Peak Paws & Hooves

Background

Peak Paws and Hooves is a specialist manufacturer of dog collars, leads and harnesses, and horse accessories, in the Peak District National Park, UK. With a wide range of materials, sizes and colours they have a vast array of products.

Realising the opportunity to go online and divert focus away from solely using eBay, they had initially been advised to build their store on Shopify – and been left to get on with it. However, being their first foray into setting up an ecommerce website they neither had the understanding or time to complete the project and were getting increasingly frustrated so decided to seek outside, professional help.

How We Helped

WordPress and WooCommerce are ideal for setting up an ecommerce website. Far from being ‘cheap’ it is much more cost effective than Shopify which can quickly become an expensive venture as your business grows and realise you need more features.

The main feature of Peak Paws and Hooves was the sheer number of variations some of the products had – up to 200 in some cases. For example, dog collars can have three different materials, three sizes and up to 21 colours. Getting this right from the start was important. With almost 50 products with numerous variations we had to keep an eye on the detail so all products displayed on the website with the right material, size and colour combination.

Fortunately, the owner was a good photographer so providing the models dogs were available we had some great photos to use.

Outcome

Taking the responsibility of website development out of the hands of the business owner was a huge relief for her. Having been ‘dumped with Shopify’ and given no assistance at all she was left not knowing which way to turn or what to do.

We took the weight off her hands and lead her step by step down the path of what was involved and required.

Over a period of a couple of months we developed a great looking, full ecommerce website with an app to monitor and manage orders that is now ranking in Google for target keywords such as ‘traditional buckle dog collars’, ‘harmony harness’, ‘handmade dog toys UK’ and ‘handmade rope dog leads’ to name a few in the ultra competitive online dog and pet market.

From her stand at Crufts to pet shows and regional shows she now has another channel to direct customers to (her own channel), reduce commissions paid to other online platforms and build her own online business.