Unleashing ecommerce potential in a complex retail environment

For Pet Supplies Plus, a large-scale retailer of pet supplies, online revenue has been growing at 6% annually in recent years, despite an aging ecommerce infrastructure. But when customers began commenting on slow response times and interrupted digital experiences, the company’s marketing team took the feedback to heart.

“Our old platform was at end-of-life support, and it was taking us a long time to get to market with new capabilities, so we continued to lag behind our competition,” said Sara Ranson, VP Marketing for Pet Supplies Plus. “We had a decision to make: Upgrade what we have, or start fresh with something new?”

Working with Sitecore Platinum Partner Horizontal Digital, Pet Supplies Plus opted for an all-in commerce modernization effort that resulted in a 2024 Sitecore Experience Award for the Most Powerful Tech Stack Integration. One month before go-time for the project, Ranson and Owen Schott, Director of Commerce Enablement for Horizontal, shared their replatforming story in a breakout session at Sitecore Symposium.

“We tell our clients, you’re only as good as your worst customer experience,” said Schott. “It’s about delivering connected experiences across the enterprise.” Still in the initial phase of rolling out its end-to-end digital platform built on composable Sitecore technologies, Pet Supplies Plus has achieved that vision, and so much more.

Pet Supplies Plus is a well-known US retailer that has been in business since 1988 with more than 730 locations nationwide. The company has a complex structure with both corporate and franchise locations. Each independently owned store builds its own local community and customer experience, with support from the brand. The company recently acquired a second, premium brand called Wag N’ Wash that has its own network of stores and digital presence.

As Pet Supplies Plus began to realize that their customers–who they refer to as 'neighbors'–were increasingly unhappy with the shopping experience, the company identified several root issues. Its outdated ecommerce platform lacked modern features such as AI and advanced analytics, so it struggled to meet the needs of the business and its “neighbors.” A poor customer experience with slow loading times, clunky navigation, and outdated design caused high bounce rates and lost sales. And limited scalability affected website performance at peak times.

“We did ok during normal times, but when we had events that were driving an increased level of traffic to the website, the response wasn’t what we needed it to be,” Ranson explained.

Concern over potential security vulnerabilities and integration headaches were additional drivers of the decision to replatform. With its transformative ecommerce initiative, Pet Supplies Plus wanted to address several business pain points:

• Limited ability to grow and enhance the customer experience.
• Customer dissatisfaction due to frequent maintenance and downtime.
• Rising costs to stay competitive on the old platform.
• Challenges with finding and retaining specialized skillset for the old technology powering the website.
• Difficulty attracting and retaining talent to work on outdated infrastructure.

“We wanted to leverage ecommerce as a way to drive acquisition and reactivation into the business,” said Ranson. “The idea was to bring the neighbors of our franchisees into the digital experience and then expand on the relationship with the physical store. It’s hard to do that when the platform isn’t performing the way it needs to.”

Ranson and team prioritized three objectives for the new platform:

1. Drive customer relationships and experiences forward.
2. Deliver performance and scale at a lower total cost of ownership.
3. Bring franchise owners into the future with a modern digital infrastructure. 

The journey to a new ecommerce platform began in the third quarter of 2023, and the project kicked off before year-end. At the start of 2024, development sprints were underway, and the new site launched in November.

Planning was a critical aspect of the project right from the start, given the twin goals of solving current problems and setting the company up for long-term success. Getting to market quickly with a new solution was a top priority, so the team streamlined the design and implementation processes, accordingly. They decided to measure success in terms of increased performance and stability, lower TCO, ability to expand its capabilities in the future, and growth of the overall business.

The resulting composable architecture features Sitecore XM Cloud, Content Hub, Experience Edge for headless content delivery, Sitecore Search for AI-driven search and merchandizing, and OrderCloud as the core backbone of the ecommerce environment. Advantages of this particular stack for Pet Supplies Plus include:

• Flexibility and scalability, so Pet Supplies Plus can adapt to changing business needs over time.
• Headless commerce to provide seamless, omnichannel experiences.
• Complex B2C capabilities to support the company’s franchise structure and sub-brands.
• Developer-friendly ecommerce environment in OrderCloud.

Schott emphasized that careful planning has made all the difference in the success of the Pet Supplies Plus transformation. By thinking ahead, the team was able to minimize downtime, prevent data loss, and ensure a smooth transition to the platform.

As a result, Pet Supplies Plus has not only enhanced the shopping experience, but also unleashed the potential for pets and their owners to have a memorable experience with the brand. Even before the new platform had launched, Ranson was looking forward to introducing significant customer experience enhancements, including personalized shopping, greater consistency across channels, faster load times, and a modern design with intuitive navigation. Moreover, an improved architecture and efficiency gains in operations promise to drive the company’s digital commerce strategy going forward.

In the project’s first phase, Ranson and Schott expected to see conversion rates and revenue increase, along with better handling of higher traffic loads. Ultimately, they wanted to see increased customer satisfaction and loyalty and a lower overall cost for the platform.

As they reflected on the project to date, Ranson and Schott said strategic planning and close collaboration among all stakeholders had been essential. They felt they had designed the right platform to address problems, such as lagging sales, customer dissatisfaction, and rising costs – and would now be able to meet the competition with newfound flexibility, agility, and operational efficiencies.

Looking ahead, the team already had a long list of enhancements scheduled to roll out within the first month of the launch to address a backlog of requests. In 2025, a mobile app will debut using existing web experience as the foundation along with a website redesign to bring the online representation of Pet Supplies Plus closer to the in-store brand experience. 

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