Task
To create a website for a pharmacy chain, organize online ordering of goods, and implement integration with the customer’s internal system.
Decision
The legislation on online trade of medicines is about to be passed. Increased trading prospects for goods on the Internet have forced most large pharmacy chains to actively create and develop their resources. Our client did not lag behind the general trend either. Created a few years ago, the online pharmacy catalog could not take its rightful place next to attractive, fast and functional competitors, so the company’s management has decided to create a completely new resource.
The company has a huge number of pharmacies (more than 1500) in several cities and even countries. There are many thousands of product items in the catalog. At the time of contacting us, an internal system was functioning, which stored the entire range of products, information about their availability at each point, data about pharmacies, cards, transactions, discounts, users and orders. Prior to starting the development, it was necessary to understand the structure of the data, to study the business processes related to creating and receiving an order in the pharmacy chosen by the user. As a result, the design of the website has initiated changes in the structure of the internal system data, refining and filling the catalog with data, creating new procedures and algorithms.
Medicines are a special commodity. They are rarely chosen according to their characteristics, but more often customers come to find a drug, prescribed by a doctor or seen in an advertisement. That is why, the focus is primarily on searching a medicine. Our search is smart and multifunctional. The product can be searched by name, manufacturer, active ingredient, and even barcode. The special pride is the search of symptoms. The user can simply write «runny nose» and see all the drugs that might be suitable for its treatment. When entering a search query, we show a list of suggestions that will enable the user to get oriented and save time. Moreover, if the user misspells the name of the drug, in most cases we will still figure it out and offer what a customer wants.
Categories and subcategories of products also help users navigate in the range of pharmacy’s goods, and special tags with the most popular queries can be used to quickly filter the variety of drugs found. We did our best to use simple and clear words for tags: «prevention», «for men»," for the elderly"," wounds and burns«, etc. Filtering can also be completed by a large number of additional parameters, the set of which is individual for each category of goods.
The product card is designed so as to provide basic information (dosage, active drugs, manufacturer, form of release). If desired, you can get detailed information about each drug from its instructions.
Showing concern for the client, we will offer syringes and napkins to the drug in ampoules, and in a separate part of the card we will show drugs with the similar effect.
Adding an item into the shopping cart is easy, but by clicking on a special icon, the user does not even realize that a serious process is launched in the hidden part of the website. The availability and leftovers of the product are checked in all pharmacies of the selected city. If there are several items in the shopping cart, the check is performed for each of them. Compounding and storage features are also checked. All pharmacies in the list and on the interactive map are ranked by the availability of products in the cart: the ones in which it is possible to pick up the entire order in full are displayed above.
Orders placed by the user are transferred to the internal system and stored in the user’s personal account.
Not everyone is used to placing orders online. There are users who are definitely willing to communicate with a pharmacist in person. Particularly for them, there is a huge selection of pharmacies, both in the list and on the map. The search field by address, district or metro station and a filter where you can specify the specialization of the pharmacy, opening hours and discount cards that the pharmacy accepts or issues will help you choose the appropriate one.
We have not either forgotten about special needs. Pharmacies deal with both rare and very expensive medicines. These can be ordered individually by contacting specialists through a special form.
In spite of sad occasions, there are also happy ones. How can a pharmacy product not be good for a gift? Cosmetics, vitamins, appliances and many other useful things can be given for a birthday or New Year. Pharmacies provide gift certificates for this purpose. They are sold and available for purchase in the catalog, just like all other products.
Planeta Zdorovya implements a number of interesting projects. «Young Pharmacist» (for kids) alone is enough to earn the title! We have talked in detail about each of them, and some even have been given an opportunity to sign up for special events.
One of the tasks for website creation therefore was to provide a high-quality representation of our client, create an image of a serious large company, attract new partners and employees. We have solved this problem within the «About» and «Cooperation» sections.
Our customer always has news and information opportunities, so the website has sections for news, publications, promotions and special offers. It is even possible to download all the issues of the company’s magazine.
Client
Planeta Zdorovya is more than 1,500 pharmacies in 41 regions of Russia and 6 million customers. The company is developing dynamically, has partners in Europe, runs its own newspaper and magazine, and develops a large number of other projects.
