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Selling animals online is the hardest kind of e-commerce: a licence to display, a courier that will carry livestock, a delivery date that cannot slip, and buyers who need care facts before they pay. We build pet and aquatics shops around all of that, run the search, the ads and the customer service afterwards, and show the numbers.
A buyer checking whether to trust a shop with a living animal, and an AI assistant deciding whether to recommend it, look for the same things. We build them in, and we show them.
Selling pet animals online in England needs a council licence. The operator holds it; we put the licence details on every page and in the structured data, so a buyer, a council or an AI assistant can see it. Aquatropics shows its Ealing licence in the footer of every page.
Ordinary parcel services will not. Both shops ship with DX on a confirmed date. We build the checkout around the courier’s rules: delivery days, cut-offs, mainland and non-mainland addresses, and a date the customer sees before paying.
Some postcodes sit outside the live-animal network. Tropical Fish Co’s assistant checks a postcode before the customer orders and says honestly when the courier cannot reach it. Nobody buys a fish that cannot be delivered.
A box of live animals cannot wait on a doorstep. Both shops send a text and an email when the order is paid, when the courier scans the box, when it is on the van with a time window, and when it arrives, with unpacking advice.
Temperature, pH, tank size, diet and tank mates on every listing, and on Tropical Fish Co the references behind them: FishBase, Eschmeyer’s Catalog of Fishes, GBIF, IUCN, WoRMS, OATA. Welfare copy that a specialist would stand behind, not marketing copy.
A live-arrival guarantee on every order, a same-day photo claim, and a refund or a replacement with the next order. The assistant can start the claim at 11pm; the team reviews it in the morning.
The parts work because they are connected: the SEO pages are the ad landing pages, the questions customers ask the assistant become the next page, and the courier scans become the customer messages. You can buy one part; the shops that grow fastest run all of it.
WooCommerce or a custom Shopify storefront, built from scratch around how people search: categories by species and need, product pages with the facts a buyer wants, structured data on every template, fast on a phone.
E-commerce web designCategory and product SEO from real search data, care guides and buying guides that rank on their own, and a monthly read of what moved. Both shops average around position 5 across every search they appear for.
E-commerce SEOFacts that agree on every page, FAQ and product markup, an llms.txt file and the care content AI assistants quote. Google’s AI Overviews cite the two shops over 1,300 times; ChatGPT names both for buying tropical fish online in the UK.
AI visibilityAds land on the SEO pages, so Google rates them highly and charges less. Aquatropics pays about 7p a click against a UK average of 17p to 22p. Meta ads and Google Shopping run where the data earns them a budget.
Google Ads managementOne assistant on the website, WhatsApp and the phone, connected to live orders, stock and courier coverage. 3,273 conversations across the two shops, most of them outside office hours, with a person for anything it cannot settle.
The customer-service gallerySearch, analytics, ads and shop data checked around the clock, our AI agents reading it daily, and a person deciding every change. The shops keep improving after launch because someone is always looking.
How we decideAn established family-run shop in London and a brand-new independent shop. Both built from scratch, both still climbing, both with every figure sourced.
WooCommerce · client
Aquatropics
Custom Shopify storefront · run by our founder
Tropical Fish Co
Google Search Console, 26 September–23 October 2026 and 26 July–23 October 2026. AI and keyword counts from DataForSEO; purchase shares from Google Analytics 4. Checked 26 October 2026.
Compare both shops side by sideData, not a template
Every change on the two shops came from their own data: Search Console and Analytics read daily through the APIs, paid search and AI-answer tracking, and what customers ask the assistants. Changes go live one at a time with a date against them, then get kept or reversed. Shops that follow generic advice find out what went wrong at the end of the month; shops that follow their own data find out the same day.
See how the decisions get madeBefore we quote
Which animals, and which licence?
The council licence is yours; we need to know what it covers so the shop says the right things.
Which courier, which days?
We build the checkout around the carrier’s live-animal terms, delivery days and cut-offs.
What happens when a fish arrives dead?
The claim process goes on the pages and into the assistant, so we agree it before launch.
Shopify, WooCommerce, or move from somewhere else?
We compare the three-year cost and the exit before recommending one.
What do you want to own?
Domain, store, Analytics, Search Console and ad accounts are set up in your name. We put ownership and handover in writing.
Yes, and we run them afterwards. We built Aquatropics (WooCommerce) and Tropical Fish Co (a custom Shopify storefront) from scratch and run their SEO, Google Ads, assistants and delivery messaging. In the 28 days to 23 October 2026 they averaged Google positions of 5.2 and 5.0, both pass Google’s Core Web Vitals on phones, and ChatGPT names both for buying tropical fish online in the UK.
No, and nobody honest will tell you they do. The shop holds the council licence and the courier contract; we build the shop around them: licence details on every page, the courier’s delivery days and cut-offs in the checkout, a postcode check before purchase, packing instructions on the pages, and the messages at every scan. We will tell you which parts are yours before we quote.
The method is the same. Live fish are the hardest case: a late courier means a dead animal, so everything about delivery, dates and care facts has to be right. A shop selling reptiles, birds, hamsters, dog food or aquarium equipment inherits the same build: pages from real searches, facts that agree everywhere, structured data, fast phones, an assistant that reads live orders, and a dated test-and-measure loop. The welfare rules differ per animal and sit with the licensed operator.
Both work; we have one of each. Shopify suits a shop that wants a hosted checkout and apps with a custom front end on top, which is what Tropical Fish Co is. WooCommerce suits a shop that wants full control and content-led SEO, which is what Aquatropics is. We choose from the catalogue size, the budget and who will run the shop day to day, and we put the three-year costs in the quote.
Tropical Fish Co went live in April 2026 at an average Google position of 25.1, reached page one on average in July, and averaged 5.0 in the 28 days to 23 October 2026, with orders up ninefold between its first full month and September. That is one shop in one niche, not a promise; competition, budget and the catalogue change the timeline.
Shops are quoted, because no two are alike. Google Ads management starts at £249 a month and the AI receptionist at £99 a month; a full shop build with SEO, the assistant and delivery messaging is scoped after a call. We put the build, the monthly work and the three-year running costs in writing.
Yes. Each case study names its Search Console and Analytics property and we walk you through the live reports on a call, with the client’s permission for their data. Speed is in Google’s public Chrome UX Report, reviews are on Trustpilot, Google and Judge.me, and any rank tracker shows the same direction for both domains. We publish counts, positions and shares, never the shops’ sales values.
Both shops side by side
E-commerce SEO case studies
The customer-service half
Smart sales and 24/7 customer service
Paid search
Google Ads case studies
Who does the work
Meet the team
Tell us what you sell, which courier you use and where you want to be in a year. We will tell you what we would build first, what it costs and what you will own.
