The opportunity

The Athlete’s Foot is one of the world’s leading footwear retailers, with a strong in-store reputation built around expert fit advice and personalised service.

Online, however, the platform had fallen behind. The opportunity was to bring that same expert, personalised experience online, unifying the in-store and digital journey so customers felt just as understood at checkout as they did in store.

What began as a request to improve site speed evolved into a full platform makeover, rebuilding the digital commerce foundation to support performance, integration, and scale across the entire business.

The challenge

Three core issues were limiting growth:

Legacy architecture slowed delivery and increased risk:

Custom workarounds had accumulated over time, making changes slow and difficult to safely deploy.

Disconnected systems reduced visibility and efficiency:

ERP, inventory, order management, and customer systems were fragmented, creating operational friction.

The customer experience was not meeting modern expectations:

Product discovery and checkout lacked the speed, confidence, and simplicity expected in a high-volume retail environment.

What we did

We rebuilt the platform on Adobe Commerce with a modular, performance-focused architecture designed to unify experience, commerce, and operations.

Experience layer:

A React-based frontend replaced the legacy stack, delivering a fast, mobile-optimised shopping experience across all devices. Checkout was streamlined with Apple Pay, PayPal, and Afterpay integrated to reduce purchase friction.

Commerce & platform layer:

A unified GraphQL API and service mesh layer simplified integrations and reduced frontend complexity, improving scalability and long-term maintainability.

Systems & integration layer:

The website project ran in parallel while TAF’s ERP was migrated from ERPLY to AP21, integrated with modern, scalable, real-time services to unify orders, inventory, and customer data across the business. Loyalty, search, reviews, and gift cards were connected into a single ecosystem.

Build highlights

Shoe Finder

A guided fit recommendation experience that replicates in-store expertise online. It helps customers select the right shoes based on their needs and behaviour, contributing to the +26% conversion and +$10 AOV improvements.

TrueFit

Size confidence tool integrated at the product level, reducing hesitation and improving purchase certainty.

Richer product discovery through smarter filtering

Footwear decisions are nuanced. The new PLP introduces a full suite of technical filters: heel-to-toe drop, cushioning, stack height, weight, best use, and age group. Colour and width variants are now stitched and clearly surfaced on both PLP and PDP, removing the friction of navigating between separate product pages to find the right fit.

Loyalty Integration

Customers can both earn and redeem Qantas Points directly at checkout, embedding rewards into the purchase journey.

Express checkout

Apple Pay, PayPal, and Afterpay streamline payment, reducing friction at the most critical conversion point.

Internal efficiency is built into the platform

Store opening hours now pull automatically from Google, eliminating the need to manually update two systems. Streamlined content templates give marketing teams the tools to build and publish new landing pages independently, without relying on development resources for every campaign.

The result

The improvements showed up across every layer of the business, from how fast pages load to how confidently the team can operate day to day.

21%   Faster average page load speed

66%  Less time blocking user input during load

96%  Reduction in layout shift during load

65%  Faster first visible element

26% Conversion uplift

Additional outcomes

• Rock solid capacity during peak trading events, including Afterpay Day and Black Friday, with no performance degradation

• Optimised single-page checkout, reducing friction at the most critical moment

• Real-time data sync across customer profiles, orders, and inventory

• Reduced reliance on manual workarounds and custom maintenance overhead

• A scalable, modular foundation ready to support omnichannel growth

• More intuitive loyalty and rewards experience for customers

Key takeaways

#1 Discovery shapes everything that follows

The brief started with speed. Discovery revealed a deeper architectural problem. Getting that right first meant every other improvement had a solid foundation to build on.

#2 The in-store experience can be translated digitally

Shoe Finder and TrueFit weren't cosmetic additions. They translated The Athlete's Foot's core service proposition into a digital interaction, and the metrics reflect that.

#3 Performance is a commercial lever

Every load time improvement is a customer experience improvement. The performance gains here translated directly into measurable commercial outcomes.

#4 Internal efficiency is part of the platform

A unified integration layer changes what's possible. Connecting ERP, loyalty, search, and payments into one coherent system doesn't just reduce complexity. It gives every team, from marketing to operations, the real-time visibility they need to move faster.