How do you modernize a beloved 50-year-old Canadian pet retailer's digital experience to compete with tech-forward giants like Chewy, while maintaining the local expertise that makes them special?
65+
Retail stores across
2 Provinces
10k+
Online
products
50
Years serving
Pet parents
20%
Conversion Rate Increase (Goal)
Ren's Pets, Canada's largest independent pet retailer with over 65 brick-and-mortar locations and a growing e-commerce presence, was losing ground to Chewy's dominant subscription model. While Ren's offered an "Autoship" subscription service with competitive discounts (up to 40% off first order), the feature was buried in the UI and converting at only 10% attachment rate compared to Chewy's industry-leading 66%.
The Business Problem
Low subscription adoption meant:
• Missing out on predictable recurring revenue
• 3-5x lower customer lifetime value vs. Chewy subscribers
• No competitive moat against a $10B competitor
The Design Problem
The existing Autoship experience had critical UX failures:
• Hidden value proposition (discount buried as secondary action)
• No upfront transparency (users feared "subscription traps")
• Complex subscription management (high cancellation rate)
• No cart-level upsell opportunity (missed conversion moment)
Primary Goal
Double Autoship attachment rate from
10% → 20% within 6 months of launch
Secondary Goal
Reduce Autoship cancellation rate by 30%
Product page
30%
click-through to Autoship selection
Subscription modal
40%
conversion rate (selection → purchase)
Cart upsell
15%
conversion rate (one-time → Autoship)
Profile Dashboard
<12%
monthly churn rate
Competitive Analysis
Analyzed 5 major pet retailers.
Key finding: Chewy's transparency + flexibility = 66% subscription rate
I audited Ren's existing flow and identified 8 critical pain points:
01 Product Page Discovery & Cart Upsell
Problem: Autoship option hidden, <5% awareness
Solution: Side-by-side pricing with prominent Autoship card
Result: 100% awareness, 70% selection rate (vs. 20% baseline)
Problem: Users checkout with one-time items, missing subscription opportunity
Solution: Inline cart upsell with one-click frequency selection
03 Subscription Dashboard
Problem: Complex management (4+ clicks to skip), 18% monthly churn
Solution: One-click actions + multi-step cancellation flow
04 Onboarding & Education
Problem: 42% of first-time subscribers cancel within 30 days
Solution: 4-email sequence setting clear expectations
Key Design Decisions:
Equal visual weight (no manipulation)
Concrete dollar savings ("$2.36" > "5%")
"Recommended" badge (default choice architecture)
Benefits module addresses objections upfront
Result: 30-day retention: 58% → 80%
Business Impact
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR):
Baseline: 5,000 subscribers × $67 × 8.67 orders/year = $2.9M
After Redesign: 10,000 subscribers × $67 × 8.67 = $5.8M
Incremental Revenue: +$2.9M (100% increase)
Extra Wins
What Worked
Transparency Over Persuasion
Making cancellation easy increased trust and adoption more than hiding it reduced churn
Design for Forgiveness
One-click skip with undo > confirmation modal
Users completed tasks 3x faster
Multi-Step Retention
Offering alternatives before cancellation saved 40% of attempts
What I'd Do Differently
Test Earlier
Validate assumptions before designing iteration 2
Mobile-first
60% of traffic is mobile, start there
More A/B tests
Test dollar vs. percentage savings, frequency defaults, CTA copy
