ManyPets Checkout Redesign
ManyPets is an award-winning pet insurance company operating in the UK, Sweden, and the US, offering comprehensive cover with unlimited vet fee reimbursement.
I was the sole designer on this project, working with a PM, a Director of Growth, and a team of London-based developers.
The goal was to design the quote and buy flow from scratch for the US market launch and hit profitability within the first year.
Company type
Insurtech, Scale-up
Time frame
6–7 months to launch · 1+ year iteration
Contribution
UX Research, Prototyping, 0 to 1 Product Design, Design System
THE CHALLENGE
The US pet insurance market was small and most consumers had never considered buying it. Designing a quote and buy flow for a product your users don't fully grasp yet was a fundamentally different problem to optimising an existing one.
RESEARCH - PART 1 of 3
We collaborated with a Market Research firm where I was actively included into the debriefing meetings where I could learn more about the insurance landscape in the US and types of users we were targeting.
The segmentation shaped every subsequent decision: messaging tone, coverage hierarchy, how we framed price, and which emotional triggers to lean into versus avoid.
RESEARCH - PART 2 of 3
Running moderated usability sessions on US competitor websites
The goal was to understand how US pet parents think about insurance from scratch, not validate our own assumptions. Almost every design decision that followed traces back to one of 3 core findings.
Research findings
01
US users prioritise coverage over price
In the UK, price is the primary decision driver. In US, participants would pay more to know their pet was fully covered, even when shown a cheaper alternative.
02
Past pet health scares are the primary purchase trigger
The single most common reason US users gave for considering insurance was a personal experience with a sick pet, or hearing about one from a friend or family member.
03
Insurance is seen as ongoing care, not emergency cover
US pet parents didn't think of insurance as something you activate when disaster strikes. This was a fundamental framing difference from UK users.
RESEARCH - PART 3 OF 3
After the user sessions I built a structured feedback analysis framework in Airtable, manually scoring each flow across the functional areas most relevant to our design decisions. Every session run by hand, before AI-assisted research was an option. The analysis confirmed the market gap and gave us a clear design benchmark.
OPPORTUNITY IDENTIFIED
No competitor solved simplicity and depth simultaneously. High-scorers (Pawprotect, Figo) were comprehensive but dense. Low-scorers were cleaner but trust-poor. The gap was a flow that did both. That was our opening.
DESIGN INPUT
Customise before committing. Every top-scoring flow showed deductible and reimbursement options before the price lock-in. This validated our quote page architecture: configure first, pay second.
SYNTHESIS
Before designing anything, I ran a service blueprint workshop with developers and stakeholders to map every touchpoint from first ad to post-purchase. One shared picture before anyone opened Figma.
It also caught edge cases early: users from states where we weren't live yet, mid-flow abandonment, and multi-pet scenarios.
Success metrics set before design started
Launch the MVP, learn and iterate after launch
Conversion above 5% in first 3 months (industry avg: ~10%)
Policies sold per week target met in months 1–3
First-month retention tracked and baselined
Drop-off rate per screen identified and tracked
TESTING & ITERATION
Every significant design decision was validated before it shipped: through prototype testing, beta sessions, or post-launch data analysis.
OUTCOMES
The US launch became the blueprint for the other markets, creating a strong foundation for future iterations.
DESIGN SYSTEM
While delivering the US product, I simultaneously led the foundation work for ManyPets' design system, Unpack. This wasn't a side project; it was built from the components I was creating for the checkout, validated across the US, UK, and Sweden products.
Accessibility standards
Took active ownership of accessibility: screen reader support, keyboard navigation, and colour contrast standards. Documented the pink-on-light failure as a system rule: ManyPets pink can only appear on dark backgrounds.
Surviving the rebrand
The brand changed name and visual identity mid-project. Because tokens were mapped rather than hardcoded, components could be repointed to the new palette without being rebuilt, shipping the rebrand with minimal engineering disruption.
CHALLENGES
01
A brand being invented in parallel with the product. Typography, colour usage, and component patterns were changing weeks before launch. I had to manage these changes while the developers were building the new flows. That's why the token architecture mattered so much at the begining.
02
Designing for a market I'd never lived in. US insurance conventions, terminology, and user expectations were genuinely different. Research was the only way to avoid building a product shaped by UK-specific assumptions.
03
Convincing marketing to adapt the brand colours for digital. The brand had been designed with print in mind, not screens. Several colour combinations failed basic contrast requirements on digital surfaces. I had to make the case to the head of marketing, get the palette adjusted for digital use, and then document the rules in the design system so the same decisions couldn't be made twice.
CONCLUSION
