Headless to Headed: Simplifying PetHeal’s Path to Scale
PetHeal.com is a fast-growing leader in pet wellness, offering innovative health and lifestyle products trusted by pet owners across the country. With a mission to improve the lives of pets and their families, PetHeal combines science-backed formulations with high-quality ingredients to deliver supplements, treatments, and daily care essentials that customers can feel confident about.
THE CHALLENGE
Originally built using Shopify's headless Hydrogen architecture by a previous agency, PetHeal’s storefront began to struggle under the weight of frequent custom development updates and day-to-day maintenanceconstraints. As the customer base expanded and the product catalog grew, PetHeal needed a more scalable, reliable, and user-friendly ecommerce experience... one that could support rapid merchandising, content updates, and campaign execution.
PetHeal needed more than just a functional ecommerce site. They needed a reliable, high-performance platform that empowered their team to move fast without compromising brand experience. The solution had to provide robust native features, simplify content management, and deliver the speed and stability today’s customers expect when shopping for trusted pet wellness products.
"Everything was broken on the headless site and we just wanted it fixed. It seemed like every single time we wanted to do something it was like - oh well that doesn't integrate and we're going to have to make a custom integration."
PETHEAL EXECUTIVE
DEMAND partnered with PetHeal to streamline their ecommerce operations by migrating from a headless Hydrogen build to a fully headed Shopify architecture using the Dawn Liquid theme. This transition dramatically reduced technical overhead while unlocking the full power of Shopify’s native features, from built-in merchandising tools and customizable storefront options to an intuitive admin experience that empowered PetHeal’s team to manage content and campaigns without developer dependency.
Our team focused on delivering a scalable, future-ready storefront that could grow with PetHeal’s expanding product catalog. By leveraging Shopify’s Dawn theme as the foundation, we ensured best-in-class performance, mobile responsiveness, and a modern design system tailored to PetHeal’s brand. The result is a stable, easy-to-manage ecommerce platform that gives their business users the agility they need while continuing to provide customers with a seamless, trustworthy shopping experience.
SHOPIFY'S ONLINE STORE
A custom theme was built from the ground up in order to provide PetHeal with a site they can finally control. Matching their previous site 1:1 with a brand new dynamic and powerful customer account portal, this specialized Shopify theme uplifted PetHeal's ability to integrate third-party services, manage front-end content, and safely stage and test changes. DEMAND was able to provide this complete site transition on schedule, within budget, with a prompt and smooth launch!
SUBSCRIPTION INTEGRATION
A vast majority of PetHeal's revenue is due to subscriptions. As YotPo's subscription service sunset rapidly approached, PetHeal needed a new solution 100% up to speed ASAP. DEMAND worked closely with their internal development team to set up and expediently transfer every single one of PetHeal's subscribers, while building custom solutions for subscription management portals and product forms. DEMAND was able to transfer existing subscriptions and deploy PetHeal's new subscription engine with no interruption of service!
"DEMAND has been the best team that we've worked with so far. Everything is working. This is the first time we've changed sites and we haven't had everything tank!"
PetHeal Executive
From Complexity to Control
By shifting from a headless Hydrogen setup to a custom Dawn Liquid build, PetHeal regained full control over their site; improving agility, reducing dependency on specialized dev work, and empowering their internal team to execute without friction.
Replatforming Beyond the Surface: Fixing What Was Broken
When DEMAND began the replatforming process, it quickly became clear that PetHeal’s challenges went deeper than architecture alone. Underneath the headless Hydrogen build, we uncovered broken components, analytics gaps, and misaligned integrations that the PetHeal team had no visibility into. What started as a replatforming initiative evolved into a much larger stabilization effort by addressing code quality issues, untangling infrastructure complexities, and correcting overlooked configurations that were quietly holding the business back.
By addressing these hidden issues during the move to a headed Shopify build, we delivered more than stability... we delivered results. The new storefront is faster, more reliable, and easier to use, driving stronger sales, higher engagement, and a clear lift in conversions while reducing bounce. With this solid foundation, PetHeal is now set up for sustainable growth.
VENDOR AND PLATFORM INTEGRATIONS
DEMAND customized the PetHeal customer account portal allowing customer-based dynamic control over subscriptions. Additionally, the portal allowed for customers to add and edit pets associated with their account with a custom connection point utilizing Shopify's GraphQL APIs.
We also transformed operational efficiency. Reviews are now seamlessly powered by Yotpo’s Shopify-native integration, eliminating manual updates and enabling PetHeal to leverage curated, authentic customer content at scale. On the backend, we introduced Shopify Flow automation to create a smarter testing environment, reducing QA costs, broadening test coverage, and ensuring every release meets the highest standard of reliability.
"Our goal was to transform PetHeal’s ecommerce from a complex build into a powerful, easy-to-manage platform. Now their team has the tools and agility to deliver amazing experiences for pet owners everywhere."
CHRIS BERGEMANN, CEO AT DEMANDPDX
CONCLUSION
PetHeal's KPIs rose across the board! Not only do they have a custom theme that they can fully control themselves, the Stay.ai service transfer went without a hitch preventing any interruption between subscription rebills.
Since transferring to Shopify's Online Store, revenue has increased, conversion rates have skyrocketed, sessions have increased, and for the first time in the company's history social attribution and referrals are working correctly through their Facebook marketing platform resulting in a 139% lift in sales attributed to social referrers!
The new site also has much faster load times increasing their lighthouse score to above 90, allowing more customers across the board to convert. As a result, conversion increased a staggering 70% resulting in a 27% increase in revenue!
