Shop CVS

Not a New Homepage, a New Retail Engine.

CVS came to us with an ambitious mandate: modernize their fragmented e-commerce experience and create a shopping journey that supported their broader brand ambition, “Healthier Happens Together.”

The goal: Transform CVS.com/Shop into a personalized, predictable, wellness-forward experience that could scale across 135M monthly visits.

Role

Executive Experience Design Director
Journey

Pitch Vision to Delivery
Focus

Strategy, Team Structure, Design Ops, Execution
Duration

6-months (2-year client engagement)

Our Pitch Vision

A Five-Driver Model to Re-imagine CVS as a Wellness Destination

Our pitch reframed the opportunity around five interconnected drivers:

Brand Purpose

Bring “Healthier Happens Together” into commerce with content and moments that support real wellness needs, not just transactions.

Omni-Channel

Connect online shopping with in-store services using location, inventory, and scheduling to create one continuous, predictable journey.

Personalization

Use real-time data signals—location, history, behavior—to tailor offers, reminders, and product suggestions for every type of shopper.

Merchandising & Cross Sell

Shift from product grids to curated, thematic merchandising that increases relevance, discovery, and opportunities for cross-sell.

Embedded Functionality

Introduce mobile-first tools—intelligent add-to-cart, subscribe & save, appointments—that reduce effort and streamline the entire shopping flow.

Pitch designs

Designing the Team

A Pod-based System, Engineered for Speed, Alignment and Scale

To support a massive experience footprint — 30,000+ pages, 87 modules — we designed a delivery model that met the complexity of CVS’ retail operation with collaboration and knowledge-sharing:

Pod 1: Home, navigation, search, product listing, merchandising
Pod 2: Checkout, fulfillment, appointments, in-store integration

Casting our team with SMEs in strategy, content, retail media, analytics, and engineering ensured each decision laddered back to the transformation goals.

We would later use this team structure to quick launch subsequent CVS projects.

My Leadership: Cast key roles, established collaboration rhythms, and served as executive design oversight.

The North Star

Modular, personalized, mobile-first, built for continuous evolution

The experience we envisioned (and ultimately built) centered around a flexible, data-driven system. This created a foundation for long-term growth, not a one-off redesign:

A modular design library allowing rapid assembly of new experiences.
Behavior that adapts from anonymous → known → loyal users
A blend of commerce, content, and care through the pillars: Educate / Inspire / Reassure
Surfaces that feel contextual — seasonal, location-aware, and responsive to user history

The Hard Moment

Our first executive review failed — and it changed everything.

Leading with UX, the initial executive meeting derailed quickly. The CMO made it clear: “I don’t want to see wireframes. Show me pictures.” We swirled a short time (a healthy debrief and vent session), but, instead of losing momentum, we treated it as a directional cue.

Our team pivoted:

Shifted to visual-first storytelling for every executive session
Partnered directly with CVS’ Chief Design Officer to anticipate and better detail C-suite expectations (i.e. to successfully challenge those expectations).
Re-structured sprint reviews to build alignment earlier
Advocated UX through polished visual narratives

Three weeks later, our next review passed with minimal feedback—a turning point in the partnership.