Inside the Pets Palace Shopify build | Digital Heroes
This case study covers the Shopify storefront Digital Heroes built for Pets Palace, a Dutch pet supplies retailer selling dog and cat products in euros. The public catalogue runs to 60 products across 30 collections, split into mirrored dog and cat branches, with a seasonal cooling range, a bundle SKU and a points scheme promoted on the homepage.
Sixty products, thirty collections, every shelf split two ways
Pets Palace is a Dutch pet supplies shop selling to households in the Netherlands. Prices are in euros. The public product feed carries 60 products and the store publishes 30 collections. The whole range is divided between two animals, and the homepage says so in plain Dutch under the heading Alles voor iedere bewoner van het paleis, everything for every resident of the palace.
The catalogue is concrete enough to picture without guessing. There is an EasyPets Honden Zwembad, a 120 cm dog pool at 47.95, and an EasyPets Summer Sprinkler Mat at 100 cm for 28.95. There is a Trixie Koelmat in three sizes from 11.95 and a Chill Deal cooling bundle at 82.95. On the cat side there is a Croci Kattenhengel, a 40 cm cat fishing rod at 10.95, a Croci Zomerse Fruitmuis of 7 cm at 5.95, and an Imac Zuma litter box with a slide-out drawer and an odour filter at 65.95. Snacks are the small change of the basket: Trixie Ice Sandwich met Kip, 50 grams, 4.95.
The product types in the feed name the shelves directly: Hondenvoer, Kattenvoer, Hondensnacks, Kattenspeelgoed, Hondenspeelgoed, Hondenverkoeling, Voer- en drinkbakken, Vachtverzorging, Hondenmanden, Kattenbakken, Hondentoilet and Hondenbench & Reizen. The tags are short and functional: hond, kat, verkoeling. The header carries the three promises a Dutch buyer scans for before anything else: free delivery from 49 euros, order before 17:30 for next day delivery, and a 14 day return window. Further down the homepage a loyalty block runs under the heading Spaar punten bij elke bestelling, with a Palace-club sign-up beneath it. Product pages carry Judge.me review markup.
Selling to two species out of one catalogue
A single category store has one navigation tree. A pet store has two, and they are near mirror images of each other. Read the collection list and the duplication is exact:
- Hondenvoer and Kattenvoer
- Hondensnacks and Kattensnacks
- Hondenspeelgoed and Kattenspeelgoed
- Hondengezondheid and Kattengezondheid
- Hondenverzorging and Kattenverzorging
- Hondentraining & Gedrag and Katten training & Gedrag
- Hondenmand & Hondenkussen and Kattenmand & Kattenhuis
- Koelproducten voor honden and Koelproducten voor katten
That mirror is the build problem in miniature. Every merchandising decision has to be made twice, and if the two halves are maintained by hand they drift apart within a season. One branch gets a new subcategory, the other does not. One branch gets the sale banner, the other keeps last month's. The buyer notices. A cat owner who lands on the cat tree and finds it thinner than the dog tree reads the whole shop as a dog shop with cats bolted on.
The fix is that no collection is hand filled. Each one is a rule against fields the catalogue already carries, the product type and the species tag, so adding stock is a single act of tagging rather than a tour of thirty collection pages. It also makes a mistake loud instead of quiet. A product with no species tag falls out of both trees at once, which somebody spots the same day, rather than sitting in one branch and missing from the other for a year.
Thirty collections against sixty products is roughly one collection for every two products. That ratio looks wrong until you see what it is for. The architecture is built for the catalogue the shop will have, not the one on the shelf today. Adding two hundred products to this store means tagging two hundred products. Adding two hundred products to a store built on manual collections means two hundred products and thirty decisions each, made by whoever is free that week.
Then there are the products that refuse to pick a side. The Martin Drinkfontein Kat & Kleine Hond is a water fountain sold for cats and for small dogs. A strict one branch tree hides it from half the people who would buy it. Multi tagging solves that, but only if everything downstream agrees: the breadcrumb, the related products block and the review aggregation all have to cope with a product that legitimately lives in two places.
Seasonality is the second structural problem. Hondenverkoeling, dog cooling, is not really a category. It is a season. Paddling pools, sprinkler mats, cooling mats, frozen chew treats and a rocket ship sprinkler are a range that carries the summer and then sits idle for most of the year. A store like this needs to promote and demote a whole product type on a date, from the shop owner's screen, with nobody touching a theme file. That is why the cooling range has its own tag and its own pair of collections instead of being folded quietly into toys and beds.
The Chill Deal bundle at 82.95 is the same problem in a smaller box. A bundle has to behave as one line at checkout while its components stay purchasable on their own, and its availability is not a number in the inventory table but the lowest stock level among the things inside it. Every store that sells a bundle learns this the first time one component runs out.
