Rebuilding a Pet Products Store on Shopify Plus

Five years into trading, this pet products brand had accumulated every symptom of an over-patched store: seven different font families loaded across the site, seven review apps competing for DOM space, product pages built in three different Shopify theme versions, and a checkout that looked nothing like the rest of the brand. Revenue was growing despite the site, not because of it. We were asked to start fresh.

Discovery and Strategy

We began with three weeks of customer research: session recordings, exit surveys, and interviews with the customer service team about the most common pre-purchase questions. The findings shaped every design decision. Pet owners wanted to know if a product was safe for their pet's breed and age. The existing site offered no guidance — customers were guessing and abandoning.

The New Store Architecture

• Custom product page layout with breed and age suitability filters driven by metafields.
• Ingredient transparency section on every product page, a key trust signal in the pet food category.
• Bundle builder allowing customers to create subscription bundles from any combination of products.
• Loyalty points visible throughout the journey — in cart, on product pages, and in the account area.
• Pet profile system allowing customers to save their pet's details for tailored recommendations.

Subscription Integration

The brand's existing subscription base used a legacy app with a poor customer portal. We migrated to Recharge with a custom-designed portal, and introduced a 'subscribe and save' prompt on every product page with dynamic savings calculation. Subscription sign-up rate doubled within eight weeks of launch.

Results

• Conversion rate improved from 1.9% to 2.6% — a 38% uplift within three months.
• Subscription sign-up rate doubled from 12% to 24% of all orders.
• Average order value increased by £22 following the bundle builder launch.
• Customer satisfaction score (measured via post-purchase survey) improved from 3.8 to 4.7 out of 5.
• PageSpeed mobile score improved from 44 to 88.