Redefining digital health. How Optibac built a composable future.

The goal

To create a fresh, intelligent, and agile eCommerce experience that connects Optibac’s brand authenticity with cutting-edge technology and empowering editorial control for their marketing and content teams. Alongside delivering this digital transformation, we focused on supporting customers through every stage of the transition, ensuring they enjoyed a smooth, reliable experience with no disruption to their orders, subscriptions, or everyday interactions with the brand.

Challenges & objectives

Optibac’s digital estate had grown organically, resulting in multiple sites and disjointed user experiences between transacting and non-transactional territories. The challenge lay in consolidating these experiences without losing local nuance or regulatory compliance, particularly in the UK, where strict product communication standards required sensitive management. The transition was further complicated by an established subscription base and a change in payment providers, making customer retention a key consideration throughout the process.

Operational complexity further intensified the brief. From multichannel payment integrations to extensive product data and learning content, the ambition for this rebuild reached far beyond visual refresh. The new site needed to deliver:

• A composable technology foundation built for scalability, AI readiness, and future B2B growth.
• Regulatory control between the UK’s transactional site and the non-transactional US presence.
• A centralised, insight-driven data layer to support global content reuse and performance analysis.
• Greater autonomy for content creators, empowered to adjust, test, and optimise without depending on developers.
• A digital experience that blended science and storytelling, reaffirming Optibac’s leadership as the UK & Ireland’s most trusted and recommended brand in probiotics.

Solution & implementation

After a full platform review, Ridgeway, Optibac’s digital partner, led the move toward a fully headless, composable architecture built around Storyblok headless CMS and BigCommerce Catalyst.

Catalyst is the next-generation composable framework from BigCommerce, designed to accelerate storefront builds through pre-integrated architectures, flexible APIs, and MACH-aligned (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless) structures. It offers brands an enterprise-ready foundation that reduces development time while keeping technical flexibility intact, ideal for brands scaling globally with complex product, pricing, and content requirements.

This overall, underpins their entire eCommerce engine. It provided:

• Multi-currency and regional storefront flexibility.
• Subscription management through integrations with Ordergroove.
• Secure payments across Worldpay, Apple Pay, and PayPal.
• Enhanced merchandising and promotions capabilities.
• Shipping and fulfilment integration with Metapack via a custom Shipping Provider developed by Ridgeway.
• Custom Tax calculation via a custom Tax Provider developed by Ridgeway.

Storyblok complemented BigCommerce by serving as the headless CMS, giving content teams intuitive control through real-time visual editing and structured components. Together, these two systems formed the beating heart of Optibac’s new architecture, composable, scalable, and built for performance.

Ridgeway’s workshops ensured every decision, from design to data model, supported this approach. Prototypes and content models were tested against Optibac’s dual priorities. Maintaining regulatory precision and creating an effortless shopping experience.

Technical features & partner collaboration

Underpinning the build was a reimagined technical framework, blending scalability with long-term sustainability. Ridgeway’s team worked closely with both Storyblok and BigCommerce, managing numerous integrations that underpin the brand’s customer experience, including:

Worldpay, Paypal, Apple Pay, Ordergroove (for subscription management), Metapack, DotDigital, Fresh Relevance, Sweet Analytics, Trustpilot, Algolia Search, BigQuery, Loqate, Mention Me, and Netsuite ERP connectivity.

By architecting around MACH principles, Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless, Ridgeway ensured Optibac’s platform remains future-ready and composable at its core. The schema and structure were designed using a Generative Engine Optimised (GEO) approach, enabling faster rendering, reusable data models, and machine learning compatibility.

This setup positions Optibac to benefit from AI acceleration and agentic interaction both now and down the line, such as personalised recommendations and intelligent content creation.

Collaboration was fundamental at every stage. Ridgeway’s partnership led approach ensured design, content, performance, and engineering teams worked as one cohesive unit alongside Optibac’s in-house leads. Regular joint sessions combined commercial insight, creative direction, and technical assurance, ensuring the final output met the high standards of both brand and performance teams.

Results & impact

The new Optibac site, launched in February 2026 represents more than a platform migration. It’s a digital transformation designed to consolidate, modernise, and inspire. The results achieved through pre-launch testing and feedback already point to major advancements:

• A cleaner, lighter, and more premium design direction that mirrors the brand’s scientific credibility while celebrating everyday health.
• Improved user journeys spark exploration of editorial content and lead and support users naturally in discovering the product range and their benefits.
• Editorial agility regained through Storyblok’s visual content editor combined with intuitive CMS architecture and reusable content items, enabling marketing teams to rapidly experiment and publish across markets.
• Substantial performance gains from streamlined architecture and CDN-backed delivery, paving the way for improved search visibility and conversions.
• A unified international framework that centralises control, aligns local needs, and simplifies ongoing management.
• Storyblok’s AI translations, paired with the Dimensions app, enable fast content delivery across languages and regions.
• Enhanced subscription journeys via Ordergroove integration, projected to drive higher retention and lifetime value.

For Optibac’s customers, this translates into faster journeys, intuitive product discovery, and stronger reasons to stay loyal to the brand. For Optibac’s internal teams, it delivers a future-proof ecosystem where creativity and commerce finally work in harmony.

Future outlook                                                     

The February 2026 launch marks the foundation of a three-year digital growth roadmap. Year one establishes a composable base and introduces more flexible, data-led content management. Year two will focus on optimisation, enhanced personalisation, and evolving retention strategies. Looking ahead, the longer-term direction is to further explore opportunities in AI and agentic eCommerce to support the brand experience and deepen customer relationships, using data more effectively to drive engagement and loyalty.

Upcoming feature phases include the introduction of a stockist locator, enhanced bundles, a dedicated B2B trade site, personalised quizzes, and richer levels of campaign personalisation, all supported by the existing MACH architecture.

This project stands as a confident example of what can happen when brand vision meets technical fluency and genuine partnership. Ridgeway’s thoughtful guidance and composable-first mindset have not only rebuilt a website, they’ve redefined how Optibac will engage its customers for years to come.