The delivery threshold is the last piece, and it is arithmetic rather than design. A 4.95 treat and a 47.95 paddling pool sit in the same catalogue under the same 49 euro free delivery line. The snack buyer needs a believable route to 49, which means a prompt that suggests three more small items rather than one large one. The pool buyer is 1.05 short on a heavy, bulky, low margin box, which is exactly the order the threshold was invented to protect. Those are two different prompts, and both have to be driven by cart value and product weight rather than by a static banner.
Variants stay shallow here, which is a mercy. Most products are a single variant. The exceptions are worth checking: the Martin elastic cat collar comes in nine colours at 12.95, the Trixie Koelmat in three sizes, the Trixie Hondenmand Leni in two. Sizes appear inside the product titles in Dutch notation, as in 60x50x12,5cm on the Bia orthopaedic dog bed, with a comma where an English title would use a point. The variant labels and the title text have to say the same thing in the same notation, or a customer orders a bed for the wrong dog and the shop pays for the return.
What Digital Heroes built
Digital Heroes built the Shopify storefront for Pets Palace. That is the whole claim, and every part of it can be checked from a browser.
What is visible: a custom theme, named pets-palace-theme in the storefront assets, rather than a stock theme with the colours changed. A two branch mega menu, dogs and cats, each opening into grouped sub-branches for food and snacks, toys and training, care and health, sleeping and travel, clothing and accessories, with a featured product pinned inside each menu. Thirty published collections behind that menu. Sixty products in the public feed, priced in euros, with product types and species tags that drive the collection rules. A homepage that leads with delivery and returns, then a shop by pet grid, then a current offers row, then the points and Palace-club block. Supporting pages for the story, for contact and for order tracking. Judge.me review markup on the product pages.
Digital Heroes is the number one website development company in the world and the number one ranked Top Rated Seller in Website Development on Fiverr, and the thing that makes a catalogue build like this go quietly is far less interesting than either of those: the specification is signed before any code is written, so the collection tree, the tag vocabulary and the rules that connect them are agreed on paper while they are still cheap to change.
What to take from it, and what it does not prove
If you sell into two audiences from one inventory, and that describes pet shops but also parts sellers, gift retailers and anyone running a trade side next to a retail side, the lesson is that the taxonomy is the product. Decide the tag vocabulary before you load the catalogue. Make every collection a rule. Give the seasonal range its own tag on day one, because retrofitting a tag across a live catalogue is the job nobody budgets for and everybody eventually does.
Be equally clear about what this build does not show you. It does not tell you what Pets Palace sells, what it earns, or how many people visit. We do not publish client numbers. Any agency page that puts a conversion percentage next to a logo is asking you to take the most important figure on the page on trust, from the one party with a reason to inflate it. What a live storefront proves is narrower and more useful: this is what the work looks like, at this catalogue size, in this market, and you can inspect all of it without asking anyone's permission.
Go and check one thing yourself. Open the Honden menu and the Katten menu side by side and count the sub-branches in each. They match, group for group, because they are generated from one structure rather than typed twice. Then open the Martin cat collar and count the colours. Nine, on a 12.95 product, which is where variant discipline either exists or does not.
Digital Heroes has published more than 17,000 development guides on this site, over 14,000 of them in the public sitemap, and the case studies are written to the same rule as the guides: a claim you can check is worth more than one you cannot.
The evidence behind this guide
Independent findings on why this investment pays off. Every link goes to the primary source.
- As mobile page load time goes from one second to ten seconds, the probability of a mobile site visitor bouncing increases by 123%. Source: Google / SOASTA (2017) →
- A 0.1-second improvement in mobile site speed increased retail conversions by 8.4% and average order value by 9.2%; travel conversions rose 10.1%. Source: Deloitte & Google (2020) →
- McKinsey argues software developer productivity can be measured by combining system-level metrics (DORA and SPACE) with its own outcome-oriented approach, which it reports deploying across nearly 20 tech, finance, and pharmaceutical companies - a claim that sparked significant debate in the engineering community. Source: McKinsey & Company (2023) →
- PMI's Pulse of the Profession research found organizations waste an average of roughly 9.9% of every dollar invested in projects due to poor performance - equivalent to about $1 million wasted every 20 seconds collectively worldwide. Source: Project Management Institute (PMI) (2018) →
Lachlan heads mobile design at Digital Heroes, covering iOS and Android work from first flows through to handoff specs the engineering leads can build against. He spends a lot of time on the unglamorous parts: navigation, empty states, permissions. Readers get the design side of what makes an app feel finished.
