How does a retail icon stay ahead in the digital age? For John Lewis & Partners, a cornerstone of British high-end retail, the answer lay in modernizing their digital infrastructure with Amplience to deliver exceptional customer and internal user experiences. Facing the constraints of a long-standing, heavily customized legacy content management system (CMS), John Lewis embarked on a journey to a composable commerce, with Amplience playing a pivotal role in their digital transformation.
The challenge: navigating the pitfalls of legacy systems
The legacy CMS, while reliable for 14 years, had become a bottleneck for John Lewis’ digital ambitions. Sam O’Neill, Group Product Lead for Digital Experience Platforms at John Lewis, highlighted the internal complexities and inefficient content operations, saying: “Content is emotive. Everyone wants to own it, but no one wants to own the problems it comes with.”
These internal struggles were taking place against a backdrop of rising consumer expectations, putting pressure on retailers to deliver engaging content — and fast.
For John Lewis, the limitations of their legacy system amplified these pressures, manifesting in several key areas:
Extended time-to-market: A two-week SLA for new content hindered agility.
Manual processes: The highly customized CMS required significant manual effort for routine content updates.
Design inconsistencies: The reliance on a WYSIWYG format led to subtle but noticeable inconsistencies in the user experience across different parts of their website.
Responsive design issues: Ensuring a seamless experience across a diverse range of devices and screen sizes was challenging.
Limited personalization capabilities: Delivering the increasingly expected personalized experiences was a resource-intensive and often impractical undertaking.
Inefficient omnichannel content reuse: The lack of an integrated system meant that reusing content across various channels required manual content duplication.
Siloed teams and disconnected strategies: Content strategy disconnects and siloed ownership across various teams (retail media, loyalty, creative, trading) further complicated efficient content production and delivery.
Lack of content supply chain visibility: The absence of an end-to-end view of their content processes made it difficult to identify and address bottlenecks.
Amplience’s headless CMS and AI-driven solutions were poised to address these pain points.
The transformation: a composable future
The move to composable commerce, powered by Dynamic Content, Amplience’s headless CMS, represents a significant shift for John Lewis. Opting for rapid Proofs of Concept (POCs) over a lengthy RFP, John Lewis tested Dynamic Content and its ability to integrate with their workflows. Hands-on demos and custom features showcased Amplience’s flexibility. The goal is to fully migrate the 14-year-old legacy CMS to Amplience within nine months, enabling a modern, agile content ecosystem.
Key priorities included:
Democratizing content creation: Amplience’s intuitive headless CMS empowers marketers and merchandisers to update content in real time, reducing reliance on developers and boosting reactivity.
Personalization and relevance: Dynamic Content enables faster testing and personalization, allowing John Lewis to deliver tailored experiences that resonate with customers.
Omnichannel efficiency: Content Hub, Amplience’s digital asset management (DAM) solution, enables the online trading team to easily locate, optimize and publish assets across all channels, moving away from reliance on graphic designers. Amplience’s “build once, deliver everywhere” model simplifies content reuse across channels, eliminating manual duplication.
Looking ahead, John Lewis plans to maximize Studios to enhance their buying guides, tapping into the deep product knowledge of their in-store partners to create valuable online content, augmenting human creativity to create compelling content.
Early wins and future potential
At an event with Deloitte Digital and Amplience on April 30, 2025, Sam O’Neill shared early successes:
Accelerated updates: Homepage updates are moving from a two-week SLA, to being delivered in just minutes.
Asset migration at scale: 9 million assets successfully migrated in just 3 months.
Improved KPIs: Initial A/B testing for stage one of the migration demonstrated an uplift in key customer metrics.
No-cost POC: Amplience’s risk-free POC cemented the partnership.
These results highlight Amplience’s composable commerce solutions in action.
Conclusion
John Lewis’ transition to composable commerce with Amplience proves their drive to innovate and prioritize customers. By overcoming legacy constraints with agility, automation, and personalization, they’re redefining retail excellence, delivering engaging experiences that ensure lasting relevance.
To find out more about how Amplience’s AI solutions can help you address challenges with content production at scale, get in touch with a member of our team today.