Not your everyday online store
Hatchet had implemented a previous project with the One Night Stand Boutique team months earlier, their booking management system (BMS). It was a natural transition as ONS's technology partner to design and build their eCommerce website. It was decided to be built out in two phases.
Phase One: Product Showcase
We chose WordPress as our project framework for its ability to sync product listings and information with their custom built BMS. Custom webhooks and APIs were developed in order to communicate and sync information with the eCommerce plugin WooCommerce. Initially, the "add to cart" and checkout facilities were hidden. The website's goal was as an initial touchpoint in ONS's customer experience. By building customer awareness of their offering, then encouraging the customer to drop into one of their brick and mortar stores. The secondary purpose was aimed as an internal knowledgebase. Assisting staff in the customer discussions by providing the most up to date product information.
Phase Two: Online Checkout
Around the corner, though, was the necessity to empower customers to self-check out and accommodate those who prefer an online experience or want to make a purchase after visiting a store. In discovery with the Director, Natalia Fiacchi, we quickly realised that this next rollout phase would certainly have a few technology gotchas to overcome. In our case, it was important for the business that online orders were distributed between the physical stores. Having a distributed inventory makes online stores 10x harder, so how do we determine which store to deduct from? On top of that, we somehow needed to ensure that dresses were available for hire within that store, between the customer's specified date range, and to also consider the calculation of the extended delivery dates vs a standard walk-in booking. Who would have thought hiring a dress would be so difficult, right?
Overcoming the challenges
The team that we have at Hatchet is remarkable. The agility we bring and the determination we have in overcoming problems with technology is what makes our job exciting. Between the custom Laravel Application, the booking management system, and having a well versed depth of experience in both WordPress and WooCommerce we were able to retrofit our custom solution without the need of any off the shelf bloated solutions. By delivering a truly custom built solution we were able to resolve the complex business requirements that ONS Boutique presented to us.