Convert Digital partnered with Chemist Warehouse to replatform their entire ecommerce operation onto commercetools, creating a modern, high-performing digital and customer experience for Australia’s largest discount pharmacy chain.

The project started where the best ones do - with the right question. Before committing to a platform, Convert led a thorough comparison analysis to find the best path forward. From there, a deep discovery phase and close collaboration between both teams shaped every decision that followed.

Convert delivered a custom frontend powered by Next.js on Netlify, a bespoke checkout experience, Contentful CMS and a prescription system purpose-built for the pharmaceutical vertical all integrated across 10+ microservices and 60+ systems. The result set a new standard for enterprise retail in Australia.

Since going live in June 2025, the new platform has delivered measurable improvements across every key metric.

Chemist Warehouse is a name that needs little introduction. As Australia’s largest discount pharmacy chain, they’ve built a household reputation on accessibility, value, and range across health, beauty, and wellness.

But behind that household name was a digital platform that hadn’t fundamentally changed in over 15 years. While the business had grown enormously - both in physical footprint and online volume - the ecommerce experience hadn’t kept pace. A full rebuild wasn’t just overdue. It was essential.

Chemist Warehouse’s existing platform had served the business well for over a decade, but it was showing its age in ways that were becoming harder to work around.

An Ageing Ecosystem

The legacy platform required heavy ongoing maintenance and was creating real limitations for the business. The technologies underpinning it had become unattractive to new development talent, making it harder to recruit and retain the engineering capability needed to support the digital experience, let alone push it forward. It also struggled to scale effectively, particularly during peak periods such as Black Friday when traffic volumes increased significantly.

Industry-Specific Complexity

Operating in the pharmaceutical and health vertical introduces complexity that most retailers don’t face. Prescription systems, regulatory compliance, product-specific rules, and accessibility requirements for users with visual, auditory, motor, and other needs all had to be accommodated from day one, not bolted on as an afterthought. This was never going to be a straightforward migration.

Scale Without Flexibility

With 200+ dataflows moving in and out of the website and integrations touching 60+ systems, the existing architecture had become deeply interconnected, but rigid. Every change carried risk. The ability to innovate or respond quickly to market shifts was constrained by the sheer weight of technical debt.

The business needed more than a refresh. It needed a foundation built for where Chemist Warehouse was heading, not just for where it had been.

Every strategic decision on this project was guided by a single objective: align the digital ecosystem with the company’s positioning - modern, attractive, and ready for the future.

Starting With the Right Question

Before a single line of code was written, Convert Digital led an ecommerce platform comparison discovery. We evaluated Chemist Warehouse’s requirements across multiple platforms, building a clear, evidence-based view of the options. This wasn’t about pushing a preferred technology. It was about finding the right fit for a business of this scale and complexity.

That process guided Chemist Warehouse toward commercetools as the commerce platform, paired with Contentful for content management - a composable architecture that would deliver the flexibility and performance they needed without locking them into a monolithic platform.

Composable by Design

The commerce strategy was a collaborative effort between Chemist Warehouse, Convert Digital, and commercetools. Rather than adopting an off-the-shelf solution and working around its limitations, the team designed an architecture built from best-in-class components - each chosen for what it does well, integrated through 10+ microservices.

This approach was about more than solving today’s problems. Multi-tenant capabilities were baked into the architecture from the start, designed to simplify the future addition of new brands, regions, and countries - preparing the business for its next chapter.

Experience-Led Thinking

Convert worked on initial wireframe concepts for the core customer flow, from homepage through to checkout. We designed initial UI concepts and built out a design system that the Chemist Warehouse team then took ownership of - building and improving upon the foundation we’d established together.

We designed this handover to prioritise speed. By equipping the team with a clear roadmap and the right toolkit, we’ve empowered Chemist Warehouse to execute independently from day one.

With the strategic direction locked in, the build phase brought the vision to life across four key areas.

Platform and Architecture

At the core of the new experience sits commercetools, operating as a headless commerce engine. This was paired with a custom-built frontend on Contentful, giving Chemist Warehouse full control over their content and merchandising without being constrained by the commerce layer.

The architecture integrates with 10+ microservices and connects to 60+ external systems, with 200+ dataflows managed across the ecosystem. Despite this complexity, the composable approach means each component can be updated, replaced, or scaled independently - a significant shift from the tightly coupled legacy system.

Custom frontend

The frontend was built from the ground up with Chemist Warehouse’s customers in mind. Rather than templating a solution, Convert designed and developed a bespoke experience that reflects both the scale of the business and the specific expectations of pharmacy retail customers. Speed, clarity, and ease of use were the non-negotiables.

Bespoke Checkout

Checkout has the single biggest impact on conversion, and for a business processing the volume that Chemist Warehouse does, there's no room for friction. Convert built a bespoke checkout tailored to the retailer’s specific requirements; including the nuances of pharmaceutical products, delivery rules, and customer verification.

Patient Profile System

One of the more distinctive elements of this build was the Patient Profile & Prescription system. Operating in the pharmacy vertical means managing sensitive health information alongside standard ecommerce functionality. Convert developed a purpose-built solution that handles the regulatory and functional requirements of the sector, secured with end-to-end encryption and biometric authentication, and integrated seamlessly into the broader commerce experience. This level of security and integration is rare in the Australian market, even beyond healthcare, setting a new benchmark for digital experiences in highly regulated environments.

A platform is only as good as the team running it. Convert invested heavily in making sure Chemist Warehouse’s people were set up to succeed from day one.

This included multiple rounds of training sessions, thorough handover documentation, and comprehensive support pathways. The team also provided dedicated support during BFCM 2025 to minimise risk during the highest-traffic trading period of the year - the first major peak event on the new platform.

The goal was always to build capability, not dependency. When the Chemist Warehouse team took the reins, they had everything they needed to operate confidently and independently.

Black Friday Cyber Monday 2025 was the first major peak trading event on the new platform - and the ultimate proof point for the architecture’s scalability.

The platform served 1 billion requests across 4 million visitors and 29 million pageviews. Peak order throughput hit 130 orders per minute, up from 104 the previous year. That headroom matters. It confirms the architecture isn’t just handling current demand, it’s built with significant room to grow. All systems, including legacy backend services, remained stable throughout.

The multi-tenant architecture wasn’t built for one website. It was built for what comes after.

With the core Australian platform now live and performing, the foundation is in place to extend the ecosystem across new brands and new markets. Further brands and regions are already on the roadmap, each able to leverage the architecture that’s already been proven at scale.

That’s the advantage of getting the foundation right. Every future rollout builds on what’s already there, rather than starting from scratch.

Looking to replatform, modernise your tech stack, or build an ecommerce experience that’s ready for what’s next? We’d love to chat. Reach out to the team at Convert Digital to see how we can help.