The Client
LifeWave is a direct selling health technology company operating in several countries known for its wellness patches and supplements.
The Problem
LifeWave sought to redesign and redevelop their multi-market, multi-lingual website while implementing an enterprise-level content management system (CMS). Previously, LifeWave relied heavily on their development team for content updates, resulting in delays and inefficiencies. They required a CMS that would empower their content team to manage daily updates independently, without the need for developer intervention.
The revamped website needed to seamless integrate with the existing product catalog and back-office functionalities. Additionally, the new platform was required to meet accessibility standards and incorporate Google Analytics for enhanced tracking and performance insights.
The Solution
Sanity was selected as the ideal content management system (CMS) due to its 24/7 support, enterprise-level account management, and the ability to offer a live preview—an essential feature for LifeWave. An aggressive timeline meant that the preferred option of going with a new proposed tech stack that would facilitate future integrations with emerging technologies and reduce technical debt would not be possible. Also it was decided to keep the existing tech stack so that the learning curve for the dev team would not be too high.
The technology stack for the website included:
The LifeWave website utilized Exigo for product data management. Sanity was integrated with Exigo to enable users to incorporate product data seamlessly into various site elements, while also allowing the enrichment of this core data with additional images, descriptions, and other content.
The Project Delivery
The project was executed in a phased approach. Phase 1 focused on gathering functional and technical requirements and delivering a new demonstration homepage in time for LifeWave’s annual conference. Due to its distinct information architecture, this demonstration homepage was not intended for full integration into the existing site. Instead, it was hosted on a new subdomain, with links provided through promotional emails and the existing site, allowing users an early preview of the new website.
Given the differences in design and technology, visually integrating the demonstration homepage with the existing site would have been challenging and potentially confusing for users. To address this, the new homepage was clearly marked as a preview, distinct from the current site. This approach not only helped delineate the new site but also provided an opportunity to communicate to the audience that a new website was forthcoming, offering them a glimpse of its future look and feel.
Additionally, the new site was fully content-managed, enabling the business to understand and refine future content authoring processes before they were applied to the entire website.
Phase 2 involved the development and delivery of the remaining portions of the website.
The Sanity Implementation
Fallbacks
LifeWave required a content management structure that allowed content to be shared across multiple markets that shared the same language. 8W developed a hierarchy based on Market > Language, where each market could operate with one or more languages independently from other markets. However, if a specific market-language combination (referred to as Market A) wished to share content with another market-language combination (Market B), Market A could adopt a "fallback" approach to Market B. This meant that users accessing Market A would receive the same content as those in Market B.
This content-sharing strategy could be implemented either at the market level, where all content was shared, or at the page level, where only selected content was identical between markets. This approach eliminated the need for LifeWave to duplicate content across different markets, significantly reducing the ongoing maintenance required when updates were necessary.
User Roles and Users
Although LifeWave was operating at the Enterprise level, the existing Custom Roles did not offer the granular control necessary to meet the specific needs of their various markets. To address this, 8W developed a new role type that granted users edit permissions exclusively at the Document Type level, restricted to their respective market and language. This solution provided the precise level of access control LifeWave required for their content managers in different markets.
