Better Website Examples: Right CMS + Right Partner

Some of the most powerful innovations today are coming from entrepreneurial organizations in highly technical industries. But being an expert in a complex field doesn’t mean you’re also an expert website developer.

And why would you want to be?

You lean on your website partner to provide the tools and capabilities that matter most to your organization—so you can move your business forward.

Refactored recently helped two ground-breaking organizations (literally) in the renewable energy space solve critical business needs by leveraging the Storyblok headless content management system (CMS).

Coincidentally, both clients operate lean websites that serve as direct portals to their brokers. And, not surprisingly, neither organization wanted the fuss and complexity of a complete website redesign. They just wanted their sites to work for the real estate acquisitions experts who were using them.

For both organizations, taking the next growth step depended on finding simple solutions to their immediate needs—and enabling agility for their future objectives.

Are you feeling stuck in your current CMS? For complex organizations—like member-based associations or technical B2B companies—a website change can feel overwhelming. Reduce your burden by starting with stakeholder alignment and a clear roadmap.

Agile Organizations Need an Agile Website CMS—and a Responsive Partner

When organizations are starting up, it’s easy to settle for a generic website that doesn’t actually meet business needs. When you think you just need a face for your operations, a simple, cookie-cutter, brochure-style site seems like a quick fix.

However, a lean team and a lean website doesn’t mean that operations behind the scenes are simple. Every organization has unique objectives, and key stakeholders may quickly realize that they need capabilities that are not built into their websites and tech stacks.

When you figure out that you need to build a better site, you may stop short. Ripping and replacing systems is the last thing you want.

Here’s where the right partner makes all the difference.

A truly experienced technical marketing agency approaches each project as unique. At Refactored, we don’t start with the tech. We start by understanding your business, your objectives, and how you work.

That approach totally changes the outcome. It means we can leverage our experience to find specific solutions and creative pathways to ensure your teams aren’t constantly fighting with tech or wasting time on elaborate workarounds.

Now your website and the tools behind it work for you.

Two Success Stories: A Better CMS for Better Website Experiences

Like many organizations at the startup stage, our renewable energy clients had put up basic websites to provide the initial visibility that they needed—and to create a place for interested customers to meet and contact them. The requirements were fairly simple. But the stakes, of course, were still high.

Very soon, they began to bump up against the limitations of those traditional, static websites. In many cases, lean websites are built on fixed templates in siloed CMS platforms. They offer just one way to set up a user experience, one way to collect visitor information, one version of a static message—and changing that basic format is often difficult and expensive.

However, modern headless CMS solutions are flexible and scalable by design. And our top headless CMS choice, Storyblok, goes above and beyond in the headless space. It provides intuitive features, like its Visual Editor, that are specifically aimed at empowering business users at the front end of communications. And backend integrations with existing systems are made seamless through Storyblok’s API-first architecture.

The resulting flexibility truly simplifies content management—for companies at startup and as they grow.

For our two renewable energy clients, the immediate focus was on what they needed right now. But both organizations are all about looking toward the future. So they came to us to get solutions that would also enable future agility.

Home page of DESRI, leveraging their new website CMS

DESRI: Empowering Visual Editing

For cutting-edge organizations, messaging and information can change quickly, and team members may need to make those updates in real time.

D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI) develops, owns, and operates renewable energy projects. Since wind and solar energy operations require land, DESRI’s purposefully lean website invites landowners and developers to sell their land for these projects.

DESRI had a hardcoded, React-based website that forced team members to work through developers for all changes. However, it quickly became apparent that their team needed a way to directly add and edit content.

The Refactored team created a simple and fast solution. We added Next.js to their existing website to enable an easy integration with the Storyblok API. The result was a best-practices-driven uplift that gives them Storyblok’s cutting-edge Visual Editor and Live Preview.

Now, their users can accomplish content management tasks directly—and stay focused on bringing renewable energy to the world.

Conversion page on the Activate Renewables website

Activate Renewables: Energizing Site Performance

For many emerging organizations, like our client Activate Renewables, capturing new connections is essential for sales, funding efforts, and expanding their influence.

As a growth-oriented renewable energy company, Activate Renewables needs the ability to quickly connect with and respond to landowners interested in monetizing real estate and royalty interests under their existing wind, solar, and energy storage facilities.

Their previous WordPress website was built with an outdated Elementor theme that caused significant code bloat, slow load times, and issues with mobile responsiveness. In addition, clunky form construction made it difficult for team members to collect essential contact information.

They wanted a simple uplift—not a full site redesign. So Refactored rebuilt their site in Storyblok, simplifying and eliminating bulky code construction and giving them control with Storyblok’s Visual Editor and Live Preview. Along the way, we applied basic best practices that modernized the site and dramatically improved site performance.

Now, they have a site that is fast, provides a clean user experience, and makes content management a non-issue for their lean acquisition team.

Why Storyblok?

For organizations at the cutting edge of emerging technologies, a lean team demands a hands-on approach.

Learn more about why we like Storyblok for projects of any size in our Buyer's Guide to Modern CMS.

What’s the Key to a “Better” Website? A CMS Partner Who Gets You

For both these organizations, making meaningful change came down to working with a partner who understood their key objectives. In addition, our technical experience enabled us to effectively customize site integrations and configurations that make a practical difference for their business users and their site visitors.

That kind of customization doesn’t happen automatically, even with the best technology solutions. You need that ideal combo—a great CMS and a great partner—to get a website that serves you and adapts as you do.

Are you looking for a better website partner?

Let’s talk. We’ll take the time to listen to what you need—and help you map your way forward.

Two Must-Haves for a Better Website: Right CMS + Right Partner