From Kickoff to Launch in 31 Days: A B2B Replatform Case Study

A full design, build, and CMS replatform—shipped in 31 days, one day ahead of a hard deadline.

The Situation

A leading B2B UX research firm—trusted by some of the biggest brands in the world—had a problem that will sound familiar to a lot of services companies: their marketing website no longer matched their reputation.

Built on an aging HubSpot instance, the site felt antiquated. It lacked the performance, the motion, and the dynamic presence you'd expect from a company whose entire business is understanding great user experiences. They needed a full replatform: new design, new technology, new CMS.

And this wasn't a "when you get around to it" project. The deadline was non-negotiable. Critical banker meetings were on the calendar, and the company was sponsoring a major industry event weeks later. The new site had to be live, polished, and representing the brand at its best.

On top of the timeline pressure, the client had a massive content library—192 insights articles and 58 case studies—that needed to be preserved and migrated. This wasn't a greenfield build. It was a full replatform with real content at stake.

The client came to FM with useful starting assets: a clearly articulated set of brand guidelines and wireframes from a previous agency. What they needed was a team that could take those inputs and ship a production website in roughly five weeks.

The Approach

FM assigned a two-person core team to the build: one senior designer and one senior developer. The technology stack was modern and deliberately chosen for speed and long-term maintainability: Payload CMS for content management, React and Next.js for the frontend, Tailwind CSS for styling, and Vercel for hosting, where performance is a first-class citizen via a global CDN.

Development was Claude Code–accelerated, supported by a library of custom skills and plugins that FM actively maintains to keep output quality consistently high.

Then came the first unconventional decision, and the biggest one: FM skipped Figma.

Rather than spending weeks cycling through static design comps, the team collapsed design and development into a single parallel workflow. On day one, the developer converted the full set of wireframes into a clickable prototype, working entirely in code. Not a throwaway prototype in a design tool—the actual beginnings of the production site. While the developer was building structure, the designer was deep in the brand guidelines, absorbing the visual language, the philosophy, and the intent behind every decision.

Then the two of them started working together in real time. The designer directed the visual design while the developer implemented it live, in the browser, on the actual codebase. No handoff. No redlines. No "developer interpretation" of a static comp. The design was born in the medium it would live in.

For the designer, this was a first. The experience changed his perspective on what's possible when design and engineering move as a single unit rather than a sequential pipeline.

Four days after kickoff, FM had a working homepage prototype. Not a wireframe. Not a mood board. A live, responsive page with the brand fully realized, rich motion design, and a complete component library—ready for client review.

A Living Brand Experience

The client had a clear vision for what the site should feel like. They described it as a "living brand experience" built on "intentional storytelling through motion." The animation language was guided by a central concept: things coming together—a visual metaphor that resonated deeply with their core brand story.

FM leaned into it. The site is motion-forward, with fluid, tactile interactions that give the experience a sense of life and intentionality. Navigation was simplified, removing complex dropdowns in favor of letting the pages themselves do the explanatory work.

A significant design pivot happened mid-project. The client's design lead pushed for a typography-forward direction, advocating to treat copy as a design element rather than filling space with imagery. Their CEO reinforced this by making the executive call to eliminate all stock photography from the site for the MVP launch. The team would rely on high-end typography and authentic team photos to reflect the brand's maturity and credibility.

It was a bold move on a tight timeline, and it made the site stronger. The result feels honest and confident in a way that stock-photo-heavy B2B sites rarely do.

The Rhythm

FM established a weekly demo cadence. Each week, the team would design and build multiple new sections of the site using the same collapsed workflow, then present the progress live. After the second demo, the client's acting CMO noted that the velocity between the first two check-ins had already exceeded expectations—validating the choice of a headless architecture and AI-augmented workflow for speed.

Client feedback was incorporated in near real-time, keeping the project tight and aligned without the overhead of lengthy review cycles.

Behind the scenes, FM was simultaneously handling the less visible but equally critical work:

Technical due diligence on the hosting environment
Security review with the client's internal security team
Infrastructure procurement
A 301 redirect strategy for over 250 migrated content assets
Integrations with HubSpot (direct API for forms), BambooHR, PostHog, and Demandbase

One small but telling detail: FM built an auto-redirect system directly into Payload CMS that automatically disables a redirect once the corresponding article is published. It's the kind of operational refinement that saves hours of manual work over time—and signals that FM was thinking about long-term maintenance, not just hitting a launch date.

The Hard Part Nobody Talks About

Around the midpoint, the team hit what you could call perfection paralysis. With the site coming together so quickly and looking so good, there was a natural temptation to keep polishing—to push every page to its final state before launch.

A mid-project check-in became the critical alignment moment. The team collectively agreed that the site could iterate post-launch, and that hitting the hard deadline with a strong MVP was more important than shipping perfection on day one.

This is a lesson that matters for any B2B services company considering a replatform: the willingness to ship, learn, and iterate is what separates teams that launch from teams that stay stuck in revision cycles.

The Result

The site went live one day ahead of the critical banker meeting deadline.

By the numbers:

Kickoff to MVP: 31 days
Prototype lead time: 4 days
Content migrated: 400+ assets
Tech stack: Payload CMS, Next.js, Vercel, Tailwind CSS
Integrations: HubSpot (Direct API), BambooHR, PostHog, Demandbase

The full Payload CMS was stood up and functional at launch—something FM had originally scoped as a future phase. Subsequent phases focused on refining the CMS authoring and publishing workflow, full CMS training for the client team, the careers page integration with BambooHR, and continued content migration.

Why It Worked

A collapsed design-development workflow. By eliminating the traditional handoff between design and engineering, FM removed the single biggest source of delay and fidelity loss in web projects. The designer and developer worked as a unit, making decisions together in the medium that mattered: the live product.

AI-augmented development. Claude Code, backed by FM's maintained library of custom skills and plugins, dramatically accelerated the build without sacrificing quality. This isn't about generating throwaway code. It's about a senior developer using AI tooling to operate at a pace that would otherwise require a much larger team.

A senior team model. FM doesn't staff projects with layers of junior resources overseen by a single senior lead. Both team members were senior practitioners. No ramp-up time, no quality gap to manage, and no communication overhead from a bloated team structure. Two experienced people, working in lockstep, moved faster than a team of ten.

A client willing to move. The client's leadership made fast, decisive calls throughout the project—the stock photography pivot, the navigation simplification, the agreement to ship an MVP and iterate. These decisions kept the project on track. Speed is a two-way street, and they held up their end.

For B2B Services Companies Considering a Replatform

If your marketing website is stuck on a platform that's holding you back—whether that's HubSpot, WordPress, or something else entirely—this is what's possible when you work with a team built for speed and quality.

You don't need a six-month engagement. You don't need a 30-slide strategy deck before anyone writes a line of code. You need a small, senior team with the right tools and the right process, and a willingness to move at the pace the work actually demands.

That's what FM builds for.

Ready to Replatform?

If you're ready to move off a platform that's holding your brand back, FM can help you ship a modern, motion-forward marketing site on a timeline you'll actually hit.

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