Lakeland Health Manages and Updates 30+ Microsites with Sitefinity Headless CMS

Spectrum Health Lakeland is a leading provider of health services in southwest Michigan, serving 80% of the region’s 140,000 people. While Lakeland is known for its excellence in service, its website did not live up to this reputation.

Lakeland’s proprietary-built CMS hindered both the user experience and integration possibilities with critical third-party systems. To provide better digital experiences, Lakeland needed a new CMS that could set the foundation for success both now and in the future.

Given the constraints of the proprietary platform, Lakeland wanted a headless CMS that could ease content delivery and provide more openness for integrating different services. Developed from inception with a decoupled architecture and robust APIs, Progress® Sitefinity™ provided the flexibility the organization was looking for.

Working with Sitefinity partner Enqbator, the Lakeland website went from conception to launch in record time. The Lakeland team was heavily involved in refreshing and repurposing the content, while Enqbator re-platformed the site and built many of the site’s new modules and features.

“Sitefinity is not only open, it’s also efficient in the way it’s handled,” explained Sujal Raju, President and CEO, Enqbator. “The APIs help us create sites that are headless and quickly repurpose content in other places where it’s needed.”

Sitefinity’s headless capabilities empower Lakeland to be more agile. Through a single interface, the digital team can leverage one true data source to simply edit and deploy content across the board. This enables Lakeland to update content easily across all 32 of Lakeland’s different microsites.

Sitefinity had a big impact for Lakeland. Sitefinity’s ease of use, combined with its headless capabilities, has enabled the organization to significantly improve workflow processes and operational efficiency.

“A good example is the physician directory information,”explained Matthew Shine, Lead Digital Marketing Developer, Spectrum Health Lakeland. “Before Sitefinity, physician information had to be entered four times throughout our system. Now, we pull information directly from our software, which eliminates duplication of effort and improves accuracy.”

Beyond that, the new site has seen a dramatic growth in mobile visitors, which was one of the major goals of the relaunch. While the results differ between the various microsites, 60-70% of traffic now originates from mobile.

“Sitefinity brought us to the next level,” said Megan Yore, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Lakeland. “Open APIs have allowed us to add so many new features for our users, and the burden to update content is being shifted from development to the stakeholders.”

With expectations for digital experiences on the rise, Lakeland is always looking for ways to improve the patient journey. Sitefinity plays a critical role in achieving this goal, enabling Lakeland to create everything from health risk assessment tools to new video modules.