Petz is the largest pet shop chain in Brazil and the company keeps growing. Its e-commerce platform is fast, safe and complete. But brazilians still prefer shopping at one of the eighty stores around the country. So, our challenge was to promote Petz e-commerce - driving traffic to the platform and boosting sales – as well as to show how the company understands what owners feel for their pets and their needs when shopping online.

Pet-commerce is the first online shopping experience designed specifically for dogs. The owner goes to Petz’s website, click on Pet-commerce button and go to an ambient designed specifically for dogs. Then, all the owner has to do is turning on the camera and playing the products videos to the dog. A tool that combines A.I. and visual recognition will analyze each of the dogs facial expressions and detect when he/she is interested in a certain product, adding it to the shopping cart. Then, the owner can review the dog’s wish list and proceed with the purchase.

Petz’s primary target consists of women (55%) and men (45%), aged 25 to 55 years old, from classes A, B and C. These people treat their dogs like a family member. And they have strong bonds with brands that understand their feelings.

When it comes to innovations and technology, this target is very demanding. They are open to try new things but everything has to work perfectly. So, to offer the best experience for Pet-commerce users, we had to be the most accurate possible. And the key for that was data gathering.

To pull this off, we studied the most common dog breeds in Brazil. Then, we collected images of facial expressions from these breeds. Then, we gathered images of the less common breeds as well as stray dogs, totalling twenty thousand dogs facial expressions.

These images were then analyzed by a professional dog trainer who ranked each of them in one out of five levels of interest. And all this data was used to train a totally new artificial intelligence. After the process of machine learning, the A.I. was able to identify the same levels of interest as the dog trainer did, for every single breed.

To create Pet-commerce, we divided the project in two parts that were developed simultaneously: U.X and A.I.

In order to build the browsing experience, we did an extensive research about dogs physical characteristics and their behavioral traits related to digital screens. The first thing we took into account was their vision. Unlike humans, dogs see a scale of yellow and blue. Besides that, they don’t pay attention to static images. So, all the products on Pet-commerce are presented in five-second videos, with blue and yellow backgrounds, that keep taking turns. And since hearing is one of the most important senses for dogs, the audio was ajusted so they could perceive the sound better. Finally, we reduced the human interaction as much as possible so the experience could be totally focused on the dogs. Before launching, we did more than 30 rounds of tests and updates on the platform.

At the same time, we started developing the A.I. To pull this off, we gathered twenty thousand images of dogs facial expressions. Then, we partenered with Leonardo Ogata, one of the best dog trainers in Brazil. He analyzed all the images, according to position of the ears, eyes, mouth and signs of relaxation or alert. And ranked them in five levels of interest. Then, all this data was used to train a totally new artificial intelligence (built without using any of the existing A.P.I.). After a long process of machine learning, the neural network was able to mimick the dog trainers ability to identify the most varied dogs facial expressions, with 83% accuracy.

The whole project took six months to be implemented and it was officialy launched on April, the 24th, 2019 to Petz 1.1 million clients as well as to potential users around the country.

During the first week after lauching, the site traffic increased 236%. The average time spent on the e-commerce jumped 103%. And the sales in toys category lifted 57%, showing that consumers really enjoyed the experience of having their dogs shopping along with them. Furthermore, Pet-commerce earned more than R$3.1 million in spontaneous media. Articles about the project were published in more than 100 media outlets in countries such as Brazil, United States, England, Russia, Australia, Germany, France, Lithuania, Slovakia, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Uruguay, Argentina, Georgia etc. And, finally, the positive mentions on social networks reached 95,6%.