We were asked to design and deploy an e-commerce site for a revolutionary new idea for a market segment (normally high cost prescriptions and over the counter drugs) by a start-up looking to launch a new business model approach. Endertech leveraged a deep bench of experience in e-commerce and online health to innovate development of a website property designed to flank all other online pharmacies in this new vertical.
Target Audience: People who do not have health and pharmaceutical insurance as well as people who have insurance plans that carry high prescription costs.
The Scenario
Endertech deemed the new Magento 2 platform to be appropriate for the Honeybee Health business model. Magento 2 is an advanced, flexible, open-source platform that we customized to match the client’s needs in areas such as membership subscriptions, search functionality, autocomplete, and checkout features. Magento 2 was deemed superior for this project than any of the popular software as a service (SAAS) platforms because some of the elements Honeybee Health desired cannot be done natively on those other shopping platforms.
Honeybee’s unique membership business model required us to further customize the user’s registration and payment system flow.
The Website Platform and Design
Our team needed to structure and validate the provided data of more than 5,000 complex pharmaceutical products into a singular Magento compliant format.
Data Management
The e-commerce store needed to possess a flexible, comprehensive, deep search functionality with auto-complete capabilities. The powerful search engine we designed needed to be fast and the client also wanted to be able to classify relevancy weights to specific product description variables.
Custom deep search and auto-complete functionality.
Creating Powerful Shopping Tools
Due to the nature of this product category, the ability to ship to all destinations was limited by local law restrictions. As such, we needed to design a system that could identify and restrict certain shipping destinations.
Complying with Restricted Shipping
The client wanted a website where customers could see the site and its products, but where purchasing was behind a membership requirement. The business concept presumes memberships will drive a higher tendency toward subscription and renewal purchases. These membership criteria went above and beyond what Magento’s extensions typically offer.
Creating a Membership Business Model
Configuring a new website membership business model has proven effective, as subsequent to launching the new site Honeybee Health successfully raised their first Seed Round of funding and are preparing to begin rapidly growing the company from within now that the resources (website and financial capital) are in place. The Honeybee Health team has been exuberant in conveying “You have been really helpful with everything we have needed, thank you and Endertech for all the good work.”
Website Powers Venture Capital Seed Round
Due to regulatory control in this vertical the client found it very desirable to work with a domestic development partner. Working with a US based agency also allows for easier and more fluid communication along with a reduction of hassles and delays that typically come when working with resources in another part of the world, including time zone misalignment and language nuances.