Headless CMS case study · Coach education & leadership
A Headless CMS Website Build for a Global Coaching & Leadership Institute
IECL is one of the most established coaching institutions in the world: 25+ years, 10,000+ certified coaches, an enterprise and government client base. The brand was world-class; the website had fallen behind. We rebuilt it end to end on a headless stack, from content model to front end.
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Core Web Vitals · real-user data (CrUX)
Real users get a site that passes Core Web Vitals
1.4s
Largest Contentful Paint
129ms
Interaction to Next Paint
0.07
Cumulative Layout Shift
Passed
Core Web Vitals assessment
The client
Meet IECL
The Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership has professionalised organisational coaching since 1999. They deliver ICF-accredited coach education (Level 1 / ACC, Level 2 / PCC, and advanced team coaching), one-to-one and team coaching from a 100+ coach network, and bespoke leadership programs for enterprise and government clients.
Sector
Coach education & leadership
Reach
Australia · APAC · US
Scale
25+ years, 10,000+ coaches
CMS
DatoCMS (headless)
The brief
A world-class brand on a website that couldn't keep up.
IECL's content had outgrown its old platform. Courses, coaches, events, and a large knowledge bank all needed to be published, localized, and found in search, but every change was slow, and the site's speed and structure were working against organic discovery. They wanted a rebuild that put the content team in control and stood up to Core Web Vitals.
Where the old site fell short
What we set out to fix
- Publishing changes meant developer involvement and slow turnarounds
- Page weight and layout shift were hurting the experience and Core Web Vitals
- A multi-region audience (AU, HK, SG, US) had no proper localized content model
- Courses, coaches, and articles lacked the structured data search engines reward
- The knowledge bank was hard to grow and merchandise
- No clean separation between content and presentation
What we built
A headless build, from content model to front end.
We modelled IECL's content in DatoCMS (courses, coaches, events, articles, and reusable page sections), then built a Next.js front end that renders it statically and revalidates on publish. The content team now ships changes themselves; the site stays fast because pages are pre-rendered and served from the edge.
Legacy site vs the headless rebuild
Area
Current
What we changed
Publishing
Developer ticket, then a redeploy
Editors publish in DatoCMS; pages revalidate automatically
Performance
Heavy pages, layout shift, slow paint
Static-first SSG + ISR, optimized images, engineered for CWV
Content model
Page-bound, hard to reuse
Structured models (courses, coaches, articles) with reusable blocks
Localization
One region, bolted-on
Locale-aware content model for AU / APAC / US audiences
SEO
Thin metadata, no schema
Per-page metadata, structured data, clean canonical + sitemap
Publishing
Current
Developer ticket, then a redeploy
What we changed
Editors publish in DatoCMS; pages revalidate automatically
Performance
Current
Heavy pages, layout shift, slow paint
What we changed
Static-first SSG + ISR, optimized images, engineered for CWV
Content model
Current
Page-bound, hard to reuse
What we changed
Structured models (courses, coaches, articles) with reusable blocks
Localization
Current
One region, bolted-on
What we changed
Locale-aware content model for AU / APAC / US audiences
SEO
Current
Thin metadata, no schema
What we changed
Per-page metadata, structured data, clean canonical + sitemap
Course catalogue: ICF pathways (Level 1 / ACC, Level 2 / PCC, team coaching) modelled as structured content, with upcoming courses and free intro events.
Coach finder: a 100+ coach directory, each profile driven from DatoCMS.
Knowledge bank: articles, research, and podcasts built to scale and rank.
Multi-region: locale-aware pages and multi-currency (AUD / HKD / SGD / USD) info.
Shipped in the build
In the client's words
What IECL said
“A huge shoutout to the team for their outstanding work on the IECL project! They were a breeze to communicate with and super responsive from day one. The website looks great, but the way they set up Dato CMS is the real game-changer: our marketing team can now spin up new landing pages in minutes. Highly recommend working with them!”
Andy Sheats
CTO, IECL
FAQ
What this project shows
IECL is content-heavy: courses, coaches, events, and a growing knowledge bank, across several regions. A headless model separates that content from presentation, so editors publish independently while the front end stays fast and consistent. DatoCMS gives a clean, structured content model; Next.js renders it statically and revalidates on publish.
Content-heavy site holding you back?
A brand this good deserves a site that keeps up.
If your content has outgrown its platform, and speed, search, or slow publishing are the cost, a headless rebuild puts the content team back in control and the performance back on your side. Let's scope it.
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