How Metagenics transformed its legacy tech stack to improve CX and grow revenue
How the vitamins brand is reaching a new group of customers with Shopify.
Metagenics is a global leader in naturally derived vitamins and supplements, with a 40-year history in the Australian market. The brand is part of the US-based Metagenics Group, which also owns the probiotics brand Inner Health and supplements brand Ethical Nutrients.
As a premium player in the wellness space, Metagenics targets customers who are highly engaged in their health. Traditionally, the brand has only been available by recommendation or prescription from a natural healthcare practitioner, a strategic decision that has benefits for practitioners, their patients and Metagenics.
“We know that patients get better health outcomes when they are seeing a practitioner because they’re on a protocol and the product is matched to them,” Suzie Young, Metagenics’ head of digital in Australia and New Zealand, explained. “There’s a commercial win-win, too, because patients tend to order more and have a higher lifetime value.”
However, data shows that only 4 per cent of Australians visit a natural healthcare practitioner, despite the strong and growing interest in the overall health and wellness category. For Metagenics, this seemed like a missed opportunity.
The business felt it was time to launch a direct-to-consumer (DTC) e-commerce site, enabling all Australians to shop its products, whilst promoting the benefits of connecting with healthcare professionals. At the same time, it wanted to improve the online experience for its existing practitioner customers and their patients.
Keeping up with changing expectations
While Metagenics’ B2B business model had served it well for many years, it knew it needed to evolve to compete in today’s fast-paced retail environment. This not only meant adding DTC functionality to its website, but also improving the user experience for its existing customers.
The brand’s website was fully custom, and it faced issues around speed and add-to-cart. “If you had a lot of SKUs in the cart, sometimes there would be time-out issues,” Young said.
The UI hadn’t been updated in a long time, so it was not a great intuitive experience.Suzie Young, Head of digital (ANZ), Metagenics
“The UI hadn’t been updated in a long time, so it was not a great intuitive experience.”
Because of this, Metagenics was keen to implement a low-code or no-code solution that the team could manage in-house: “We’re not a software business, we’re a vitamins and supplements business, and we want to focus on growth,” Young said.
The challenge was finding an out-of-the-box solution that could meet its complex needs. Metagenics has multiple customer types, including natural healthcare practitioners, patients, consumers and retailers, and they all have different needs and pricing and shipping rules.
After conducting a proof of concept with Shopify – first with the platform’s technical team and then with Overdose, a Shopify agency partner – the business was impressed by its flexibility and confident it was the right solution.
A tailored solution for complex needs
After deciding to implement Shopify, Metagenics worked with Overdose to integrate the right solutions to meet its specific business needs.
Metagenics used Microsoft Dynamics with Boomi middleware to deliver Shopify’s B2B capabilities, and launched Dotdigital to support targeted marketing by segment, enabling precise communication with both B2B and DTC customers. It also launched Yotpo to power its loyalty program and subscriptions.
For payments, it implemented Shopify’s checkout solution, Shop Pay. “It’s the highest converting checkout,” Young noted. It not only enables DTC transactions but also facilitates offline invoices for Metagenics’ B2B customers.
Finally, to make it easier for natural healthcare practitioners to recommend Metagenics products to their patients, the business worked with Overdose to build a custom affiliate program.
If you’re going to use Shopify, you don’t want to customise it too much because then you’re missing the whole point of the platform,Suzie Young, Head of digital (ANZ), Metagenics
However, improving the user experience for practitioners and patients was “a really important part of the solution” for Metagenics.
For the most part, the business found ways to work within the Shopify ecosystem by thinking creatively about app functionality and being open to changing its internal processes. For example, it repurposed a store locator tool to support its ‘find a practitioner’ service.
From approval to launch in six months
From start to finish, Metagenics’ implementation took six months, a rapid rollout that was made possible by the brand’s methodical approach to planning and project management.
Launching a DTC channel was quite a significant change for our business, and for our customers, so we treated it as a business transformation, not just an e-commerce transformation,Suzie Young, Head of digital ANZ, Metagenics
“We created a business project, we assigned a project manager, we created streams for tech, DTC, content and marketing, supply chain and commercial, internal communications and change management, and we ran it through an agile framework.”
Metagenics launched an MVP version of the platform in October 2024 and has continued to roll out additional features in the interim. Ensuring everyone within the business was on the same page in terms of the initial launch objectives and timeline was key.
“Because we had been sitting on this legacy stack and hadn’t moved forward for a long time, there were a lot of asks from departments throughout the business, so the big challenge for us was keeping the scope tight,” Young said.
“I think the way we conquered that was through the disciplined project management approach and the internal communications.”
POSITIVE RESULTS ACROSS THE BOARD
24% of consumers and patients have opted into subscriptions
Since launching Shopify six months ago, Metagenics has seen positive results across several key metrics.
“One of our big goals was to connect more consumers or prospective patients with our practitioners, and that’s going really, really well,” Young said.
The ‘find a practitioner’ tool is the third most-visited page on the website, and the business has received positive feedback from natural healthcare practitioners who have experienced an increase in new patients and leads.
“We’re also seeing that patients are ordering more than they did before. There’s been a really good uplift in revenue and AOV,” Young added.
While DTC is an entirely new channel for Metagenics, the uptake so far is strong.
“What we can see from the initial traffic and conversion rates is that there are a lot of people out there who know the brand, so the consumer channel is going really well,” Young said.
She noted that Metagenics’ subscription offering has been well-received, with 24 per cent of consumers and patients having signed up to receive recurring orders.
Implementing Shopify has also taken a lot of complexity out of the e-commerce team’s day-to-day work.
“Before, a lot of the bugs or issues with new features would have to be triaged through IT, whereas now the e-commerce team can step up and troubleshoot because it’s so simple from a user interface perspective,” Young said.
Riding the e-commerce wave
After building a thriving B2B business in the premium health and wellness category, Metagenics knew it needed to evolve to stay relevant in a shifting retail landscape.
Launching a DTC offering was the obvious move, but because the business catered to multiple types of customers with different needs, it was sceptical that an out-of-the-box solution could meet its requirements.
Since implementing Shopify in October 2024, Metagenics has not only benefitted from best-in-class e-commerce features for DTC customers but also tapped into integrations to optimise its B2B offering.
“We’re so thrilled to see the success and the takeup so far, and how well the revenue is performing online,” Young said.
When asked if she would recommend Shopify to other retailers, she said “absolutely”.
“Shopify is probably investing more in their platform than most other companies out there. The pace of innovation is super fast; every six months, they’re dropping new releases, and they have so much more on the roadmap,” she said. “You’re almost riding the wave with them.”
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