Story
As a pet lover, I’ve been wanting a Ragdoll for so long. During my search for a cat, I figured out that although there are plenty of websites connecting shelters with petfinders, there isn’t a single successful platform connecting breeders with petlovers.
Right now, if you want to find a breeder, you have to go online and search for “best Ragdoll breeders in New York City”. This will lead you to watch tons of bad-designed websites, send countless emails, do many interviews, pay deposit fees, and finally - you have to wait for six months for the litter.
If you want a cat right away, you may have to search for out-of-state breeders or even abroad breeders. You might ask: “How do I trust them? How can I make sure I will receive my pet after paying the money?”
Thus, during my Engineering Software as a Service class, I developed Paws and Tails - a website that connects breeders and petfinders.
Customer Analysis
Pain Points
- Lack of reliability of breeder and pet information
- Lack of effective communication tools - still phone/email based
- Lack of access to overseas or faraway breeders
- New petowners need advice on raising animals
- Hard to find pets other than dogs & cats in the current market
Customer Needs
- Already got tons of websites on shelters, NO good websites that connects breeders and future pet owners; or breeders and breeders
- Centralized marketplace for finding breeders and making purchases, not “word-of-mouth”;
- Safe, secure internal communication tools;
- Communicating with breeders from a different region.
Why Paws and Tails
- A comprehensive and reliable resource for pet lovers Useful functionality such as sorting and filtering and chat functionality with breeders
- Access to both existing and forthcoming (with anticipated birth) pets
- Connect between pet owners for breeding
- Connect pet lovers with faraway pet owners
Competitor Analysis
Technologies
Tech Stack
Frontend: Vanilla Javascript
Backend: Ruby on Rails
Database: Amazon RDS, SQLite3
Behavior Driven Development: Cucumber.io
Test Driven Development: Rspec (unit testing)
Deployment: Docker, Heroku
Supported Features
- Animal searching by city and country, sorting, filtering
- Join animal liter waitlist
- Breeder searching
- Dashboard for breeders to manage waitlist
- In-app messaging between breeders and petfinders
- User signup, login system