An order system built for live stock.
Delta Aquarium ships live fish, so every order has a deadline. We built them a fully bespoke order dashboard, connected to WooCommerce and shaped around how the shop actually packs, ships and hands over orders. It works as well on a phone as at the desk.
Every queue the shop runs on.
Live stock. Live pressure. Zero margin for error.
Delta Aquarium ships live fish online. Unlike any other product, live stock has a hard deadline — it must reach the customer within 24 hours of dispatch. That makes order timing, customer communication, and shipping coordination absolutely critical.
The manual system Simon had was cracking under the weight. Orders were being processed by hand, stock checks were manual, and customers were chasing updates. The risk of a delayed or missed shipment wasn't just a bad review — it was a dead order, literally.
To keep up, Simon had brought on two members of staff solely to handle online orders. The cost was mounting — over £500 a week — and human error was still possible. On top of that, customer emails were piling up and reviews were going unanswered, damaging the reputation the business had worked hard to build.
Build the software around the shop.
Off-the-shelf order tools treat every order the same. Delta's aren't: deliveries need a ship date, collect-in-store orders need a "ready" step, and some payments sit on hold in WooCommerce before anything can happen.
So we built a bespoke dashboard that knows all of that. Every WooCommerce order lands in the right queue, moves through it with one click, and sends the customer the right email at each step.
Changes no longer need a developer. Email wording, staff accounts and appearance all live in Settings, and a built-in tutorial walks new staff through a real order with every email sent to the shop's own inbox.
One dashboard for every order.
A pipeline for live stock
Deliveries move from Awaiting Date to To Be Shipped to Shipped. Collect-in-store orders get their own Ready step. Orders WooCommerce hasn't confirmed payment for wait at a payment gate that re-checks itself, and late or delayed orders are flagged.
Packing without mistakes
A packing list arrives by email at 7:30am and stays live on screen. Marking an order shipped means ticking every item first. Likely duplicate orders are flagged for merging, and notes are dated and never overwritten.
Owned by the shop
Every customer email is editable in plain English, with a live preview. Staff accounts, light and dark mode, an activity log and an interactive tutorial are all built in, and there's a staff handbook under Help.
AI Email Customer Service Agent
Delta Aquarium receives a high volume of customer enquiries — stock availability, care advice, order updates, returns. We deployed an AI agent powered by DeepSeek running on Ollama, trained on their product catalogue and policies. It handles their webmail inbox intelligently, drafts accurate on-brand responses, and routes anything complex to Simon directly. What used to take hours a day now takes minutes.
Automated Review Management
Reviews were going unanswered — not because Simon didn't care, but because there simply weren't enough hours. We built an automated review responder that monitors Google and other platforms, drafts genuine, personalised replies in the Delta Aquarium voice, and posts them automatically. Negative reviews are flagged for Simon's approval before anything goes live. The business now looks engaged around the clock.
Nothing ships unchecked.
Marking an order shipped opens a checklist of everything in the box. Confirm stays disabled until every item is ticked. WooCommerce and the customer aren't told for 10 minutes, so a mistake can still be undone from the order page.
Every queue, one tap away.
This is amazing. My staff can now focus on the tasks that actually need them — not drowning in emails and orders all day.
Simon — Owner, Delta Aquarium
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