Headless WordPress with Next.js: Valto's new website is live

The new Valto website is live. It is a headless WordPress site with a Next.js front end, and it carries Valto's new brand.

If you read our announcement back in July, you'll know the background. Valto are specialist Microsoft Solutions Partners, a fellow Cheshire business and a Clicky client since 2023. They saw what we had done with our own website and asked us to apply the same thinking to theirs.

What is a headless WordPress website?

In a traditional WordPress site, WordPress does 2 jobs: it stores the content and it draws the pages. In a headless setup it only does the first. WordPress stays as the content management system, and a separate front end (Next.js, in this case) builds the pages visitors actually see.

For Valto that means 2 things. Their team keep the WordPress editor they already know, so nobody had to learn a new CMS. And visitors get a site that loads quickly and feels more like an app than a brochure.

How we built it

Valto's new brand and imagery were supplied, so this was a build project: design the page blocks, write the technical spec, migrate the content and build the site.

We designed and built a library of reusable content blocks, and Valto's own team used them to build out the pages. The site now runs to more than 470 pages across services, sectors, case studies, events, videos and guides. For me that is the real test of a CMS: the client can do it without us.

Sign-off ran through a review tool we built for the project, so the Valto team could request changes on the real site and approve them as they landed.

You can read the full story, including the paid media results, in the Valto case study. And if you want a website built this way, have a look at our AI-native websites.

Thanks to the whole Valto team for trusting us with this one.