A marketing site for a private capital firm whose existing site looked like a template and read like one too. Replatformed to Next.js with GSAP-driven scroll choreography and a Sanity CMS the partner team could update without an engineer.
Brief
The firm was rebranding into a new asset class and the existing WordPress site couldn’t carry the visual ambition of the rebrand. Constraint: the new site had to be editable by the head of marketing without engineering involvement, and had to load fast enough that LP reviewers on hotel WiFi wouldn’t bounce.
Approach
Next.js static export, content in Sanity, GSAP for the scroll moments,
Lenis for the smoothing. We kept JavaScript under 90KB on the homepage by
locking GSAP to scroll-triggered timelines only — no idle animation loops,
no requestAnimationFrame cycles unless the user is actively scrolling.
Key decisions
Sanity over Contentful for the editorial surface. The firm’s marketing lead had used Sanity at a previous firm and the rich-text portable text format let us define five custom block types (case-study card, partner quote, risk disclaimer, regulated stat callout, single hero image) without writing a schema migration UI.
Scroll choreography is driven by a single GSAP ScrollTrigger pinned to the hero section. Three breakpoints, three completely different timelines. We did not try to make one timeline elegantly scale across breakpoints — the mobile experience deserves its own choreography rather than a degraded desktop one.
All long-form pages (positioning, team, approach) render as static HTML at build time. The only client-side JS is the scroll machinery and the mobile-nav toggle. Lighthouse hits 100/100/100/95 on a clean run.
Regulated stats display through a small component that pulls the
last-verified date from frontmatter and renders a Last verified [date]
caption below the stat. This unlocked compliance review without forcing
copy back through engineering on every quarterly update.
Outcome
Launched eight weeks from kickoff. The marketing lead has published every weekly update since launch without engineering involvement. Site weight dropped from 2.4MB to 380KB at first load while the visual ambition went up. Used in three subsequent LP meetings the firm has publicly acknowledged.
For your agency
White-label appropriate for: financial services marketing sites, regulated-industry brand sites, anywhere a partner team needs to publish without an engineer in the loop. The Sanity schemas and the GSAP timeline pattern transfer cleanly to the next firm in the vertical — we’ve shipped this approach as the spine for two subsequent agency engagements.