( Case study · E-commerce · Pet care )
Pet-care e-commerce platform
A redesign of Fernwood's shopping experience — vet-reviewed products, autoship, and a vet pharmacy — focused on helping pet owners trust that a product is right for their pet, and get prescriptions filled without friction.
( 01 ) The problem
Shoppers couldn't tell, at a glance, whether a product actually fit their pet — and getting a vet prescription filled meant leaving the site entirely.
2000
vet-reviewed products
Every product is reviewed by a veterinarian and tested by real pets — but that trust signal wasn't visible where people were deciding what to buy.
- Product pages didn't surface vet-review status or breed/age fit up front
- Autoship setup and prescription refills lived in different, disconnected flows
- Finding a nearby partner vet or the pharmacy team meant searching outside the site
- No consistent way to compare products across the same trust criteria
- Shelter-donation impact (1% of every order) wasn't visible at checkout
- Mobile checkout had extra steps carried over from the desktop flow
( 02 ) Objective
Make the trust signals visible, and get every pet-care task done in one place.
12,000+
Orders shipped in 2026 — the redesign had to scale with real order volume, not slow it down.
4.8 ★
Average rating across 9,400 reviews — the bar the new flows had to protect.
$38k
Donated to 42 partner shelters — 1% of every order, made visible rather than buried in a footer.
( 03 ) Solution
One consistent trust badge, and pharmacy, autoship and shopping unified into a single flow.
Vet-reviewed badge everywhere
The same badge and breed/age fit indicator on listing, detail and cart — so trust travels with the product, not just the product page.
One pharmacy flow
Prescription upload, verification status and refill autoship live inside the same checkout, instead of a separate portal.
Autoship as a toggle, not a form
Turning any order into a repeat delivery is a single toggle at checkout, with the 5% saving shown inline.
Impact at checkout
The shelter donation is shown as part of the order summary — the giving becomes part of the purchase, not an afterthought.
( 04 ) Sitemap
Three levels deep, so any product is two taps from the header.
Department first, then category. Pharmacy and Autoship get their own top-level entries because repeat orders and prescriptions drive most of the revenue in pet retail. 13 of 38 pages are designed; the rest are planned for the next sprint.
- Dogs
- Cats
- Small pets
- Pharmacy (Rx)
- Autoship & deals
- Account
- Help
- Cart & checkout
( 05 ) User flow
First order, landing to delivery, with the four moments that most often break it.
The shopper can't find the product, the size is out of stock, the cart holds a prescription item, or the payment fails. Each of these got its own path instead of a dead end.
What the flow told us to design
- Two ways in, search and mega menu, so both needed a no-results state
- Out-of-stock sizes stay visible but switch to “Notify me”
- The pet & vet step appears only when the cart holds an Rx item
- A failed payment keeps every field filled; the error sits inline
- Rx items are charged after vet approval, so confirmation splits paid today from pending
- Account creation moves after purchase instead of blocking checkout
( 06 ) UI states
Every component designed for the moments that go wrong, not just the default.
Five components, four states each. Every state is tied to a real trigger in the store, like stock level, a pending API call, field validation or a payment response, so developers know exactly when to show it.
( 07 ) High-fidelity screens · Mobile
Tap a screen to see the full page
( 07 ) High-fidelity screens · Desktop
11 pages · tap to open
( 08 ) Roadmap
Fourteen weeks from research to a live Shopify store.
Design runs ahead of build, so every screen, state and flow is signed off before the storefront work starts. The build connects a Next.js front end to Shopify’s Storefront API, with Shopify’s own checkout styled from these designs.
Test 01
Autoship pre-selected on the product page
Defaulting to Autoship should lift repeat orders without hurting conversion.
Metric · Autoship share of orders
Test 02
Free-shipping progress bar in the cart
Showing the gap to $49 should nudge small carts over the threshold.
Metric · Average order value
Test 03
Guest checkout as the first option
Putting guest checkout before log-in should cut drop-off on step one.
Metric · Checkout completion
( 09 ) Impact
Numbers from the live product, at the scale the redesign now supports.
Orders
12,000+ shipped in 2026
Steady volume through the redesigned checkout and autoship flows.
Catalog
2,000+ vet-reviewed products
Every one carries the same trust badge, end to end.
Community
$38k to 42 shelters
1% of every order, now visible at the point of purchase.
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