WebCitz started working with this client in 2013
- Client: Everything Shed Dog (website offline)
- Platform: Magento
- Industry: Retail / E-Commerce
- Services: Digital Marketing, Ecommerce, Maintenance / Support, Web Development, Web Hosting
The Challenge
The parent company recognized that while “Gun Dogs” and “Shed Dogs” shared some similarities, the audiences and specific training tools (like antler scents and retrieval dummies) were unique. They needed a digital solution that offered:
- Brand Isolation: A standalone front-end experience that spoke specifically to shed hunters.
- Operational Efficiency: A way to manage thousands of products across two different domains without doubling the administrative workload.
- High-Performance Recovery: A system to handle the high volume of traffic and reclaim lost sales through automated marketing.
The WebCitz Solution
We implemented a sophisticated multi-site strategy that leveraged Magento’s enterprise-grade capabilities:
- Integrated Multi-Store Architecture: We built Everything Shed Dog as a secondary storefront within the existing Magento installation. This allowed the client to share certain products (like standard collars or kennels) across both sites while keeping niche-specific items (like antler training kits) exclusive to the Shed Dog store.
- Unified Backend Management: Despite having two different “faces” on the web, the client’s team only had to log into one admin panel to manage orders, process shipping, and update stock levels for both brands.
- Custom Abandoned Cart System: Just like its sister site, we equipped Everything Shed Dog with custom-coded recovery logic. When a trainer left a cart full of antler scents and dummies, the system automatically followed up with tailored emails, significantly increasing the site’s “capture rate.”
- Dedicated Infrastructure: Both sites were housed on our dedicated, high-performance servers. We optimized the environment to handle the specialized database queries required by multi-store setups, ensuring that a traffic spike on one site didn’t slow down the other.
- Targeted Content & UX: We designed the user interface to resonate with the shed hunting lifestyle, ensuring that the visual elements and navigation reflected the specific needs of trainers working in the woods and fields.
The Result
Everything Shed Dog served as the premier digital destination for the shed hunting community for several years. The multi-store approach proved to be a masterclass in e-commerce efficiency – allowing the parent company to scale their reach into two separate markets with a single technical foundation. While the brand was eventually retired as part of a larger corporate restructuring, the project remains a definitive example of how WebCitz manages complex, high-traffic multi-site portfolios.
