Farmaline needed more than a standard webshop. Strict pharmaceutical regulations, fluctuating stock levels and razor-thin margins demanded a custom e-commerce platform built for compliance, scale and profitability. We partnered with Farmaline from day one, evolving from pure platform development into a blended tech-and-marketing operation. Today, the platform handles 100,000+ daily visitors and thousands of orders, while margin-based performance marketing keeps acquisition costs below profit thresholds.
Custom-built e-commerce platform for Belgium's leading online pharmacy
100,000+ daily visitors, thousands of orders: built for scale
Margin-based performance marketing: budgets driven by product profitability
Automated advertising via Channable synced with stock and pricing
Integrating Akeneo PIM, Microsoft Dynamics ERP, Cloudflare, AWS
The challenge
How do you build a scalable e-commerce platform that meets strict pharmaceutical regulations while keeping marketing costs below already slim profit margins?
The solution
A custom-built platform tailored to regulatory requirements, combined with margin-driven performance marketing that allocates budgets based on product profitability rather than volume.
Farmaline x iO: from side project to market leader in 15 years
Farmaline is Belgium's leading online pharmacy, specialising in prescription-free medication, personal care products and supplements. What started as a side project by a pharmacist in Tongeren has grown into an absolute market leader among Belgian e-pharmacies.
We have been Farmaline's trusted digital partner for 15 years. Our collaboration evolved from a purely technical engagement into a fully blended partnership spanning platform development, performance marketing and conversion optimisation. Some experts sit at iO, others at Farmaline, but we operate as one team. This case highlights just one dimension of what we build together: a custom e-commerce platform and the marketing engine that drives it.
Why custom e-commerce beats standard platforms for pharmacy
Standard e-commerce software was never an option for Farmaline. Belgian pharmaceutical regulations (FAMHP/FAGG) impose strict requirements on how medicines are displayed, sold and delivered. Specific product warnings, age verifications, dosage limitations and real-time stock checks would have turned any off-the-shelf solution into an unmanageable patchwork of workarounds.
Fifteen years ago, we convinced Farmaline that a custom-built platform would be infinitely more future-proof than adapting standard software. Today, that decision still pays off: every regulatory update, every new delivery method and every marketing integration fits seamlessly into the architecture we designed together.
Scaling to 100,000 daily visitors without downtime
An online pharmacy cannot afford downtime. Customers depend on timely medication deliveries, and a single outage erodes trust. Our developers built Farmaline's infrastructure for resilience: Cloudflare handles security and load balancing across multiple front-end servers, delivering near-100% uptime and consistent accessibility even during peak demand.
Beyond availability, the platform manages thousands of daily orders across multiple fulfilment channels: home delivery, pickup points and parcel lockers via bpost, DPD and Mondial Relay. Payment processing through Ingenico, customer loyalty via RedPoints and automated email flows through Episerver and Mandrill complete the customer journey.
What integrations does a pharma e-commerce platform need?
A custom e-commerce platform for online pharmacy requires deep integration with external systems. For Farmaline, we built direct synchronisations with:
Akeneo (PIM): centralised product information management for 70,000+ SKUs
Medipim: real-time stock and pricing data from pharmaceutical wholesalers
Febelco & Belmedis: direct ordering from major Belgian pharma distributors
Microsoft Dynamics (ERP): seamless order, return and reimbursement flows
Amazon CloudFront: image caching for fast page loads
Elasticsearch: instant search results across the full product catalogue
This integration layer ensures that what customers see is always accurate: correct prices, real availability and compliant product information.
How to structure performance marketing budgets by product margin
In online pharmacy, competition is fierce and margins are slim. Giants like bol.com and Amazon now sell personal care products and supplements, driving up acquisition costs. If marketing spend exceeds product margins, growth becomes unsustainable.
We solved this by structuring Farmaline's performance marketing budgets around product profitability rather than sales volume. High-margin products receive higher ad spend; low-margin items get conservative budgets or are excluded entirely. This margin-first approach ensures that every euro spent on advertising contributes to actual profit, not just revenue.
Seamless customer experiences through continuous optimisation
A custom e-commerce platform is never finished. Our developers continuously improve Farmaline's customer experience: abandoned cart emails help visitors complete purchases; phone-order functionality allows staff to guide customers through checkout, sending automated payment links; conversion analysis identifies friction points for ongoing UX refinement. Meanwhile, our marketers perfect a dual strategy: always-on margin-based campaigns combined with targeted product boosts and seasonal promotions. Weekly sessions with Farmaline's team ensure alignment on past performance and upcoming priorities.
How to use Channable for automated margin-driven advertising
Manual campaign management cannot keep pace with a catalogue of 70,000+ products, fluctuating prices and variable stock levels. We implemented Channable to automate Farmaline's advertising across Google Search, Google Shopping, Google Display, Discovery and YouTube.
Channable ensures:
The full product range is visible on Google
Prices update automatically in ad copy as they change
Ad pressure adjusts to stock levels (no advertising nearly sold-out products)
Budget allocation follows margin rules in real time
This automation frees our marketers to focus on strategy: analysing weekly performance, planning seasonal campaigns and identifying high-potential product boosts in partnership with suppliers.
From side project to Belgium's leading e-pharmacy
The custom e-commerce platform we built together transformed Farmaline from a pharmacist's side project into the undisputed market leader among Belgian online pharmacies. The architecture handles regulatory complexity without friction, scales effortlessly to 100,000+ daily visitors and integrates deeply with the systems that keep a pharmacy running.
For Farmaline's customers, the impact is immediate: accurate stock information, fast deliveries and a seamless shopping experience. For Farmaline's business, margin-driven marketing ensures sustainable growth in a market where competitors often spend themselves into losses. And for both teams, the blended partnership model means we operate as one, continuously improving both platform and performance.
The numbers
1years
Duration of our partnership with Farmaline
1+
Daily visitors to the Farmaline platform
1+
Products managed through Akeneo PIM
1
Google advertising channels managed (Search, Shopping, Display, Discovery, YouTube)
1+
External system integrations (ERP, PIM, wholesalers, payments, delivery, loyalty)
~1%
Platform uptime through Cloudflare load balancing
