RESULT
40+ million
users having the best experience
Project goal
Scale and boost the client’s development capacity
Technologies
Django | React | React Native | Celery | Datadog
Highlights
SEO optimization | Cross-platform development and migration | New business units experiments
RESULTS
40+ millon
users having the best experience
Project goal
Scale and boost the client’s development capacity
Highlights
SEO optimization | Cross-platform development and migration | New business units experiments
Technologies
Django | React | React Native | Celery | Datadog
A platform that makes the lives of pet parents easier
A platform that makes the lives of pet parents easier
Rover is a platform for booking pet sitters and dog walkers. It offers services such as house sitting, day care, dog walking, and more. Founded in 2011, Rover is the world’s largest network for pet owners and sitters in over 10 countries. It is a public company listed in Nasdaq that has millions of 5-star reviews and their app has been used by 2+ million pet parents.
Overcoming the pandemic impact with staffing
Overcoming the pandemic impact with staffing
We first connected with Rover in the 2019 DjangoCon, in which both of our businesses were speakers. Recently, their team reached out to ask for our help with software development needs.
After overcoming the pandemic difficulties that included reducing their dev team, they were ready to take their platform to the next level and recover their development capacity and speed. Octobot impressed the Rover team and we were their go-to choice thanks to our unique ability to quickly assemble a senior level team.
Staff augmentation model: complementing the in-house team
Staff augmentation model: complementing the in-house team
We kicked off our engagement with Rover in a small, punctual project for migrating part of their system to the newest version of Django. It was the perfect opportunity for both sides to evaluate the partnership: they could review our developers’ quality and work modality, and we dug deeper into their product and practices. After a successful first project, we decided to grow the team and continue to support Rover’s in-house development on different fronts.
From a 3-person team we grew the engagement until reaching a team of 10+ developers, working in 4 different teams inside Rover. Currently, the teams are organized based on a few different goals:
Growth team, responsible for SEO optimization and making sure the platform fulfills all of Google ranking factors in order to grow organically. This team is also dedicated to implementing Rover’s referral program.
The team responsible for all the flow where a pet owner connects with a sitter, which includes search feature, mailing, user profiles, matching algorithms, and more.
Another team in charge of making sure Rover fulfills all the cookies consent policies, such as GDPR and CCPA.
Expansion team, responsible for working on new business units. As Rover detects opportunities to explore new markets and services, this team is in charge of implementing them by experimenting, measuring, and validating the best ones.
How the app works
Search
A pet owner opens Rover and, by entering the zip code, is able to see pet sitters and walkers nearby.
Connect
After checking out the different options in the map and reading verified reviews, the pet owner contacts the person that is the best match for their needs.
Match
Users can book and pay for the services they require at any time, thanks to Rover's 24/7 services. Besides pet sitting, they also offer services such as dog walking, day care, and training.
Empowering each other in a positive engagement
Historically, Octobot has predominantly worked with B2B partners, so Rover and its B2C solution brought us the best opportunity to learn more about building solutions for final users.
The processes we put in place for this project affect over 40 million users, which led us to adapt our dev practices in order to reduce downtime and elevate results with continuous deployment and integration.
Our partnership with Rover has thrived due to the team's talent and high-quality standards, as well as our transparency and good rapport. As we mentioned before, we started the partnership as a small project and, as we got to know each other virtually and also in-person after a visit to their offices in Seattle (which we believe is fundamental to improve and generate strong bonds in the relationship with our customers), we realized we were a perfect match.
One of the greatest aspects about our teams’ collaboration is the frequent touchpoints that Rover's leaders and Product Managers have with our leadership team. In these talks, they align expectations and share feedback about the team's work and motivation, which later translates into actionable goals that increase the devs' performance and fidelity to the project.
A team dedicated to continuous improvement
A team dedicated to continuous improvement
We've had many achievements, , such as a great advance in the migration of functionalities initially created using native Android and iOS technology to React Native. We also implemented new business units such as a training service for pets -that now users can get through the platform-, and pet insurance. To also make things easier for pet sitters, we’ve added a new calendar to offer a better overview of their schedule.
On SEO aspects, the team has made remarkable breakthroughs in improving the site speed and other technical factors using React with server-side rendering and CSS. As a result, the Rover brand increased their ranking over search engines. Using tools such as SEO Clarity and Google Lighthouse, they're constantly improving the platform's performance and supporting other teams to implement changes without affecting SEO standards.
Another challenge the team undertook was the migration to GitHub Actions and GitHub Codespaces, which made the production releases much more efficient and the general coding process faster.
New projects are on the horizon to continue helping Rover in becoming a better, more user-friendly and accessible platform. Their interest remains consistent because of our elevated service level and the many benefits that outsourcing to Latin America offers to US businesses: same time zone, cultural affinity, high English level, and more.
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