Pets Lounge: barcode reordering, built into search

Somebody reordering pet food points their phone at the bag instead of typing a product name they have never actually read. That is the whole feature, and it is the reason pet care suits an app so well.

The problem it solves

Pet food is one of the most reliably repeated purchases in retail. The same customer buys the same thing every few weeks, which sounds like the easiest sale in the world until you watch somebody try to make it: the product name is a string of words nobody reads — a brand, a formula, a life stage, a weight — and getting it wrong means the wrong bag arrives.

So a reorder that should take ten seconds becomes a search, a comparison, and a moment of doubt. Some of those end in an order and some end in a shrug.

What we built

The barcode scanner is in the search bar rather than behind a menu, because that is where somebody goes when they are trying to find a product. Point the camera at the bag in the cupboard and the exact item is in the basket.

It is a small feature and it is the right one for this category, which is the point: an app earns its place by removing the specific step that a specific business loses people at, not by having the longest feature list.

Live on both stores

Published October 2023 and still updated. Install it and try the scanner on anything with a barcode.