Modernizing a Public Website with Headless CMS and Agile Delivery

The client is a highly regulated enterprise organization operating in the financial services industry. Its public-facing website plays a critical role in customer communication, compliance, and brand trust. As part of a broader digital transformation initiative, the organization sought to replace a legacy content management platform with a modern, scalable solution capable of supporting future digital experiences across the business.

The client’s existing public website was built on a legacy CMS that made updates slow, complex, and risky. Content changes required significant technical effort, limiting the organization’s ability to respond quickly to business needs. Additionally, site performance, accessibility, and compliance requirements continued to increase in importance.

Key challenges included:

• A cumbersome legacy CMS that slowed content creation and publishing

• Limited flexibility to reuse content across other digital initiatives

• The need to significantly improve site speed, responsiveness, and user experience

• Strict regulatory and compliance requirements, including SOC2, GDPR/CCPA, and ADA accessibility

• The desire to establish a scalable architecture aligned with future digital programs

The client needed a partner to design and implement the technical solution while enabling internal teams to own and evolve the platform long term.

Connective partnered closely with the client’s technology, communications, and architecture teams to deliver a pragmatic modernization approach grounded in Agile delivery.

Key elements of the approach included:

• Designing and implementing a headless CMS architecture using Hygraph

• Building a modern, high-performance front end using Next.js and deploying via Vercel

• Establishing cloud-ready patterns aligned with the client’s AWS environment

• Integrating analytics and ensuring full regulatory compliance

• Providing hands-on training, mentorship, and knowledge transfer to internal teams

Rather than operating as a siloed vendor, Connective embedded with client teams, leveraging existing workstreams, wireframes, and compliance processes to minimize risk and accelerate delivery.

• A modern headless CMS implementation enabling faster, safer content updates

• A Next.js-based static website optimized for performance and accessibility

• Cloud-hosted infrastructure with standardized CI/CD and environment management

• Reusable components and templates aligned to the client’s design assets

• Enablement of an enterprise-wide content strategy to support future platforms

The solution was designed not just to replace the legacy system, but to serve as a foundation for broader digital transformation initiatives.

• Significantly improved speed and efficiency of content publishing

• Enhanced site performance, responsiveness, and accessibility

• Reduced dependency on engineering for routine content updates

• A scalable, compliant architecture aligned to future digital initiatives

• Internal teams enabled to own, extend, and support the platform independently

By combining modern headless architecture with Agile delivery and deep collaboration, Connective helped the client transform a legacy public website into a flexible, future-ready digital platform—while ensuring compliance, performance, and long-term ownership by internal teams.