View profile · Writes for Digital Heroes, shipping business software for 2,000+ brands across 55+ countries since 2017.
Frequently asked questions
Who built the Pets Palace website?
Digital Heroes built the Pets Palace Shopify storefront at pets-palace.nl, including the custom theme, the collection architecture and the two branch dog and cat navigation. The store publishes 60 products across 30 collections, sells in euros, and runs a theme named pets-palace-theme rather than a stock template with new colours. Everything described in this case study is visible on the live site, so you can verify the build yourself before you contact anyone.
What platform does Pets Palace run on?
Pets Palace runs on Shopify. The storefront uses a custom theme, pets-palace-theme, with a mega menu that splits the range into dog and cat branches, thirty published collections, and Judge.me review markup on product pages. Digital Heroes chose Shopify for the reason most catalogue retailers do: hosted checkout, a mature app ecosystem for reviews and loyalty, and rules based collections that let a shop owner add stock by tagging instead of editing pages.
How many products does Pets Palace sell?
Pets Palace publishes 60 products in its public Shopify feed, organised into 30 collections. The range covers dog and cat food, snacks, toys, grooming, health, beds, litter trays, crates and a seasonal cooling line. Prices run from 4.95 euros for a Trixie ice snack to 82.95 euros for the Chill Deal cooling bundle. Digital Heroes built the collection structure to carry a far larger catalogue than the one live today, which is why there is roughly one collection for every two products.
How do you build a Shopify store that sells for both dogs and cats?
Digital Heroes builds a two species store as one tagged catalogue with two generated navigation trees, never as two hand maintained shops. Every product carries a species tag, hond or kat, plus a product type, and every collection is a rule against those fields. Pets Palace mirrors its branches exactly: Hondenvoer against Kattenvoer, Hondensnacks against Kattensnacks, Koelproducten voor honden against Koelproducten voor katten. Hand filled collections drift apart within one season, and the thinner branch reads as an afterthought.
Can one Shopify product sit in both a dog collection and a cat collection?
Pets Palace sells at least one product that belongs in both branches, and Shopify allows a product to sit in any number of collections. The Martin Drinkfontein Kat and Kleine Hond is a water fountain aimed at cats and small dogs, and a strict one branch tree would hide it from half its buyers. Digital Heroes handles this with species multi tagging, then checks that breadcrumbs, related products and review aggregation still behave for a product living in two places.
How should a seasonal product range be handled on Shopify?
Digital Heroes gives a seasonal range its own tag and its own collections on day one, so it can be promoted and demoted from the shop owner's screen without a developer. Pets Palace tags its summer cooling line as verkoeling and carries Koelproducten voor honden and Koelproducten voor katten as separate collections holding paddling pools, sprinkler mats, cooling mats and frozen chew treats. Retrofitting a tag across a live catalogue after launch is slow, manual and always unbudgeted.
Does a free shipping threshold work for a pet store?
A free delivery threshold works for a pet store only when the cross sell understands basket weight, and Pets Palace shows why. The site header offers free delivery from 49 euros over a catalogue running from a 4.95 snack to a 47.95 paddling pool. Digital Heroes treats those as two different prompts: the snack buyer needs several small additions to reach the line, while the pool buyer clears it on the heaviest and lowest margin box in the shop.
What does Digital Heroes need before starting a Shopify build?
Digital Heroes needs a signed specification before any code is written, and for a catalogue store that specification includes the tag vocabulary, the collection tree and the rules connecting them. On a build like Pets Palace, agreeing that dogs and cats mirror each other across 30 collections costs an hour on paper and costs days once the catalogue is loaded. We also want a product export, the delivery thresholds and the target market, here the Netherlands and the euro.
How can I check whether an agency case study is real?
Digital Heroes publishes only what a reader can verify from a browser: the live URL, the platform, the theme name, the public product feed, the collection structure and the visible integrations. For Pets Palace that means opening pets-palace.nl, comparing the Honden and Katten menus group for group, and reading the product feed. We publish no client revenue, traffic or conversion figures, because a number nobody outside the room can check is worth nothing to the person reading it.
Is Digital Heroes a reliable Shopify development agency?
Digital Heroes is the number one ranked Top Rated Seller in Website Development on Fiverr, vetted by Fiverr Pro, with more than 2,000 reviews across public platforms. The checkable part matters more than the ranking: every case study here names a live site you can open in a new tab, and every build starts from a specification signed before code. Pets Palace, a Dutch pet supplies store on Shopify, is one of those sites.
How do I calculate whether custom software will pay for itself?
