A mobile-first web app

Image by Freepik

Petco Love Lost

Petco Love, Petco’s non-profit organization, created Petco Love Lost to help reunite missing pets using facial recognition technology. Petco Love Lost is now the largest lost and found pet database in the country, with more than 200K searchable pets and 3K animal welfare partners.

Head of Product: Aaron Klein

Digital Product Manager: Jessica Remitz

Copywriter: Ben Laun

Product Designer: Abbey Price

My Role

As the digital product manager from concept to launch, my responsibilities included:

  • Conducting surveys and user interviews to understand the problem and synthesize pet owners' experiences into a viable, scalable product

  • Working with design to conduct usability tests with rapid prototyping and quick iterations based on test findings

  • Balancing stakeholder requests with user needs

  • Reviewing and approving all visuals

  • Writing all product requirement documents

  • Working cross-functionally with front and back-end engineers on several development squads

  • Managing all user acceptance testing

  • Creating and executing a product launch plan

The Problem

How can we improve the site experience to reunite more pets?

Early iterations of Petco Love Lost posed several challenges, including:

  • Usability and accessibility issues

  • Slow site performance 

  • Roadblocks in the user journey preventing pet reunions

Additionally, the site was not optimized for mobile, despite the fact that a vast majority of the users are on mobile devices.

Given that pets get lost and found outside, we knew the experience needed to be mobile-first, fast and easy to use.

The Goal

Our first step was to distill the primary functions and goals of the project:

  • Simplify how users report a lost or found pet

  • Improve the search experience

  • Connect users to shelters and each other to facilitate more pet reunions

  • Streamline the tool for shelter and rescue partners (whose animals in care comprise the majority of the searchable pet database)

Working wireframes with blue sky “report a pet” flow

The Outcome 

Make Petco Love Lost the central database for reporting and searching for missing pets.

The newly designed Petco Love Lost launched in February 2024. Post-launch, the product roadmap includes:

  • Feature enhancements, including social media platform integrations 

  • Pet alert and photo match notifications 

  • Improved search experiences 

Baseline Metrics

  • 34K pet reunions

  • 200K+ searchable pets

  • 2K+ pet reunions/month

  • 96% of users who have taken a reunion survey recommend Petco Love Lost