When I launched the new Cohesion Studio website on August 27, 2026, I built it on WordPress. It got my studio to market quickly, represented my visual brand well, and delivered a solid baseline experience for visitors.
WordPress remains a powerful engine that I continue to build and support for many clients, especially those who rely heavily on familiar editorial workflows or deep plugin ecosystems.
However, for my own studio site, where custom motion design, precise typography animations, and maximum performance are core brand promises, I wanted to move past traditional CMS boundaries. In less than two months, I completely rebuilt the site from the ground up using Astro, Sanity CMS, and GSAP.
Here is why I made the move so quickly, and why Astro is becoming my primary recommendation for high-performance web builds.
Choosing the right tool for the job
There is no single best tech stack, only the right stack for a project's specific goals. WordPress excels at rapid deployment and standard content management, but for a studio portfolio centered around visual interaction, I hit a few structural trade-offs:
- Heavy scripts and slow load times: Traditional setups pack together scripts and styles in ways that slow down page loads. The original WordPress site took over 2.6 seconds just to render key page elements.
- Large page sizes: Unoptimized images and assets led to heavy page downloads for visitors.
- Animation hurdles: Running smooth GSAP animations inside a standard WordPress theme meant constantly wrestling with complex layout structures and styling conflicts.
I wanted a modern front-end foundation that treated motion design as a core architectural layer while delivering static HTML at maximum speed.
If you are evaluating your current platform before starting a build, The Decisions to Make Before Redesigning Your B2B Website can help you clarify your goals before touching code.
Setting clear performance goals
I established three clear objectives for the Astro rebuild:
- Uncompromising speed: Achieve a sub-1.5-second Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and zero main-thread blocking time.
- Precision motion architecture: Deliver smooth bracket reveals, clean typography hover effects, and zero GPU rendering glitches.
- Structured content autonomy: Build a Sanity Studio setup that gives me full editing control without risking design drift or layout breaks.
The Astro and Sanity stack
Astro's Islands Architecture matched this vision directly. By shipping static HTML by default and hydrating interactive UI elements only on demand, Astro allowed me to separate my GSAP animation scripts from static content delivery.
For content, I paired Astro with Sanity CMS. Rather than relying on rigid rich-text editors that output unpredictable markup, Sanity's Portable Text schema allowed me to define strict typography rules, including disabling automatic list shortcuts when typing numbers, so my visual hierarchy remains intact.
The performance results
Rebuilding in Astro and Sanity unlocked immediate gains across every core metric:
| Metric | Original Build (WordPress) | Astro + Sanity Rebuild | Performance Gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| PageSpeed Score | 83 | 99 | +16 Points |
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | 2.8s | 0.8s | 71% Faster |
| Total Blocking Time (TBT) | 20ms | 0ms | Zero Latency |
| Accessibility Score | 93 | 100 | Perfect Score |
While WordPress remains a practical choice for many client projects, this rebuild proved why Astro and Sanity are my go-to recommendation for clients seeking ultra-fast, motion-rich digital platforms.
In Part 2 - Building a Zero-JS Pagebuilder Engine with Astro and Sanity, I look under the hood at the technical execution, engineering GPU-accelerated GSAP clip-path sweeps, structuring SCSS design tokens, and setting up Sanity schemas for publishing efficiency.
If you are planning a technical migration, explore Cohesion Studio's web sprint options to see how we scope custom web development.