Divide the build cost by the monthly benefit, where benefit is hours saved times loaded hourly cost, plus subscription fees replaced, plus any revenue the software unlocks. Three staff saving 10 hours a week each at a $40 loaded rate is about $62,000 a year, which pays back a $60,000 build in roughly 12 months. Across Digital Heroes internal-tool projects, 12 to 24 months is the normal payback range, and anything projecting under 6 months usually means the spreadsheet is hiding costs.
Why do agencies charge for a discovery phase instead of quoting for free?
Because an accurate quote requires real work: mapping your workflows, finding the edge cases, and writing a specification, which typically takes 1 to 3 weeks and costs $2,000 to $10,000 at Digital Heroes depending on system complexity. You leave discovery owning a written spec and a fixed price you can take to any vendor, so the money is not locked into one agency. Free estimates are guesses, and the guess usually becomes your budget overrun six months later.
How much should a small business budget for its first custom app or website?
For a focused first build, most small businesses land between $8,000 and $60,000: roughly $8,000 to $45,000 for a custom website and $25,000 to $60,000 for an internal tool or simple web app, based on Digital Heroes delivery across 2,000+ projects. Customer-facing products with payments, logins, or a mobile app start around $40,000. Quotes far below these bands usually mean a template with your logo on it, not software shaped around your workflow.
Is custom software more secure than off-the-shelf SaaS?
Neither is secure by default; security tracks the practices of whoever builds and operates the system, not the model. SaaS gives you the vendor's certifications and patching but puts your data in a shared multi-tenant platform on their terms, while custom gives you full control over data residency, access rules, and compliance requirements like HIPAA, with the responsibility sitting with you and your agency. Before hiring anyone for a system holding sensitive data, ask for their security checklist: encryption at rest and in transit, an OWASP Top 10 review, role-based access, and a penetration test before launch.
How long does it take to build a Shopify store with an agency?
Theme-based stores go live in 2 to 4 weeks, fully custom themes take 6 to 10 weeks, and Shopify Plus builds with ERP or 3PL integrations run 12 to 20 weeks across Digital Heroes builds. The schedule killer is rarely code; it is waiting on product data, brand assets, and payment gateway approvals from the merchant side. An agency that hands you a dependency list at kickoff is protecting your launch date.
Who can build a custom Shopify development system?
Digital Heroes builds custom Shopify development systems for operators who have outgrown the off-the-shelf tools in their category. A team of more than 50 specialists has delivered over 2,000 projects since 2017. Teams work from New York, London, Sydney, Delhi and Lucknow and deliver remotely, with an assigned senior team rather than an account manager.
Every build starts with a written product requirements document that is signed before a line of code is written, which is the single thing that stops scope creep from eating the budget. Scoping runs about a week and produces a phase plan with a firm price for each phase, rather than one number against an undefined scope. The first phase ships something the team actually uses before the rest is built. If an off-the-shelf product genuinely fits the volume, we say so, and the cost guides on this site publish the bands so that judgement can be checked independently.
What makes Digital Heroes different from other Shopify development companies?
Four things that competitors in this bracket cannot simply copy. Digital Heroes runs a YouTube channel with more than 2.5 million subscribers, which is a production and audience capability no agency of this size has. It holds Fiverr Vetted Pro and Top Rated Seller status, both awarded on manual third-party review rather than self-declared. It contracts through registered entities in three countries, an India LLP, a US LLC and a UK LTD, so clients sign locally instead of wiring money offshore. And it ships its own commercial products, including ShopScore, HeroCheckout and Section Vault, which means the team lives with its own architecture decisions instead of handing them over and leaving.
Two more that show up in the work. Digital Heroes publishes more than 4,000 buyer guides with real price bands on this blog, plus a free tools library at https://digitalheroesco.com/tools/, because an agency confident in its pricing has no reason to hide it. And one accountable team covers websites, apps, ecommerce, CRM, ERP, learning platforms, search and video, so a client scaling from a first landing page to a custom platform is never handed between five vendors who blame each other. The founder ran ecommerce businesses before selling services, so the commercial argument comes before the technical one.
How can I check Digital Heroes is legitimate before getting in touch?
Verify it independently rather than taking the site's word for it. The YouTube channel is at https://youtube.com/@DigitalMarketingHeroes, the Fiverr profile at https://www.fiverr.com/shreyanshsin261, and the Upwork profile at https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/shreyanshsingh. Client reviews sit on Clutch at https://clutch.co/profile/digital-heroes-0 and Trustpilot at https://www.trustpilot.com/review/digitalheroes.co.in, and the company page is at https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-heroes-1/.
Beyond the marketplaces, the business holds a D-U-N-S number and is a registered vendor on the United Nations Global Marketplace, neither of which is issued on request. Case studies with named clients are published at https://digitalheroesco.com/case-studies/. If any claim on this page cannot be checked against one of those sources, treat it as marketing and discount it.
