About the Client
WyGo is a company committed to preserving local commerce and culture by helping independent businesses thrive. They offer small- and mid-sized retailers a high-quality, enterprise-level online shopping system integrated with inventory management, paired with a unique delivery service using electric vehicles driven by local people earning a fair wage. For retailers, WyGO offers a path to growth and helps maintain a strong presence in the local market. For consumers, it’s local, green, fast, and fun. Through our collaboration, we developed a customizable and scalable solution that enhances online shopping experiences for small to mid-sized retailers.
The situation
The goal of the project was to optimize WyGo’s delivery service by using electric vehicles and to provide drivers with an app for easily tracking pending orders. Additionally, WyGo wanted to offer customers an e-commerce platform to sell their products, which would integrate seamlessly with their delivery service. To make this vision a reality and ensure its success, WyGo needed a skilled team to develop and structure the solution. That’s when they chose Devlights as their partner.
Our solution
We began collaborating with WyGo in 2019. Over the course of the project, several changes were introduced, and some features that were initially planned were temporarily paused. An individual application for Deli was shelved, and instead, we developed a new API specifically for managing delivery logistics. In addition, we implemented an Agent that configured the client’s existing database, extracted necessary data, and synchronized it with our system to eliminate the need for manual price synchronization. We also integrated an external payment processing service. To tackle these tasks, we temporarily expanded the team by adding a developer and a graphic designer to assist with user interface design. The core development team consisted of a full-stack developer and the client, who played a key role in developing stored procedures. We used .NET with SQL Server for the backend, where a significant portion of the business logic was stored in Stored Procedures. For the frontend, we employed TypeScript, React, and Redux, integrating modern techniques like hooks and CSS modules. Several challenges arose during the project, such as difficulties getting the payment service to function correctly. We worked closely with the service providers to resolve these issues. Another challenge was troubleshooting problems in the large volume of business logic stored in stored procedures. To address this, we implemented a robust logging system with detailed diagnostic messages that could be toggled off when not needed. Additionally, we faced the challenge of ensuring that the site's visual elements were easily customizable without relying on inline styles. To solve this, we created a system where all adjustable values are defined as CSS variables, stored in a database, and could be overridden as needed through a custom function. The most significant issue we encountered was that the site was originally developed using JavaScript, and many function definition changes led to errors that were only detected at runtime. This was largely resolved by migrating the entire codebase to TypeScript, which helped us catch errors early and improved overall code quality.
Technologies
