when ‘in stock’ items were ordered.

Through tighter integrations between tradeit and their ERP system, store stock is now updated in real time meaning customers can see actual stock availability at their closest five stores (based on browsing location), ensuring Click & Collect orders can be fulfilled in as little as two hours without issue.