HEADLESS WORDPRESS
Reimagining a Critical
Digital Connection
Kanopi Studios leverages WP Engine Atlas to build a lightning-fast, user-centric website
for the Alameda County Community Food Bank.
Site:
Industry:
Community Food Services, Nonprofit
“In our work for ACCFB, mobile accessibility and overall performance were paramount concerns. Many of our users access the site on low bandwidth and limited data. Taking a headless approach with Atlas gives us the best of all worlds—a flexible front end that can grow and change with our client’s needs and gives our end users a fast, responsive experience.”
—Katherine White, Chief Technology Officer, Kanopi Studios
100%
Increase in Users/New Users
89%
Increase in Sessions
54%
Increase in Pageviews
The Client
The Alameda County Community Food Bank (ACCFB) is a nonprofit organization at the forefront of new approaches to ending hunger and poverty in California and the United States. In partnership with CalFresh, a California food benefits program, ACCFB’s Food Now program distributes millions of healthy meals annually.
Kanopi Studios is a woman-owned web design, development, and support agency dedicated to helping you create the strongest possible connections between your content and your audiences.
A WP Engine Strategic Agency Partner, Kanopi works with a diverse group of organizations that strive to create a better digital world, including the San Francisco Airport, the Global Brain Health Institute, the National Council for the Blind in Ireland, and more.
The Challenge
Refresh the online presence for ACCFB's Food Now program, making it easier for people to find and access healthy, nutritious food. Retain connection to existing CRM data while emphasizing site performance and mobile accessibility.
The Solution
A full-site redesign and rebuild led by Kanopi Studios, built with WP Engine Atlas for headless WordPress. The new architecture uses Faust.js, Next.js, Atlas Content Modeler, WPGraphQL, Kanopi Pack, Polylang, and a limited number of plugins to provide users with a faster user experience that’s easier to navigate.
Taking a phased approach and through continuous support, Kanopi and ACCFB continue to actively extend existing features and roll out new features and functionality.
The Results
One of the primary purposes of ACCFB’s Food Now program is to connect people with nearby food pantries quickly.
The food pantry locations come from a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, which had to remain the source of truth for those locations as Kanopi rebuilt the site.
When content is managed in many different services, a headless WordPress implementation allows a client to consume the APIs from these services without the need to re-platform. WP Engine Atlas provided Kanopi with the flexibility to do just that and rebuild the site while managing data from the existing CRM.
The site also has a large mobile user base and is accessed in low bandwidth areas, making performance and mobile accessibility essential requirements.
To fulfill these requirements, Kanopi immediately saw the core goals delivered with a headless WordPress instance, providing ACCFB with unparalleled performance and security.
“WP Engine Atlas provided Kanopi with the infrastructure to scaffold the project efficiently while delivering a secure and performant experience,” said Kanopi Studios WordPress Engineering Manager Shane Robinson.
Since launching the new site, the Kanopi and ACCFB teams have seen impressive improvements across the board—from exceptional Core Web Vitals metrics to better internal workflows.
“From a performance perspective, the site loads incredibly fast, and that underpins many of the valuable UX improvements we made,” Robinson said. “It combines seamless navigation with rapid page speed.”
This combination has translated into skyrocketing engagement rates for the new Food Now site.
In addition to a 100% increase in users (including new users), the new site has also seen an 89% increase in sessions as well as a 54% increase in page views, offering strong validation for the new navigation and other user-first design choices provided by the Kanopi teams.
“In our work for ACCFB, mobile accessibility and overall performance were paramount concerns as many of our users access the site on low bandwidth and limited data,” said Kanopi Studios Chief Technology Officer Katherine White.
“Taking a headless approach with Atlas gives us the best of all worlds—a flexible front end that can grow and change with our client’s needs and gives our end users a fast, responsive experience.”
Radically Faster Sites
Build, deploy, and manage headless websites with the power of WordPress and the best of modern web development. See why leading publishers, B2B software companies, and growing eCommerce stores are all doing more with WP Engine Atlas.