Client name withheld under NDA.
The retailer sold pet food, litter and accessories mostly through marketplace listings, with a small website that worked more like a catalogue than a shop. Customers could browse, but checkout meant sending a WhatsApp message and waiting for a reply. Marketplace fees were eating into margins on every order, and the team had no way to contact those customers again. Every sale was a one-off with a stranger.
The owner wanted an online store that customers could actually buy from, with delivery slots that matched how Singapore pet owners shop: a bag of food running low on a Thursday, needed by Saturday. We measured the old setup first so the new store had something real to beat.
We reviewed 640 products across the marketplace listings and the old site, grouped them by pet type and purchase pattern, and picked the categories that mattered most: dry food, wet food, litter and health basics. Duplicates and weak product data were cleaned before anything was designed.
Pet supplies are a repeat purchase business. A clean catalogue with consistent names, sizes and photos makes it easy for customers to find the same brand again in seconds, which is what builds repeat orders. It also keeps the store manageable for a team of nine.
We designed the shop around shopping by pet, then by brand, with filters for life stage and diet. Checkout was cut to one page, guest checkout was allowed, and the delivery slot picker sat next to the address so customers saw it before paying.
Most abandoned carts happen when delivery cost or timing is a surprise. Showing both early removes that surprise, and it tells the customer the delivery promise is real.
The store was built on WordPress and WooCommerce. We connected PayNow and card payments, courier rates by delivery zone, stock sync with the warehouse sheet and order emails that tell the customer exactly when to expect the delivery.
The retailer already ran on a simple stock sheet. Connecting to it meant the team did not have to learn a new inventory system on top of a new store.
We compressed product images, set up caching and tested checkout on both iPhone and Android handsets across several mobile networks. Marketplace customers were invited to the new store with a launch code, and the old catalogue pages were redirected.
Pet owners shop on their phones, often while standing in the pet aisle comparing prices. A store that stalls on mobile data loses the sale, however good the products are. Mobile load time fell from 4.9s to 2.1s.
We added a repeat order option for food and litter, set up abandoned cart emails and reviewed the checkout funnel each month. Product pages that attracted views but few orders were rewritten with clearer sizes and feeding guidance, and the three slowest category pages were trimmed so they opened faster on mobile.
Pet owners usually reorder the same item on a fixed cycle. Making that one click turns a one-off buyer into a regular.
Three months after launch, the store was taking more than twice the online orders it had before, at a higher average value, with more of those orders coming from returning customers. Marketplace listings stayed live, but customers had a better reason to buy direct. The store now earns more per order than it did on the marketplaces, because there are no platform fees on those sales.
Catalogue audit, design, WooCommerce build, integrations, testing and launch.
Abandoned cart emails live, repeat order option added, checkout tuned from real session recordings.
Repeat purchase share, order value and conversion rate reviewed against the baseline.
Moving from WhatsApp ordering to a one-page checkout lifted the conversion rate from 1.1% to 2.4% and cut cart abandonment from 78% to 64%. If customers have to message you to buy, you are losing the impatient ones.
Repeat customers grew from 19% to 31% of orders once reordering took one click. For consumables, build the second purchase into the first. Ask yourself what a customer has to do to reorder today, and remove one step.
Marketplace sales leave you with no customer contact. Every order on your own store adds an email address you can reach again, which is where the increase in average order value to S$61 came from.
How we plan and build online stores for Singapore retailers.
Getting your product and category pages found on Google.
Putting your products in front of people ready to buy.
What long-term ecommerce growth looks like.
Tell us what you sell and where it ships. We will map out the store, the checkout and a realistic timeline.