B2C healthcare platform | Conversion & retention optimization

Overview

📍 Background

Thrive Pet Healthcare is a national network of veterinary clinics dedicated to making pet care more accessible and transparent. As major vet networks launched digital platforms, Thrive set out to build a competitive self-service web app that helped pet parents manage their pet’s care in one place.

⚡ The challenge

Thrive was losing revenue to competitors with better digital experiences. Pet parents struggled to manage appointments, prescriptions, and health records efficiently. My task was to create a mobile-first experience that made booking appointments and managing pet care seamless.

👩🏻‍💻 My role

  • Lead UX/UI Designer
  • Team: Creative director, product manager, engineering

I led the UX design for a responsive pet portal that simplified appointment booking, streamlined access to health records, and gave users a clearer picture of their pet’s overall wellness.

⭐️ The solution

A simple, user-friendly platform that made pet care easier to manage. Pet parents could book appointments, track vaccinations, store records, and access personalized tips, all in one place.

🤔 How might we

How might we help pet parents proactively manage their pet’s health in one centralized platform?

Research & insights

Without direct access to end users. Working within an agency setting, I had to make informed decisions using stakeholder input, competitive analysis, and informal research, knowing the MVP would need to evolve once real user data became available.

✅ What I did

  • Analyzed direct competitors (Banfield, VCA) and adjacent wellness apps to understand user expectations for pet health portals
  • Stakeholder workshops to surface internal assumptions and business goals
  • Informal interviews with pet owners in my network to validate pain points
  • Brand audit of Thrive’s website and messaging to ensure tone alignment

⭐️ Key insights

  • Pet parents view their pets as family: trust and empathy weren’t optional
  • Personalization drives engagement: Individualized data like savings trackers and pet-specific reminders increases perceived value
  • Centralized records solve a major pain point (vet-hopping creates fragmented histories)
  • Educational content feels like noise unless it’s timely and relevant to their pet
  • Business priority was clear: appointment bookings = primary goal, plan enrollment = secondary goal

Ideation & strategy

Using research insights, I worked with the product manager to prioritize features that built trust and drove conversions.

🎯 The goal

Drive conversions through trust, simplicity, and usefulness.

👍 MVP features defined

  • Pet profiles with medical history: Trust anchor, solves the records pain point
  • Appointment and vaccination reminders: Primary conversion driver
  • Wellness plan management: Secondary business goal
  • Personalized tips by pet type, breed, and age: The content already existed, making it an easy win that would drive engagement and reinforce Thrive’s expertise
  • In-app appointment booking at preferred clinic: Primary business goal; all design decisions supported this conversion path

👎 What was deferred

  • Vet-to-parent in-app messaging (too complex for MVP)
  • Gamification (too much effort, not enough confidence in value)

I used OOUX methodology to define the system’s core objects, their relationships, and required actions. This visual framework helped stakeholders prioritize MVP features, gave engineers clarity on data structure and technical feasibility, and ensured the team aligned on what needed to be built before diving into visual design.

Design & iteration

I worked closely with product and engineering to design an MVP that met technical constraints while solving user needs. We moved rapidly from wireframes to interactive prototypes to stay within tight deadlines.

🎨 Key design decisions

  • Dashboard highlighting upcoming appointments and vaccine reminders
  • Progressive disclosure for secondary details
  • Filterable medical records by type and date
  • Persistent “Book appointment” and “Request refill” actions
  • Displayed past savings to reinforce membership plan value

Stakeholder insights and competitor patterns showed proactive reminders build trust and drive bookings. Surfacing alerts created a natural path to booking an appointment, while making pet care management easy for pet parents.

I kept the interface clean by hiding less-critical information until needed, reducing cognitive load for pet parents managing multiple tasks.

Pet parents needed quick access to specific records (like vaccination history ahead of travel and pet boarding), not endless scrolling through every document. Filters by record type and date let users find what they need fast, especially in time-sensitive situations.

I made the two high-priority actions always visible, removing friction from primary conversion paths that drive revenue.

Pet owners need tangible proof membership is worth it. I designed a savings tracker that makes value visible at a glance, while one-tap enrollment removes the friction that causes people to defer and forget.

Outcomes

The design prioritized easy appointment booking while creating simplified membership enrollment paths, addressing Thrive’s primary revenue driver and secondary growth goal.

Leadership called the the design “valuable”, “feasible”, and “on-brand”, approving it for development.

Engineering reported a smooth handoff due to early, consistent collaboration.

🚀 Post-launch

As an agency project, I transitioned off before launch. The member dashboard and enrollment flow I designed became the foundation for Thrive’s mobile-first patient portal, directly supporting their goal of expanding their digital touch points and driving engagement and revenue.

🔄 What I’d do differently

While I’m proud of the visual execution and strategic thinking, I’d push harder for user testing, such as moderated usability sessions to gauge desirability and refine usability, or surveys sent to Thrive’s email list to assess feature prioritization. Even just 5 user sessions would have caught blindspots we couldn’t see from internal feedback alone.