Withings on Shopify Plus: balancing hardware, subscriptions, and international growth
Selling a smart scale or watch in 14 languages is one thing.
Pairing it with a subscription, managing renewal logic, handling pre-orders across multiple markets, and connecting it all to the brand's information system is quite another.
That was the entire challenge of the e-commerce redesign for Withings, the French pioneer in connected health.
With Shopify Plus, the Axome team designed an architecture capable of uniting the brand's physical products, digital services, and the numerous complexities of its international expansion into a single experience.
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The challenge: fitting a complex model into a simple experience
At Withings, the customer journey doesn't end with the purchase of a product.
Watches, scales, and other connected devices are part of a broader ecosystem, notably with Withings+, the brand's subscription service that provides access to advanced health tracking features.
The redesign therefore had to address several challenges simultaneously:
- integrating subscription logic directly into product journeys;
- connecting Shopify to Withings' information system;
- managing product launches and pre-orders;
- deploying the experience across multiple markets and in 14 languages;
- maintain the specific commercial and tax requirements for each region;
- give teams enough autonomy to update the site on a daily basis.
The goal was clear: absorb this complexity on the architecture side without burdening the user.
A Shopify Plus architecture connected to the Withings IS
Shopify Plus serves as the e-commerce foundation for the new platform, but a significant part of the project takes place behind the interface.
Axome developed the necessary connections between Shopify and Withings' internal tools to orchestrate the various flows related to products, orders, services, and logistics.
This architecture allows Shopify to integrate into the brand's existing ecosystem rather than operating as an isolated platform.
A vital challenge for a company like Withings, where physical products and digital services are closely linked.
Withings+: integrating subscriptions into the product journey
This is one of the project's main unique features.
Withings sells connected devices, but also Withings+, a service providing access to additional health data tracking and analysis features.
It was therefore necessary to move beyond the classic "one product = one purchase" e-commerce model.
Axome worked on a mechanism to seamlessly associate the purchase of a device with a subscription sign-up.
Certain situations also require more advanced logic: for example, purchasing a product may impact an existing subscription or service.
These various scenarios were integrated directly into the journey to keep the user experience simple, despite much more complex mechanics in the background.
Anticipating launches through pre-orders
In a sector driven by innovation and new product launches, the platform also needed to allow Withings to easily activate pre-order phases.
Dedicated workflows were therefore integrated to market new products before they are actually available, while maintaining proper management of orders and associated information within the Withings ecosystem.
This setup allows teams to support key commercial periods without having to rebuild a specific workflow for every launch.
Deploying the same experience in 14 languages
Another major challenge: international expansion.
The Withings platform serves numerous markets, each with its own language, content, and sometimes regulatory or tax requirements.
Configuring Shopify Markets makes it possible to adapt the experience by region and manage the specificities of certain markets, particularly in the United States.
In total, the site is deployed in 14 languages.
But translating a site like Withings is not just about translating pages.
Product pages contain precise technical vocabulary, content relies on numerous dynamic fields and data, and certain terms must remain consistent from one market to another.
Reversia for industrializing translation
To manage this complexity, Axome integrated Reversia into Withings' Shopify ecosystem.
The solution allows for the translation of the site's various content levels, including product pages, metadata, and dynamic content used in Shopify.
A glossary also helps standardize the translation of Withings-specific terms: industry vocabulary, feature names, technical specifications, or elements that simply should not be translated.
The goal is therefore not just to go faster, but to maintain consistent terminology and tone across the site's 14 languages.
More technical complexity, but more autonomy for the teams
One of the project's paradoxes lay right there: building a more advanced architecture while making its day-to-day operation simpler.
Axome therefore developed a set of Shopify sections and components that are reusable and configurable directly from the theme editor.
Banners, editorial blocks, storytelling content, comparison tools, or product highlights can thus be used and rearranged by the teams according to their needs.
This approach allows Withings to evolve its pages and drive its key commercial campaigns without systematically relying on custom development.
UX designed to simplify decision-making
This logic of simplification also extends to the user side.
Rather than organizing the catalog solely by product category, Withings allows users to explore the offering by health goal : heart, sleep, nutrition, or muscle mass.
Dedicated comparison tools for watches and scales then make it easy to understand the differences between products.
Reassurance elements—such as warranties, returns, reviews, and studies—also support the journey right up to the point of purchase.
Finally, a dedicated space for Withings Health Solutions allows the brand to simultaneously address healthcare professionals, researchers, and remote monitoring stakeholders.
Conclusion
The Withings redesign highlights a challenge increasingly common in Shopify Plus projects: the difficulty lies not necessarily in what the user sees, but in everything that must function behind the scenes.
Subscriptions, physical products, digital services, pre-orders, proprietary IT systems, 14 languages, and market-specific constraints must all coexist without complicating the shopping experience.
This is precisely the role of the architecture implemented by Axome: to make Shopify Plus the meeting point for these various challenges, while providing the Withings teams with a platform flexible enough to continue evolving.
Do you also have a complex e-commerce model to scale on Shopify Plus?
Discuss your project with the Axome team.
