Case studiesPawGuard
PawGuard case study: a fully custom Shopify build for a new DTC brand, live in July 2026.
How we built pawguard.ie, Ireland's newest wireless dog fence brand, on a fully custom Shopify theme: homepage filters built around how buyers actually shop, Shopify Markets for cross-border expansion from day one, 108 brand images, 16 content pieces and a verified 1.4-second page speed — launched under the Cooney's Group retail portfolio.
- Client
- PawGuardNew DTC brand · Cooney's Group, Ireland
- Scope
- Custom Shopify build + DTC launchTheme, 108 brand images, 16 content pieces, Google stack
- Platform
- Shopify, standard planShopify Markets, GA4, GTM, Merchant Center
- Live site
- pawguard.ie Built and launched by Aqsa Shahzad Official
The challenge
A new brand in a market owned by legacy names, on a standard Shopify plan.
PawGuard is a new brand entering an established Irish market where legacy US brands (PetSafe, SportDog) have decades of installed base. The design brief was clear: the site had to feel like it belonged to a serious pet-tech brand from the first scroll, not another Shopify template with a fresh logo.
Wireless fence buyers rarely know the exact product name they want. They know their garden size, their dog's size, whether they need bark control, and whether they are going GPS or radio-based. A catalogue organised by SKU code would have sent them to Amazon.
The client is on the standard Shopify plan, not Shopify Plus, and still needed cross-border expansion and per-variant shipping rates from day one — capabilities that usually get bought with a Plus subscription.
And it all had to be measurable from launch: Shopping Ads on day one, every downstream marketing action tracked.
What we built
Custom from the first scroll, fast from day one.
No premium theme underneath, filters built around how buyers decide, and a store that measures itself from launch.
Homepage: custom hero and product discovery grid
A custom-coded hero with brand-tuned typography, 15 hand-designed homepage image assets, and a category grid that maps to how buyers actually shop for wireless fences: by garden size, dog breed and use case, not by SKU code. Filter controls sit directly on the homepage, so a shopper lands, taps "large garden + medium dog" and is served the right product cluster in one click. Every element is written from scratch.
Product pages: 15 SKUs, 108 brand-consistent images
We designed and shipped 93 product images across 15 SKUs, from the Freedom Plus Fence flagship through the 830 GPS Wireless Fence to the compact T710S small-dog trainer, plus 15 homepage assets. Every product page has a scroll-stopping first image, lifestyle shots, feature callouts and a technical spec strip, finished to a brand-consistent standard.
Custom homepage filters
The filter system maps to the buyer's decision points: garden size, dog size, bark control, GPS or radio. It is genuinely custom — not an app plugged in, not a theme feature — and the single biggest conversion driver built into the site.
Content architecture: 16 site documents
Product copy, category pages, homepage copy and FAQ content authored end to end, written for the Irish pet market specifically: rural versus urban gardens, Irish weather waterproofing, and the legal context under the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013.
Shopify Markets, multi-domain from day one
DNS, hreflang, geo prompts and per-market shipping profiles configured for cross-border expansion. Because the client is on the standard plan, per-variant shipping was built manually: every variant sits in its own shipping profile, so the store charges per-variant rates without Shopify Plus.
Speed, tuned to 1.4 seconds
Custom builds do not ship fast by themselves. Image compression pipelines, lazy-loaded below-the-fold assets and every non-essential Shopify block stripped from the theme brought the verified LCP to 1.4 seconds — the top 5% of Shopify stores, and direct protection for Google Ads Quality Scores and conversion rate.
The Google marketing stack
Google Merchant Center configured and approved on the domain; Search Console with the sitemap submitted; one-time technical and on-page SEO; a Google Tag Manager container and a GA4 property set up. Shopping Ads could launch on day one, and every marketing action has been measurable since.
The storefront
Every screen, built from scratch.
The homepage, the PawGuard 850 product page and the Shop menu, captured from the live store in September 2026. Each frame drifts through the full page; hovering holds it.
Six product families, each with its own photograph, one hover away. The menu mirrors how buyers actually shop (fence type first), and a second menu splits the range by pet.
Design work
108 images, designed in-house.
Product, lifestyle and category imagery for pawguard.ie, from the same build: 93 product images across 15 SKUs and 15 for the homepage, finished to one standard.
Design work © 2026 Aqsa Shahzad Official LLC, created for PawGuard and shown as a record of the build. PawGuard and its product names belong to their owners.
Results
Live on 1 July 2026: fast, measurable, expansion-ready.
- Shopping Ads could launch on day one. Merchant Center approved, Search Console verified, GTM and GA4 live before the first order.
- Plus-tier capability on a standard plan. Per-variant shipping rates and multi-market architecture without the Shopify Plus subscription.
- A storefront that owns its category. Custom discovery filters competitors on templated themes cannot clone, and a design that reads as pet-tech, not template.
- The model is now the launch package. The same build — custom theme, image library, content, Markets, Google stack — is what we run for the next brands on the launch cohort.
The private-label package
Launch your private‑label brand in 4 weeks, under $40,000.
What PawGuard got, as a fixed package: a custom Shopify theme written from scratch, ten products set up and ready to sell, and a launch date four weeks from kickoff. One number, quoted in writing before we start.
Fixed scope. Extra products, imagery and content are priced per item, in writing, before they are added.
The package
- Custom Shopify themeWritten from scratch, no premium theme underneath
- 10 productsSet up with variants, pricing and shipping, ready to sell
- 4 weeksKickoff to launch day, one team end to end
Scope & stack
Services delivered, and the stack behind them.
- Services
- Stack
ShopifyStandard plan, custom theme- LiquidTheme language, section architecture
JavaScriptCustom filter engine- Shopify MarketsMulti-domain, hreflang, geo prompts
Google Analytics 4Property set up from launch
Google Tag ManagerContainer installed and configured- Google Merchant CenterApproved on the domain, Shopping-ready
Google Search ConsoleSitemap submitted, verified
MetaPixel-ready
- Approach
More work
The other documented builds.
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