Building a large corporate group website on WordPress.
On-brand design and future-proofed build are crucial for corporate sites
What did Lanas need from its website?
Lanas is a new global healthcare technology group built on the foundations of Clanwilliam Group. The website had to launch an entirely new brand without losing what the old one had built.
Lanas brings together established healthcare software and services businesses under one unified brand – operating across pharmacy, primary care, specialist practice, medical communications and care platforms. The model is built around acquiring, strengthening and scaling proven healthcare technology companies.
That is not a simple thing to explain on a website. The audiences are distinct: investors, acquisition targets, healthcare technology partners and potential employees. Each of them needs something different from the same site. Each of them will form a view of the organisation within seconds of landing on it.
The brief was to build a digital presence that matched the scale and ambition of the business – confident without being corporate, clear without being simplistic – and to do it in time for the group launch without throwing away the search equity the Clanwilliam domain had accumulated.
What the site needed to do:
- Launch a new global brand clearly and credibly from day one
- Explain a complex group structure to multiple distinct audiences simultaneously
- Protect existing Clanwilliam search equity during the transition
- Position Lanas as a credible acquisition partner for healthcare technology businesses
- Support recruitment at a senior level in a specialist market
- Build on a platform that could scale as the group grows through acquisition
- Migrate approximately 140 historic news articles without disrupting continuity
Our approach
Project overview
A brand launch project for a new international healthcare technology group. Full discovery, content strategy, site architecture, design, bespoke WordPress build and content migration – delivered to a fixed launch deadline with a design-to-build loop to maintain momentum.
Discovery and strategy
- Competitor research and keyword analysis to inform structure and content tone
- Full audit of the existing Clanwilliam site – mapping URLs to retain, consolidate or redirect
- Audience mapping across four distinct groups: investors, acquisition targets, technology partners, prospective employees
- Content and navigation strategy built around the six core pillars: Company, Products, Leadership, M&A, Culture, Careers
Design
- Full digital identity developed from initial visual references supplied by the client
- Strong typography, confident spacing and clear content hierarchy throughout
- GSAP scroll animations used for polish without distraction
- Flexible component-based layout system designed to accommodate future growth
WordPress build
Bespoke build from scratch on our own custom starter theme. Custom ACF content blocks give the Lanas team full control over pages, leadership profiles, M&A content and insights without developer involvement for day-to-day updates.
Custom post types keep structured content consistent and properly templated as the group grows. The architecture is built to accommodate new acquisitions, new regions and new content types without restructuring the site each time.
Content migration and SEO
Approximately 140 historic news articles migrated from the Clanwilliam site and integrated into the new Lanas content architecture. URLs audited and mapped to protect existing search visibility during the brand transition.
Technical SEO foundations built in throughout – clean markup, structured archives, metadata configuration and internal linking. The platform is ready for phase two SEO activity as the brand establishes traction in search.
Launching a new brand at scale?
If you are rebranding an established business, launching a new group entity, or building a platform that needs to grow as fast as the organisation behind it – we should talk.
Tell us what you are working with and we will tell you how we would approach it.
The results
This project was a brand new site, so we have no comparison data to share.
140+
Historic news articles migrated and integrated into the new site architecture
4
Distinct audience groups served by a single, coherent site structure
97/100
Google PageSpeed score on mobile and desktop at launch
6 pillars
Company, Products, Leadership, M&A, Culture and Careers – all clearly structured and independently navigable
Zero
Existing Clanwilliam search equity lost during the brand transition
Scalable
Platform built to grow with the group – new acquisitions, regions and content types add without restructuring
Technical details
WordPress theme
Built on our own bare-bones WordPress starter theme. No inherited styles, no third-party framework dependencies, no bloat. Before any design work goes in, we run the blank theme through Google PageSpeed Insights and aim for 100 out of 100 on both mobile and desktop. That discipline is what makes the performance scores possible.
Plugins
We keep third-party plugins to a minimum. This site uses ACF-powered content blocks edited in the Gutenberg editor. The default WordPress block library was disabled entirely – editors can only use the purpose-built blocks we created, which means every page is built consistently and on-brand regardless of who published it.
Custom post types
Custom post types built for leadership profiles, insights, news and M&A content – keeping each content type consistently templated with its own URL structure. As Lanas acquires new businesses or enters new markets, additional post types can be added without touching the core theme.
Animations
GSAP scroll animations used throughout – fade-ups, directional reveals and staggered entrance effects. The animations add polish and reinforce the sense of a modern, well-resourced organisation without slowing the site down or distracting from the content. Performance is preserved because the animation layer sits on top of a clean, lightweight build rather than fighting against a bloated one.
Why WordPress was the right platform for a group business built on acquisition.
Group businesses grow in unpredictable directions. Their websites need to be able to follow them.
Lanas is not a product company with a fixed feature set. It is an acquisitive group that will add new businesses, new sectors and potentially new regions over time. The website it launched with is not the website it will have in three years. New companies will come in. New leadership profiles will need adding. New M&A activity will need publishing. The content architecture needs to absorb all of that without a rebuild each time.
That is a different type of brief to a standard brochure site, and it requires a different type of thinking about the build. We used custom post types not just because they keep content consistent – though they do – but because they make the site genuinely extensible. Add a new business to the portfolio, add a post type for it. Add a new market. Add new leadership. None of it requires touching the core theme.
We also built the GSAP animation layer on top of a clean, performance-first codebase rather than into it. That distinction matters. Animations on a bloated theme slow the site down and become a maintenance liability. Animations on a lightweight bespoke build add polish without cost. At enterprise scale, that discipline is the difference between a site that keeps performing and one that gradually degrades.
Lanas launched with a site that reflects what the business is today and is structurally ready for what it will become. That is the right way to build for a group.
