Lorna Jane: From Headless to Liquid
Background
Homegrown in Australia and loved worldwide, Lorna Jane lives and breathes the Aussie way of life. The brand has carved out a mid-to-premium position as a lifestyle brand of choice in a crowded market, with ecommerce sitting alongside their mobile app and a broader omnichannel retail footprint.
Convert Digital partnered with Lorna Jane to migrate its Shopify storefront from Headless to Liquid, giving the activewear brand native content management and faster feature delivery. The new storefront launched in May 2026.
View the site here.
The Challenge
The brand's platform history includes an earlier move from Salesforce Commerce Cloud onto Shopify, paired with a custom headless frontend purpose-built to align with their mobile app. It was the right call at the time but the problem was what it cost to run.
Every content update, every campaign, every small change went through a developer. And as Shopify's native theme architecture matured, it closed the gap that had justified going headless in the first place, while the day-to-day cost of running headless stayed exactly the same. Lorna Jane didn't need to choose between platform stability and agility. It needed a way to keep both, without carrying the ongoing developer dependency that headless required.
Our Strategy
Following extensive internal research and proof-of-concept work, Lorna Jane had already identified a native rebuild as a strong potential path forward. Convert Digital played an important role in helping validate that direction, bringing their platform expertise to the evaluation and working closely with the team to compare the trade-offs between headless and Liquid.
Together, the teams determined that a native rebuild was the right approach, allowing Lorna Jane to retain the platform stability and app alignment it needed, while gaining the agility that Liquid provides out of the box.
“This rebuild was really seamless. Everything worked from the get-go – anything we might have run into was identified and fixed early. The actual go-live was pretty much a button click. We had rollback strategies ready just to be safe but we didn't end up needing them.”
Ethan Lynch, Enterprise Systems Manager, Lorna Jane
The Solution
Rebuilding the Product Data Foundation
Rather than carrying over the existing structure, Lorna Jane's product data was rethought from the ground up for how it needed to display across both website and app, while keeping the customer experience consistent throughout. The result is richer, more structured product data, positioned for AI-powered and agentic search, where information increasingly needs to be available to systems even when it isn't directly visible to customers.
An Extension of the Team
Convert Digital worked as an embedded extension of Lorna Jane's ecommerce team throughout delivery, flagging risks early, communicating proactively and absorbing a significant volume of content-page work that sat outside the original project scope. Lorna Jane's internal team could focus on testing and readiness instead of manual content rebuilding, keeping the project on track against a tight launch deadline.
“Internally we said we don't have the capacity to rebuild the site – it's a lot of work, and it's probably the riskiest thing from our end. Convert just made it happen.”
Ethan Lynch, Enterprise Systems Manager, Lorna Jane
What Changed After Go-Live
Content updates and campaigns that once consumed hours, sometimes most of a working day, now take minutes or a few hours for larger campaigns. Internal estimates put the time returned to the team at roughly 10x. The new structure also reduces double-handling and better supports international markets, while SEO was treated as a core part of the project from day one rather than an afterthought. Shortly after launch, Lorna Jane was able to adopt an improved Shopify customer account login experience with minimal development effort, a small but telling example of what native platform access now unlocks.
“I can't explain how much time the team was spending on campaign execution and banner updates. The time they're getting back now is tenfold – they can finish their tasks for the day and have a couple of extra hours to actually enhance the experience for the customer.”
– Maddison Faulkner, Omni-channel Systems Specialist, Lorna Jane
Key Initiatives
User Experience
Convert Digital elevated Lorna Jane's digital experience with a considered approach to premium design and intuitive UX, with a particular focus on the product detail page as a key driver of engagement and conversion.
Faster Browsing, Seamless Discovery
Collection pages were optimised for faster, more efficient browsing, with clearer filter and sort calls-to-action. The introduction of quick view and quick add on product listing pages let customers move seamlessly from discovery through to purchase, something that was previously missing.
A More Editorial PDP
The PDP gallery experience was reimagined to bring more product imagery into view earlier, reducing unnecessary scrolling while introducing a more editorial approach that heroes the product - a richer, more immersive experience that puts the product front and centre.
Simplified Navigation and Filtering
Navigation and filtering were simplified and standardised, making it easier for customers to find what they were looking for.
Key features delivered:
Shop the look / complete the look
Quick add and size guides
Enhanced product landing pages and product pages
Faster campaign and banner management
Ongoing customer-journey and conversion improvements
Partner Ecosystem
Lorna Jane's platform is powered by a best-in-class partner stack:
NetSuite: ERP and business operations
Nosto: Personalisation, search and merchandising
Starshipit: Shipping and fulfilment
Shift4: Gift cards and loyalty
Omni: Omnichannel retail operations
The Wishlist Company: Wishlist functionality
Yotpo: Customer reviews and UGC
Klaviyo: Email and SMS marketing
Insider: Live chat and customer engagement
The Ongoing Partnership
The relationship didn't end at launch. Convert Digital and Lorna Jane continue to work together in an ongoing optimisation partnership – fortnightly work-in-progress meetings, quarterly roadmap planning, and Convert Digital acting as a sounding board for new ideas rather than just an execution partner.
“Convert Digital brings that technical expertise that we expect from a Shopify Platinum Partner, which was one of the driving reasons for selecting Convert. It means that we know we're getting best in class and access to the best Shopify minds that there are. We can always brief a vendor to do whatever we want, but it doesn't mean we're making the right decisions. We're relying on that experience from Convert Digital.”
– Ethan Lynch, Enterprise Systems Manager, Lorna Jane
What's Next
The roadmap ahead is focused on making intentional improvements to the customer journey, building on the refreshed product pages, including further development of the “coming soon” experience and gift-with-purchase, plus ongoing checkout and post-purchase enhancements.
“We’re incredibly excited to continue our partnership with Lorna Jane and build on everything we’ve achieved together so far. With a clear roadmap ahead, we’re looking forward to bringing fresh thinking, technical expertise and a strategic lens to each opportunity - helping the team make intentional improvements that continue to elevate the customer experience.”
– Olivia Grant (Senior Account Manager, Convert Digital)
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 at hello@convertdigital.com.au to see how we can help.
