Online store for residential communities with SMS alerts and affiliate catalogue

The challenge

An Indian start-up wanted an online store built specifically for people living in residential housing communities in Karnataka. Rather than a generic shop, customers would register as residents of a particular housing community, and deliveries would go to a specific block and flat within it. The store would also carry an affiliate catalogue drawn from a large online retailer.

That meant the standard registration, address and checkout flow did not fit. Customers had to be grouped by community from the moment they signed up, address capture had to reflect how housing estates are actually laid out, and the client wanted residents to receive text-message updates when they registered and ordered.

What we did

• Store and extensions. We set up the store and installed the extensions the client had purchased: an affiliate and retail store module for the external catalogue, which we later replaced with a newer version, and a support ticketing tool.
• Community module. We built a module that lists the housing communities served, displayed as a carousel on the storefront.
• Community registration. Each customer must choose a community when registering, implemented as a mandatory customer group so the client can manage residents per community.
• Structured addresses. We added block and house number fields, a city drop-down and postcode suggestions, and adjusted checkout to match.
• Transactional SMS. We integrated a template-based SMS API from the client's chosen provider, set up the message templates and tested delivery for account and order events.

Tech stack

PHP, MySQL, OpenCart, cPanel, template-based SMS API, affiliate catalogue extension, ticketing extension