Why Cherry Bekaert Chose Optimizely Over Adobe and Sitecore

700

Designer hours saved

2.8k

Pages migrated

Zero

Traffic lost

Christina Keller discusses Cherry Bekaert's migration from WordPress to Optimizely, saving 700 design hours and achieving zero traffic loss at launch.

Industry
Financial services
Company
  • Cherry Bekaert
Products used
Content Marketing PlatformContent Management SystemRecommendationsWeb ExperimentationPersonalization

Christina Keller is Website Manager at Cherry Bekaert, a top accounting and advisory firm in the US. It's a new role — before, everyone just worked on the WordPress site whenever they had time. Now Christina manages everything: the main site, subdomains, and collaborates with SEO, design, editorial, and marketing teams to get content live.

Christina has been involved in 13 CMS migrations throughout her career. She discusses why Optimizely was the best decision yet and how the CMP has already freed up 700 designer hours. Plus, Christina explains how Sitecore has repeatedly let her down, and why Optimizely was chosen over Acquia, Adobe, Contentful, and more at Cherry Bekaert.

This interview shares how Cherry Bekaert continue to improve their digital experience, by investing in good tech that allows their teams to collaborate better together. As well as a few mentions on what they're excited about in the future (CMS 13 and Opal).

How Cherry Bekaert Brings Everyone Together

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  • Christina Keller is Website Manager at Cherry Bekaert — a new role created to bring structure to what used to be "everyone working on the WordPress site whenever they had time"
  • She manages the main marketing site plus multiple subdomains (e.g. careers.cbh.com) and smaller WordPress subsites
  • Christina works across SEO, design, editorial, and marketing manager teams to get new content live — services, industries, and more
  • Her role sits at the end of the workflow with many touchpoints before content goes live, sometimes requiring follow-ups to re-optimize pages for SEO or adjust layouts based on content needs

"Wouldn't have picked Sitecore"

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  • Christina's previous employer went through multiple CMS migrations, cycling through various combinations of live code and CMS platforms before landing on Sitecore
  • The web team wasn't included in the Sitecore decision-making process — and they wouldn't have chosen it if they had been consulted
  • When the team finally pushed to demo alternatives, they discovered Episerver (now Optimizely) and found it "leaps and bounds ahead" of Sitecore in both intuitiveness and scalability.
  • The UI was significantly sleeker than Sitecore, and global reusable content blocks were a "huge game changer" for maintaining consistency across pages at her previous tech company.

WordPress is the Wild West

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  • At her previous employer, Christina consolidated 7-8 different sites into a single Episerver instance, making it far easier to manage everything in one content tree instead of logging into different platforms.
  • When Christina joined Cherry Bekaert, they were managing 2,800 pages on WordPress — services, industries, articles, and brochures — which wasn't easily manageable at that scale.
  • WordPress had limited layout flexibility with only 4-5 blocks to choose from, and the PHP-based system meant deprecated code could break sections of the site.
  • WordPress inconsistency across companies creates unique challenges — every developer has their own preferred organization method, plugin approach, and security configurations that make transitions difficult.

Why Optimizely Over Everything Else

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  • The team used the Gartner Magic Quadrant to identify CMS leaders and evaluated Optimizely, Sitecore, Acquia, Adobe, Contentful, and several others.
  • The team quickly ruled out vendors outside the leadership space that didn't meet their scalability needs, narrowing it down to Acquia and Optimizely.
  • Adobe offered strong design team integration with their product suite, but it wasn't as intuitive from a content editor standpoint for managing thousands of pages.
  • Cherry Bekaert's CMO had C-level conversations with both Optimizely and Acquia finalists before ultimately selecting Optimizely, then partnered with Blend Interactive for implementation and launched in approximately 8 months.

I think their [Sitecore] UI improved a little bit. But, still how you managed your site and how everything linked, it was still the exact same. I didn't make the call on that one, though.

Christina Keller|Website Manager

Optimizely CMP Saves 700 Design Hours

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  • Training new team members on Optimizely is remarkably easy — one colleague joined during the build phase with no prior CMS experience and picked it up quickly using wireframes and intuitive block naming.
  • The CMP alone saved Cherry Bekaert's design team approximately 700 hours through automatic image rendition options across different block types.
  • Simple tasks that previously required designer intervention — like flipping an image or creating tablet and mobile versions — can now be handled directly by the web team with a few clicks.
  • This time savings freed designers from repetitive technical tasks during the complete website redesign, allowing them to focus on strategic brand work like selecting imagery that fits Cherry Bekaert's voice, rather than producing multiple versions of every asset.

Excited to Use Opal and Upgrade to CMS 13

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  • Christina is enthusiastic about Opal's potential to reduce workload for Cherry Bekaert's small SEO and analytics teams — particularly for competitive analysis, keyword research, and ad-hoc GA4 reporting.
  • Out of 13 CMS migrations throughout her career, Cherry Bekaert's move to Optimizely was the first where they didn't lose traffic when switching platforms — a success she attributes to their two-person SEO team's dedication.
  • She's eagerly anticipating CMS 13's Figma-to-Visual-Builder workflow, which will allow the team to create blocks immediately without agency back-and-forth, freeing her to focus on strategy development.
  • The upcoming AI capabilities represent a significant opportunity to support their constantly growing organization while maintaining a lean team structure.

13 Migrations Later, Finally the Right Platform

Christina's journey through 13 CMS migrations taught her exactly what to look for — and what to avoid. After surviving Sitecore's limitations, WordPress's inconsistency, and countless hours managing 2,800 pages across fragmented systems, Cherry Bekaert's move to Optimizely delivered something she'd never experienced before: a migration that didn't lose traffic.

The impact is already clear. The CMP alone saved 700 design hours by eliminating repetitive tasks that previously required designer intervention — flipping images, creating responsive versions, managing multiple renditions across block types. That time didn't disappear; it shifted to strategic work that actually moves Cherry Bekaert forward. New team members pick up the platform immediately, even without prior CMS experience. And the website team finally has the control they need without constant agency dependencies.

But Christina isn't stopping at what works today. She's excited about Opal's potential to amplify her small SEO and analytics teams, CMS 13's Figma-to-Visual-Builder workflow to eliminate bottlenecks, and the shift from reactive page management to proactive digital strategy. After years of fighting platforms that got in the way, Cherry Bekaert finally has technology that gets out of the way — and lets teams do what they do best.

The lesson? When you find a platform that makes your job easier instead of harder, you know you've found the right one.