Modernizing Michelin’s Global Web Experience with ApostropheCMS and Astro

About Michelin

Michelin is a global leader in mobility, known not only for its iconic tires but also for its commitment to innovation across industries. As part of that commitment, Michelin has built a robust digital ecosystem to support a wide range of customer experiences, from individuals to professionals, including consumer-facing websites and internal tools.

Since 2017, Michelin has relied on ApostropheCMS to power this digital landscape. Today, the platform supports over 300 websites across dozens of brands, including Michelin, BFGoodrich, Kleber, and Uniroyal. These sites span more than 50 languages and serve users in markets around the world.

The flexibility of ApostropheCMS has enabled Michelin to support everything from local dealer content to high-visibility corporate initiatives. More recently, Michelin has also begun using Apostrophe headlessly to deliver structured content to mobile applications—demonstrating the platform’s adaptability beyond traditional web use cases.

Challenges

As Michelin’s digital ecosystem grew in size and complexity, so did the demands on their design system. To ensure consistency, reusability, and long-term maintainability across hundreds of websites, the team began to shift toward a modern, component-based frontend architecture.

This evolution led them to adopt Svelte for building out their design system. However, integrating Svelte into their existing frontend stack introduced friction. Their current templating setup wasn’t designed to support the kind of component composition and scalability the team was aiming for. Over time, it became clear that a more modern, decoupled approach was needed—one that could support their design system goals while maintaining a strong editor experience for content creators.

Why ApostropheCMS + Astro + Svelte

With a clear need for a more modern and flexible frontend, Michelin’s development team began rethinking their architecture. They had already adopted Svelte to power their design system, and the next step was finding the right framework to bring it to life at scale.

Astro emerged as the ideal match. Its support for multi-page applications (MPAs), performance-boosting island-based hydration, and seamless integration with Svelte made it a natural fit. Combined, Astro and Svelte offered the flexibility, speed, and developer experience Michelin was looking for.

ApostropheCMS, meanwhile, remained at the core of their content strategy. Its structured content model, localization capabilities, and visual editing experience continued to meet the needs of a global network of content creators and digital teams.

This architecture shift gave Michelin the best of both worlds: a robust, editor-friendly CMS with the flexibility to power modern, performant frontends at scale.

Innovating Together: An Open-Source Integration, Born from Partnership

Michelin’s shift to a headless architecture also marked the beginning of a deeper collaboration between their development team and the ApostropheCMS core maintainers. As early adopters of Astro, Michelin recognized the opportunity to bridge Apostrophe’s visual, in-context editing experience with a fully decoupled frontend environment.

Their developers created an early proof of concept showing how ApostropheCMS could power structured content in a headless mode, while still providing editors with a rich preview and editing interface inside an Astro-based frontend.

This innovation wouldn’t have been possible without a shared commitment to open source and a highly collaborative partnership between both teams. ApostropheCMS adopted Michelin’s work as the foundation for an officially supported integration—complete with developer documentation, starter kits, and ongoing maintenance—enabling more teams to build modern frontends without giving up a great authoring experience.

Flexibility, Performance, and Creator Experience

By adopting a decoupled architecture built on Astro and Svelte, Michelin’s development teams gained the flexibility they had been looking for—without sacrificing performance or maintainability.

Astro’s island-based hydration model and Svelte’s compiled output made it possible to deliver faster, more responsive websites with significantly reduced Time to Interactive (TTI). The shift to a fully component-based frontend also brought clarity to the development process, enabling teams to work more independently and iterate faster across projects.

Notably, Michelin ensured a smooth transition to this new technical stack by rolling out a structured training program. Every developer completed onboarding for the new architecture before working in production—ensuring alignment across teams and reducing friction during the shift.

Just as importantly, ApostropheCMS continued to deliver a strong editing experience for content creators. Editors could still work visually and intuitively, while the structured content model supported efficient localization and multi-brand content reuse.

Performance and Business Outcomes

Michelin’s architectural shift wasn’t just a technical upgrade—it delivered measurable business results across performance, SEO, developer productivity, and user engagement.

Between October and December 2024, across an average of 12 redesigned websites, the team saw:

• +56% increase in organic audience
• +12.5% improvement in lead generation conversion rate
• +75% uplift in total lead volume

These gains reflect the impact of faster load times, improved content structure, and a more premium user experience.

Developer teams also saw a boost in efficiency. The clear separation between frontend and backend allowed for more focused work streams, easier debugging, and faster implementation of shared design components.

Beyond the numbers, the transition reinforced Michelin’s digital brand. The updated experience is faster, cleaner, and more engaging—and early feedback confirms that users perceive it as a step forward.

Looking Ahead

With a modern, headless architecture now in place, Michelin is focused on scaling the approach across its broader ecosystem of digital experiences. The combination of ApostropheCMS, Astro, and Svelte has proven flexible and performant enough to support the wide variety of use cases Michelin faces—from corporate websites to regional brand sites, B2B portals, and mobile applications.

The next phase involves continuing to expand adoption across teams and projects, ensuring consistency in implementation while allowing room for evolution in both frontend and content strategy. As the design system matures and the development process becomes more streamlined, the architecture is well-positioned to support ongoing innovation and future channels.

ApostropheCMS remains a central part of that future. Its ability to adapt to both monolithic and headless architectures allows Michelin to meet teams where they are—while continuing to provide an editor-friendly experience and strong content governance as the platform grows.