The Emmes Group
The Emmes Group is a global contract research organisation.
It has supported Phase I–IV trials in more than 90 countries and has worked with government agencies, public-private partnerships and commercial biopharma for over 45 years. Today the group is four brands: Emmes for full-service clinical research, Veridix for eClinical technology and AI, Essex for biomedical informatics and data science, and OptymEdge for ophthalmology endpoints.
The old website, built on Drupal, had not kept up with that growth. Services were several levels deep, the technology business had no proper home, documents were scattered, and almost every change to a menu or a page needed a developer.
VOCSO redesigned the site from the information architecture up and rebuilt it as a headless platform: a Next.js front end that reads its content from Strapi. The result is one site for all four brands, organised around what a sponsor is looking for, which the Emmes marketing team can now run on their own.
Project summary
Next.js
React
Strapi
Node.js
Tailwind CSS
SwiperHubSpotCloudflare R2
Responsive
UX/UI01The challenge
What stood in the way
The difficulty was scale rather than any single page. Emmes covers dozens of therapeutic areas and clinical services, a full eClinical product line, several AI agents, a newsroom and a large back catalogue of documents, across four brands with their own histories. Moving all of that off Drupal could not mean simply reskinning the old menu.
The answer was to design a small set of templates — specialty, clinical service, product, resource and person — and model each one as a content type in Strapi. That kept the design consistent across hundreds of pages and meant new products or services can be added as content, without new design or development work.
Emmes needed a website that explains a large, technical organisation to three very different audiences — sponsors weighing up a partner, researchers looking for evidence, and candidates considering a job — on a platform the marketing team could manage without engineering help.
- A complete visual redesign on one consistent design system
- Navigation rebuilt around user intent rather than the org chart
- A proper home for the Veridix eClinical platform and AI agents
- Repeatable page templates for specialties, clinical services and products
- One searchable, filterable library for every downloadable resource
- A simpler first step than the existing RFP form
- Leadership and careers pages that put people at the front
- A headless CMS so content and structure change without a release
02The work
What we shipped
03The build
Key features
Each feature answers one question a visitor brings to a CRO's website: who are you, what can you do for my trial, where is the evidence, and how do I talk to you.
04The stack
Tech and integrations
The new site is a decoupled build. Strapi holds the content — pages, navigation, site settings, resources, news and people — and a Next.js application renders it with React Server Components. Pages are pre-rendered and revalidated in the background, so visitors get static-page speed while edits in Strapi appear within minutes. Media is stored on Cloudflare R2, styling is Tailwind CSS on a token-based design system, and HubSpot is connected for marketing analytics.
Key technical highlights:
- Next.js App Router with React Server Components and a Turbopack build
- Pre-rendered pages with background revalidation (ISR)
- Strapi headless CMS with structured content types for every template
- CMS-driven navigation, footer and call-to-action blocks
- Resource Center with keyword search, faceted filters and sorting
- Request a Meeting form with validation and reCAPTCHA
- Media on Cloudflare R2 and self-hosted web fonts
- Swiper carousels for leadership and case studies
- Clean URLs, page metadata and Schema.org markup
- Responsive, accessible layouts across breakpoints
Tech stack used for The Emmes Group
Next.js
React
Strapi
Node.js
Tailwind CSS
Swiper
HubSpot
Cloudflare R2
Responsive
UX/UI
Next.js
React
Strapi
Node.js
Tailwind CSS
Swiper
HubSpot
Cloudflare R2
Responsive
UX/UI
Next.js
React
Strapi
Node.js
Tailwind CSS
Swiper
HubSpot
Cloudflare R2
Responsive
UX/UI
Next.js
React
Strapi
Node.js
Tailwind CSS
Swiper
HubSpot
Cloudflare R2
Responsive
UX/UI
05Capabilities
Services in this project
06Questions
Questions about this project
01What does The Emmes Group do?
The Emmes Group is a global contract research organisation. Through its four brands — Emmes, Veridix, Essex and OptymEdge — it provides full-service clinical research, eClinical technology and AI, biomedical informatics and data science, and ophthalmology endpoint services to government, public-private partnerships and commercial biopharma.
02What did VOCSO build for The Emmes Group?
VOCSO redesigned the group's website and rebuilt it on Next.js and Strapi. The work covered the information architecture, the design system, the homepage, templates for specialties, clinical services and Veridix products, the Resource Center, the leadership and careers pages, the Request a Meeting flow, and the content model behind all of them.
03Why move from Drupal to a headless CMS?
Because nearly every structural change on the old site needed a developer. With Strapi managing the content and Next.js rendering it, the marketing team can edit pages, menus, resources and people themselves, while the front end stays fast and consistent.
04How is the site kept fast?
Pages are pre-rendered and revalidated in the background, so visitors are served static pages while content edits still go live within minutes. Media is served from Cloudflare R2, fonts are self-hosted, and images load lazily below the fold.
05Can Emmes add new products and services themselves?
Yes. Every product, specialty and clinical service page is a Strapi content type on a shared template, so a new Veridix module or a new therapeutic area is added as content, without design or development work.
