October Three operates in a highly specialized corner of the retirement industry, helping employers and advisors navigate defined benefit plans, pension risk transfer, plan administration, cash balance plans, and other complex retirement plan strategies. It is the kind of business where trust is earned through expertise, relationships, and the ability to translate technical concepts into practical guidance.
Its website needed to play a larger role in that process. October Three was no longer relying only on referrals, relationships, and direct conversations to educate the market. Its marketing team was investing in search, paid media, webinars, reports, and more structured digital campaigns.
But the existing web ecosystem was holding the team back.
Inconsistent Brand Experience Across Three Web Properties
October Three was managing three related digital properties: the main October Three website, Retirement Learning Center, and O3 Edge. Each served a different role in the business, but together, they needed to support one connected buyer journey. The main site had to represent the full consulting organization, Retirement Learning Center needed to support advisor education, and O3 Edge needed to preserve a more functional product experience.
That connection was becoming increasingly important as October Three looked to make its website a stronger demand generation asset. Prospects needed clearer paths into the right services, paid campaigns needed more focused destinations, and content needed to ladder into core topics and service lines. For a business built on deep expertise, the site also needed to make that expertise easier to understand, which made pages like “Meet Our Team” central to the user experience.
The existing CMS environment made that evolution difficult. What should have been simple updates often required extra coordination, developer involvement, and manual workarounds. Publishing content, adjusting page layouts, updating visuals, and managing formatting all took more effort than they should have.
The challenge was no longer just maintaining three web properties. October Three needed a more flexible foundation that could help marketing move faster while creating a more cohesive experience across the entire web ecosystem.
Webstacks partnered with October Three to solve that challenge: migrate its web properties from Contentful to Storyblok, redesign the brand experience, and create a scalable system that could support growth across all three sites.
Designing a Strategy for Three Distinct but Connected Brands
Before rebuilding the experience, the team needed to understand how October Three’s business was structured, how each web property supported the broader go-to-market motion, and where users needed clearer paths through the web experience.
Through stakeholder interviews, sitemap reviews, and web presence workshops, Webstacks worked with October Three to map how the three properties should relate to one another. The main October Three site needed to serve as the parent brand and primary conversion engine. Retirement Learning Center needed to remain connected to October Three while supporting advisor education through resources, training, and guidance. O3 Edge needed to maintain its more product-oriented role without requiring the same level of reinvention.
That discovery process clarified an important strategic direction: the new website ecosystem needed to preserve the distinction between each property while creating more consistency in how users moved through them.
Webstacks prioritized a more connected information architecture, clearer audience pathways for employers and advisors, stronger service-page structures, and a more flexible approach to content relationships. Instead of treating the blog as a standalone destination, content could better support core service areas, educational journeys, and conversion paths.
The strategy also reinforced the need for restraint in the visual direction. October Three did not need a dramatic rebrand. It needed a more modern, polished website experience that still felt credible in a trust-driven financial services category. The brand had to feel refined and current without losing the professionalism, clarity, and people-first positioning that mattered to its buyers.
With that strategic foundation in place, Webstacks could move into design and development with a clear mandate: build a flexible web system that brought the three properties closer together.
Building a Marketing-Owned Foundation on Storyblok
The move to Storyblok was a shift toward a more marketing-owned website operation. October Three’s previous setup made everyday updates feel heavier than they should have, with slow publishing workflows, limited preview capabilities, formatting constraints, and extra developer involvement for changes the marketing team needed to manage quickly.
Storyblok gave October Three a better foundation for that next stage. Its visual editing experience and component-based content model gave the marketing team a more flexible way to create, update, and manage pages across three web properties without relying on one-off development support each time.
Webstacks approached the migration with both flexibility and risk reduction in mind. The team migrated existing content through a combination of scripts and manual migration, rebuilt key templates, configured Storyblok content models, and connected the new component library to the CMS. With Vercel supporting the hosting layer, that implementation work turned the design system from a visual framework into a usable publishing system for October Three’s marketing team.
Because the existing website already supported organic search and paid traffic, the migration also required a cautious approach to information architecture. Webstacks preserved what was working, avoided unnecessary URL disruption, and focused structural improvements where they would create a better user experience or a more scalable content model.
That included clearer employer and advisor pathways, stronger service-page structures, a more prominent “Meet Our Team” experience, and improved relationships between blog content, service lines, and conversion paths. Webstacks also built flexible landing page capabilities so October Three could support future campaigns, gated resources, and conversion-focused experiences.
October Three gained a composable website foundation where content models, reusable components, and hosting infrastructure worked together across all three properties. That foundation gave Webstacks the structure needed to turn the new design system into a practical publishing experience, not just a set of static design assets.
Establishing a Cohesive Multi-Site Digital Identity
With the platform strategy defined, Webstacks translated October Three’s brand and business requirements into a modular design system that could support all three properties. The goal was to create a shared visual foundation that made the web properties feel connected while giving each property enough flexibility to serve its own audience.
October Three was looking for a more refined digital experience that felt current, credible, and easier to navigate. In stakeholder conversations, the team aligned on a visual direction that moved the brand forward without making it feel too trendy for a trust-driven financial services category. The experience needed to feel professional and established, but not dated.
To land on this direction, Webstacks developed a series of tailored design vignettes, exploring varying balances of modern typography, imagery, and layout options to refine the experience. This collaborative process allowed the team to confidently select a concept that balances professional credibility with a contemporary digital presence, ensuring a stable launch for the client's channels.
Built around reusable components and distinct theme variations, the new design system established a shared foundation for all three web properties. October Three gained a scalable library of building blocks for pages and campaigns, ensuring structural consistency while preserving each brand's unique expression.
The visual direction also addressed one of October Three’s biggest brand challenges: how to feel people-first without relying on predictable stock photography. Because the business sells expertise and relationships, the site needed to make people, guidance, and credibility feel central to the experience. Webstacks introduced more polished content structures, stronger team and service modules, and a more intentional icon system to help communicate complex offerings without making the site feel generic.
With the design system complete, Webstacks had the building blocks needed to move from visual direction into page production. The system gave each property enough flexibility to support its own role, while keeping the broader ecosystem cohesive across October Three, Retirement Learning Center, and O3 Edge. From there, the work moved into building the redesigned websites that would bring the strategy, CMS, and design system together.
A New Digital Foundation for October Three’s Next Chapter
With the strategy, design system, and Storyblok implementation in place, October Three launched three redesigned web properties across its digital ecosystem. The new experience brought the main October Three site, Retirement Learning Center, and O3 Edge into a more connected visual and operational foundation while preserving the distinct role each property plays in the business.
Within days of launch, the web properties were showing strong technical performance across all three sites:
- October Three maintained a Lighthouse performance score of 91.
- Retirement Learning Center maintained a Lighthouse performance score of 89.
- O3 Edge maintained a Lighthouse performance score of 90.
The migration also preserved business continuity through launch. SEO performance remained stable, with scores recovering within hours of go-live, a critical outcome for digital channels already reliant on organic search and paid traffic.
A Digital Web Strategy October Three Can Execute
Through its partnership with Webstacks, October Three moved from a digital platform that required too much work to maintain into one built with more clarity, flexibility, and control. Its three digital properties now have a stronger connection to one another, while the marketing team has a platform they can continue shaping. For a consulting business built on long-term relationships, that matters.
October Three’s new trio of web properties now gives the team more room to tell the story behind its expertise, guide buyers through complex retirement decisions, and evolve the brand without waiting for the next major rebuild.
