Leading a multi-brand digital transformation
Rebuilding Petco Love's Digital Ecosystem
Founded in 1999 as the Petco Foundation, Petco Love formalized Petco’s longstanding commitment to animal welfare. By the time of this project, the organization had invested more than $380M in animal welfare initiatives, distributed 2.2M free vaccines, facilitated 6.8M+ pet adoptions, and reunited 34K pets.
In 2021, the organization evolved from the Petco Foundation into Petco Love, launching three distinct initiatives: Petco Love Care, Petco Love Lost, and Petco Love Adopt.
The brand had evolved. The digital experience hadn't.
Head of Product: Aaron Klein
Digital Product Manager: Jessica Remitz
Copywriter: Ben Laun
Product Designer: Abbey Price
Development: Oowlish Technology
My Role
I led the product work from concept through launch, partnering across product, design, engineering, content, SEO, and organizational stakeholders to transform Petco Love's digital presence. I was responsible for:
Defining the information architecture and rebuilding the taxonomy across the Petco Love properties
Partnering with design to evaluate and shape the new visual and interaction experience
Defining product requirements and translating business and user needs into an executable product roadmap
Aligning stakeholders across multiple teams and audiences around the new digital experience
Managing external SEO and copywriting partners and overseeing UX content
Evaluating and implementing a new CMS, Contentful, and training stakeholders on the platform
Leading content migration and coordinating the transition from the legacy platform
Planning and leading user acceptance testing
Developing and executing the product launch plan
The Problem
How should Petco Love show up online?
The transition from Petco Foundation to Petco Love created a fundamental digital product problem: the organization had a new brand architecture, but its website hadn't evolved with it.
The existing experience was fragmented, outdated, and difficult to navigate. The new Petco Love brands weren't represented, making it harder for users to accomplish some of the organization's most important goals—from donating and finding free vaccines to searching for adoptable animals.
The underlying technology created another challenge. The site was built on a custom WordPress template that was difficult to maintain, prone to bugs, and regularly experienced outages.
The brand had evolved. The platform, architecture, and experience needed to catch up.
The Goal
We set out to create a digital ecosystem that could support Petco Love's next stage of growth by:
Establishing a cohesive digital brand and experience across Petco Love and its three initiatives
Creating a new information architecture and taxonomy that balanced the needs of multiple audiences with ease of navigation
Replatforming the website onto a more flexible, scalable CMS
Creating a reusable design and component system that could support multiple properties
Making it easier for consumers to donate, find free vaccines, and search for adoptable animals
Making critical information around grants, vaccines, and adoption events easier for animal welfare partners to find
This wasn't simply a website redesign. It was an opportunity to rethink the underlying product architecture, technology, and operating model that supported Petco Love's digital presence.
Building a digital ecosystem, not just a new website
One of the biggest product challenges was balancing two distinct audiences: consumers and animal welfare partners.
At the same time, Petco Love needed to establish a strong parent brand while giving Petco Love Care, Petco Love Adopt, and the broader Petco Love ecosystem their own clear identities and purposes.
We developed brand personas and evaluated multiple visual concepts, ultimately establishing the foundation for Petco Love's first design system.
The Outcome
The redesigned Petco Love experience launched in December 2023 with a new brand expression, streamlined architecture, modern technology platform, and a reusable design system spanning the organization's digital ecosystem.
The new system included 60+ reusable components, giving product, design, and engineering a shared UI foundation that could be used across all three brands.
More importantly, the redesign established a digital experience capable of clearly communicating Petco Love's mission while making its core services and programs easier for users to discover.