Development of a pet sitter services

Pet owners often find themselves in a difficult situation when they need to urgently leave for business or go on a business trip, but leaving a pet unattended is also impossible. After all, he needs to be regularly fed, paid attention and walked. In such situations, overexposure services become the solution to the problem – special platforms where you can find a petsitter who will provide the pet with professional care during the absence of the owner.

To look at this situation from a business point of view, we suggest turning to statistics.

According to American analysts, every third pet owner is a working person aged 20-45. That is, this is a solvent audience that has money and a desire to provide comfort to their pet, but little time. As a result, overexposure platforms have become increasingly popular in recent years.

Below, we’ll show you how to take advantage of this trend and launch your own petsitting platform.

After analyzing the market, we came to the conclusion that most petsitting platforms operate according to one of two business models:

Mediation

In this model, the platform works like a bulletin board and is monetized through paid listing of petsitters, banner ads, and premium features. At the same time, services are provided completely free of charge for the client side.

The main disadvantage of this model is that pet owners will have to rely entirely on the honesty of the performer. To some extent, a reliable system of ratings and reviews can help here. But in order to ensure the highest level of trust, the platform administration will have to take responsibility for verifying the qualifications of the performers. By the way, the introduction of “verified accounts” can become another source of income for the company.

Own staff of petsitters

In this case, the company receives full payment for the provision of services and is responsible for the quality of their provision. On the one hand, this approach gives the maximum level of trust on the part of customers, but on the other hand, it imposes some restrictions in terms of business expansion, since:

• To develop the network, it will be necessary to open a new offline office in each locality.
• Due to the limited number of employees, there may be overlaps in customer service.
• It is necessary to introduce effective tools for personnel control.

When developing a service for keeping animals, it is important to focus on maximum automation. This will make the interaction between clients and petsitters comfortable, and will also positively influence the popularization of the platform on the Web.

The main features of this project include:

• Registration and entry. Creating a user profile with the ability to select a role on the platform – client or performer. You also need to immediately provide for the possibility of password recovery via e-mail or mobile phone.
• User profile. A page where users can post important information, such as their pet experience, services offered, or their pet in the case of a customer account. It would be useful to give the opportunity to customize the profile.

• Listing of petsitters. A catalog with easy navigation, a system of filters and tags that will help customers quickly find the right artist.
• Rating and reviews. This is a very important component of the service for overexposure of animals, regardless of the model of its monetization. With its help, customers will be able to form a certain idea about the artist, based on the opinions of other users.
• Planning. Tools for planning the working time of performers will help to avoid overlaps and the possible recording of two clients at the same time.
• Photo and video report. The reporting function integrated into the service will allow the owner of a pet to control the emotional and physical state of his pet.
• Payments. Possibility to pay for the overexposure of a pet online or purchase paid premium features. This will require integrating bank payment services, Visa/MasterCard, Google Pay and Apple Pay.

The stability and performance of the service for overexposure of animals directly depends on how optimally the technological stack was selected. There may be several options here:

• Server side — can be built in PHP/Python/Java programming languages, Node.js software platform, or Django/Flask/Yii2/Laravel frameworks.
• The client part — the front-end of the web version of the service is based on the JavaScript language. In addition to it, static HTML / CSS technologies or reactive frameworks Vue.js and React.js can be used.
• Mobile development – there are two approaches here: you can use native technologies: the Kotlin language for Android and Swift for IOS, or cross-platform – the Flutter framework and the Dart language.

In the first case, we will get maximum performance and full integration with each platform, and when using the SDK, we will be able to significantly save the budget, but the system performance will have to be sacrificed a little.

• Desktop – such applications are installed on a PC or laptop and are focused on maximum speed. Java, C++, PHP and Python programming languages, as well as Django/Flask/Yii2/Laravel frameworks can be involved in their development.

Our team selects technologies individually, taking into account the characteristics of each individual project, as well as the priorities and budget of the customer.

Animal care service is a technically complex project, so when implementing it, our team uses an iterative approach based on the Scrum methodology. The life cycle of such a product often consists of six stages. Let’s consider them in more detail.

Stage 1. Gathering information

Starting work on a new project, the team studies the requirements of the customer, conducts in-depth market analysis and creates high-level documentation.

Stage 2. Design

This is a preparatory stage, during which a preliminary design of the user interface is created, the functionality logic is designed and the viability of new ideas is tested.

In fact, during the design process, a detailed prototype of the project is created, which will become the basis for developers at all subsequent stages. As a rule, it includes:

• Low-detailed interface prototypes.
• Block diagrams that visualize the principle of operation of the main functions.
• Functional description table.
• Project mathematics.

Stage 3. Design development

The interface plays an important role in any digital product, therefore, in order to achieve the optimal result, we offer the client several UI options. After the visual concept is approved, fonts, illustrations, animations and other components are superimposed on the warframe, as a result of which the GUI acquires an attractive and natural appearance.

Stage 4. Programming

The technical development of the service for overexposure of animals consists of two parts:

• Frontend. It is located on the client side – that is, in the browser itself or on a mobile device, and provides a comfortable user interaction with the server. Frontend includes layout, creation of animations, transitions and other interface components.
• Backend. It works on the server and is responsible for all internal processes – storing, processing and providing data to the client at the request of the user. At this stage, developers form a database architecture, write functional code, configure servers, and integrate the product with external services.

Stage 5. Testing

Thorough testing allows you to bring to the market the most prepared product for operation. To do this, QA engineers are involved in almost all stages of development, and their area of responsibility includes:

• Development of testing strategy.
• Creation of test documentation.
• Carrying out manual and auto-tests.
• Bug fixing control.

Stage 6. Technical support and development

After the release, the development of the service for overexposure of animals does not stop. Next, you need to focus on optimizing and developing the functionality, as well as on solving technical issues that users may have at first. To do this, the product is transferred to technical support.

Most pet owners are committed to the welfare of their pets and are willing to spend money on it. And given that this trend is constant and does not lose relevance, investments in the development of a petsitting service will most likely pay off and bring profit.

AVADA MEDIA has all the necessary experience and formed teams of qualified specialists for the development of PetTech projects. In our work, we rely on careful design, innovative technologies and close interaction with the customer. This approach allows us to create thoughtful and competitive technical solutions that are in demand in the market.