Diggs on Shopify: Headless, a Rebrand, 13 A/B Tests and a Move Back to Native
Diggs designs premium dog crates and accessories, like the Revol and Evolv crates, for pet owners who want something that looks good at home and works for their dog.
From 2022 to 2025 we worked as Diggs' development and optimisation team on their headless Shopify store, built with Shopify, Sanity and Gatsby. The work ran in sprints: every task moved from ready for development, through build and our own QA, to client review and live.
2022–2025
Sprint-by-sprint development and CRO for Diggs.
13
Concluded A/B tests, plus more run on the testing framework.
US + CA
Two markets, with Canada launched as its own experience.
What We Built Together
- A modular storefront. New and existing Sanity modules let the Diggs team build pages without waiting on development.
- A full rebrand. A new design system rolled out across the homepage, product and collection pages, bundles, cart, blog and support pages.
- A Canadian store experience. Market-specific content and geo-aware redirects, so Canadian shoppers land in the right place.
- A modern checkout. We moved checkout customisations onto Shopify's Checkout Extensibility, including custom shipping messages and reviews at checkout.
- A healthier platform. Upgrades to Sanity v3 and a cleaner content query layer kept the stack maintainable.
Testing Instead of Guessing
We built an A/B testing framework into the storefront, including tests driven straight from Sanity content, so ideas could be tested without a full release each time.
Thirteen numbered tests ran to conclusion across the shopping journey, from the homepage collection layout and navigation to price display on product cards, quick view, comparison, product page layout, variant selectors and cart cross-sells. More tests followed on product page copy, image layouts and checkout.
Every change that stayed on the site earned its place with real shoppers first.
Helping Shoppers Choose the Right Crate
A crate is a considered purchase, and the right size matters. Much of our work focused on making that choice easier:
- Sizing help, with a size quiz and size charts for each crate.
- Bundles that pair crates with accessories, including free-gift bundles.
- Clear product pages, with buy-now-pay-later messaging, sticky add to cart and detail tabs the team can manage.
- After the purchase, an upgraded order status page and order tracking.
Back to native Shopify
After three years of headless, we moved Diggs onto a custom native Shopify theme. Shopify's own themes had caught up with what the headless stack was built for: flexible sections on every page, structured content with metafields, previews in the theme editor and apps that simply plug in.
That meant fewer moving parts. No separate build pipeline, no hosting to manage and no custom cart to maintain, while the Diggs team keeps the same flexibility to build pages and campaigns. The lessons from the headless years, from the module library to the test results, carried straight over into the new theme.
Accessible by default
Accessibility had its own checks on every release, with fixes ranging from closed captions on videos to alt text on new images and recommendations from accessibility audits. It's part of the work, not an afterthought.
What our work with Diggs taught us
- Make the storefront modular. The more the team can build in the CMS, the faster campaigns ship.
- Test the big assumptions. Thirteen concluded tests settled questions that opinions couldn't.
- Treat each market properly. Canada got its own content and routing, not a copy of the US store.
- Re-check the platform choice. Headless was right for Diggs then; native Shopify is right now.
Read the Diggs case study, or see the crates at diggs.pet.
