Chemist Warehouse SEO Case Study
How we delivered zero disruption to organic revenue during an 18-month Commercetools transformation, then drove sustained growth across a three-brand pharmacy network.
- 75% organic traffic growth
- 40% higher conversion rate year on year
- 13% session growth year on year
- 27% increase in orders
Chemist Warehouse is Australia's largest discount pharmacy chain, operating alongside sister brands Amcal and Discount Drug Stores. Together they form one of the country's largest pharmacy networks, with more than 500 stores.
80% of Australians live within 5km of a Chemist Warehouse. Online is the front door to that footprint, so any drop in search visibility flows straight through to revenue.
The Challenge
For over 15 years the ecommerce platform ran on Kentico, with customisation layered on to keep it going. It had become slow to update and hard to scale at peak. On Black Friday 2024, the site went down during the year's biggest sales event.
The business committed to a full rebuild: an 18-month move to a composable commerce stack led by Convert Digital, with commercetools at the core.
For SEO, the risk was obvious. A migration this size touches thousands of SKUs and hundreds of categories. Get it wrong and organic revenue takes the hit. Amcal and Discount Drug Stores added another layer. Both had lost visibility in earlier platform changes and needed rebuilding from stronger foundations.
“Chemist Warehouse wasn't just a replatforming project - it was a shared commitment to building the right foundation for the next 15 years of digital retail. Every decision was grounded in evidence, collaboration, and long-term thinking.”
Our Role: SEO Built In From Day One
Large migrations fail when SEO is treated as an afterthought. Composable architecture means more moving parts, and more places for technical SEO to fall through the gaps between systems.
We embedded into the project from the start, not at the end. That meant sitting inside Convert Digital's build across architecture planning, URL structure, content migration, staging tests, and intensive post-launch monitoring. Weekly syncs with Convert and Chemist Warehouse's internal team meant issues were caught in development, not after go-live.
The result: rankings held, and we avoided the post-migration traffic drop that hits most enterprise replatforms.
The Tech Stack
The new platform runs on a best-in-class composable stack. Each component needed specific SEO consideration: how search pages are crawled and indexed, how content renders for search engines, and how the headless frontend handles canonicals, hreflang, and structured data.
- commercetools: headless commerce engine
- Contentful: content management
- Algolia: search and product discovery
- Akeneo: product information management
- Netlify: frontend hosting
- Okta/Auth0: identity and security
Our role was making sure the SEO layer worked across all of it.
Key Features & Partner Ecosystem
The platform pairs a custom frontend with a composable backend, integrated across 10+ microservices and 60+ external systems, with 200+ dataflows moving in and out of the site.
Key Features At A Glance:
- Custom frontend built on Contentful, powered by commercetools
- Bespoke checkout built for pharmaceutical retail
- Purpose-built patient profile and prescription system
- Integrated with 10+ microservices
- Connected to 60+ external systems
- 200+ dataflows managed in and out of the site
- Multi-tenant architecture built for future brands and regions
- SEO embedded across the full stack
Partner Ecosystem
A composable build is only as strong as the ecosystem around it. Each technology was chosen for what it does best.
- commercetools - headless commerce engine
- Contentful - content management
- Algolia - search and product discovery
- Akeneo - product information management
- Netlify - frontend hosting
- Convert Digital - platform build and delivery
“commercetools allows us to handle the complexity of healthcare retail while keeping the customer experience simple and seamless. We can launch promotions, manage inventory and serve customers at scale without compromise. The modern architecture enables rapid innovation and has become the foundation for both growth and agility across our business.”
AI Search Readiness
Migration Phase (Then)
We embedded SEO into every stage of the build: architecture, URL structure, content migration, staging tests, and post-launch monitoring. The focus was risk elimination. Hold rankings through the transition while laying technical foundations for growth.
Growth Phase (Now)
With migration done, we shifted to aggressive optimisation.
For Chemist Warehouse: category content development, internal linking, local landing pages targeting suburb-level searches, and Google Business Profile optimisation across 500+ locations.
For Amcal and Discount Drug Stores: technical remediation, keyword mapping, and building local search presence from stronger foundations.
With Google's AI Mode now live in Australia and ChatGPT referral traffic already appearing in Chemist Warehouse's revenue breakdown, we're positioning the brand for the next evolution of search.
Current state
Chemist Warehouse is well-positioned for AI-driven discovery. Strong brand visibility means AI systems already reference CW in pharmacy-related queries, and the server-side rendered Commercetools architecture ensures AI crawlers can access and understand content effectively.
What we're doing
We're tracking ChatGPT as a distinct traffic and revenue source, monitoring Google AI Mode impact as adoption grows, and identifying long-tail content opportunities where AI search excels. Queries like "which perfume for my grandma" where conversational, helpful content wins. We're also exploring AI Max (paid placements within AI answers) as a potential channel.
This is strategic positioning rather than reactive optimisation. AI search is still emerging, but the brands that build for it now will capture value as adoption scales
Partnership Approach
This project required close collaboration across multiple specialist partners. Convert Digital led the platform build, delivering a custom frontend, bespoke checkout, and patient profile system. We embedded directly into this ecosystem, working alongside Convert's development team and Chemist Warehouse's internal stakeholders to ensure SEO requirements were built into every technical decision.
Direct relationships with both the platform partner and the internal team, from day one, are what prevented the typical post-migration traffic drop.
Read the full story from both partners:
Big platform moves don't have to hurt
We've managed some of Australia's largest ecommerce platform transitions, including Chemist Warehouse's 18-month commercetools build. No traffic drops. No ranking losses. Just a stable foundation for long-term growth.
Get in touch and we'll talk through your site, your stack, and what a low-risk migration looks like when SEO is built in from day one.
