A bespoke, hand-coded pet marketplace plus companion iOS app — multi-species classifieds, a product shop, services and a community forum under one account system, with built-in advert monetisation.
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The challenge
—Pets Connected needed a genuine two-sided marketplace, not a brochure site: people advertising and finding pets across many species, plus products, services and community.
—It had to handle accounts, listings, payments for paid adverts and a lot of moving parts reliably — well beyond what a template or plugin stack can carry.
—The business also needed real ways to earn revenue from the platform itself.
What I built
—I custom-coded a full marketplace web application (hand-built, not WordPress or a template): multi-species classifieds, search and filtering, member accounts with social login, a product shop with cart, services, a learning centre and a community forum.
—Monetisation is built in — paid "Boost" and "Feature" advert tiers plus display ad slots.
—A companion iOS app extends the platform to mobile, live on the App Store.
The outcome
—Pets Connected runs its own two-sided marketplace on a platform it controls — listings, shop, services and forum under one account system.
—Built-in advert boosting/featuring and ad slots give it genuine revenue routes.
—The web app plus iOS app means members can use it wherever they are.
The story
Pets Connected is a UK pet marketplace spanning dogs, cats, horses, reptiles and more.
A template could not carry classifieds, a shop, services, a forum and paid adverts in one place.
So I hand-built the whole platform and a companion iOS app, direct, end to end.