Building Enterprise Level Website: Lessons on branding perfections
Deep dive into the architecture and engineering decisions behind building professional brand site for loyalty-as-a-service platforms that power rewards programs for global brands like American Express, HSBC, and Marriott.
Featured Project
When we partnered with Ascenda to build their enterprise website, we knew we were embarking on a project that would push the boundaries of what a corporate website could be. Ascenda powers loyalty programs for some of the world's most recognizable brands—American Express, HSBC, Uber, Marriott—and their website needed to reflect that level of excellence.
The Challenge: Enterprise-Grade with Startup Speed
Ascenda came to us with ambitious requirements. They needed a website that could:
- Heavy customization and interactivity with pixel perfect design precision
- Empower marketing teams to make content changes without developer involvement
- Showcase complex products in an engaging, accessible way
- Maintain brand consistency across hundreds of pages
- Support multiple languages and regional variations
The existing website was built on a legacy CMS that had become a bottleneck. Content updates took weeks, design changes required full development cycles, and performance was suffering.
Our Approach: Next.js + Prismic CMS
After evaluating several technology stacks, we recommended a modern JAMstack architecture built on Next.js with Prismic as the headless CMS.
Why Next.js?
Next.js provided the perfect foundation for an enterprise website:
- Static Site Generation (SSG) for blazing-fast page loads
- Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) for real-time content updates
- Image optimization out of the box
- Edge caching through Vercel's global CDN
Why Prismic?
Prismic's Slice Machine architecture aligned perfectly with our component-driven approach:
- Reusable content slices that marketing could mix and match
- Preview functionality for reviewing changes before publishing
- Scheduling for planned content releases
- Multi-language support built-in
Building the Component Library
We developed a comprehensive library of reusable React components, each designed to be both visually stunning and highly performant.
Professional Design Components
Every component was built with attention to detail:
- Hero sections with dynamic backgrounds and animated text
- Feature grids with hover interactions and micro-animations
- Testimonial carousels with smooth transitions
- Data visualization components for showing loyalty program metrics
Lottie Animations
One of the standout features was our integration of Lottie animations throughout the site. These lightweight, vector-based animations added life to the pages without sacrificing performance.
"The animations bring our platform's capabilities to life in a way that static images never could. Visitors immediately understand the value we provide." — Ascenda Marketing Team
The Careers Page: A Special Challenge
Ascenda's careers page required special attention. They wanted something that would attract top talent while showcasing their culture and values.
We built a custom animated experience featuring:
- Interactive timeline showing company milestones
- Department exploration with smooth transitions between teams
- Employee testimonials with video integration
- Real-time job listings pulled from their ATS
The page became one of the highest-performing in terms of engagement metrics.
Terms & Conditions: Solving the Content Pipeline
One unexpected challenge was the legal content. Ascenda's legal team worked in Microsoft Word, but the website needed clean, styled HTML.
We solved this with an innovative Writage integration:
- Legal team writes/edits documents in Word
- Documents are exported to Markdown via Writage
- Our build pipeline processes the Markdown
- Content appears on the website with consistent styling
This eliminated the copy-paste errors and formatting inconsistencies that had plagued previous workflows.
Results and Impact
The new website launched to immediate positive feedback:
| Metric | Before | After | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Page Load Time | 4.2s | 1.1s | 74% faster |
| Components Reuse | 4% | 40% | 10x higher |
| Content Update Time | 2 weeks | 2 hours | 98% faster |
| Mobile Bounce Rate | 68% | 34% | 50% lower |
Key Takeaways
Building Ascenda's website reinforced several principles we apply to all our projects:
- Content architecture is as important as code architecture — Investing time in the CMS structure pays dividends in maintainability
- Performance is a feature — Users expect sub-second experiences; anything less is a competitive disadvantage
- Empower content teams — The best technology is invisible to content creators
- Animation with purpose — Every motion should communicate something, not just decorate
The Ascenda project exemplifies what's possible when enterprise requirements meet modern web development practices. The result is a website that serves both the brand's ambitious goals and its users' expectations for fast, engaging experiences.
