AI & Automation
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
You know that feeling when your marketing team is begging you to update the homepage copy, but your developer is swamped for the next two weeks? I've sat through countless meetings where CTOs insisted on keeping WordPress while marketing teams desperately needed faster deployment.
After 7 years building websites as a freelancer and working with dozens of companies, I've watched this same drama play out over and over. The breakthrough moment came when I helped a B2B SaaS startup cut their website update time from 2 weeks to 2 hours by switching to Framer.
But here's the thing - most businesses are asking the wrong question. Instead of "Can Framer replace my CMS?" they should be asking "Should my website live where marketing velocity is needed most?"
In this playbook, I'll walk you through:
The real cost of keeping marketing teams dependent on developers
When Framer actually makes sense (and when it doesn't)
My exact migration process that prevented SEO disasters
Why the "WordPress is better for SEO" argument is mostly outdated
A framework for deciding if you should make the switch
Ready to see how treating your website as a marketing laboratory instead of a digital brochure can transform your business?
Industry Reality
What every tech team has been told
The conventional wisdom around CMS selection sounds logical on paper. WordPress powers 40% of websites, has thousands of plugins, and offers unlimited customization. Most CTOs default to it because it feels like the "safe" choice.
Here's what the industry typically recommends:
WordPress is SEO-friendly - You get Yoast, RankMath, and countless optimization plugins
Full control over everything - Custom post types, unlimited plugins, complete code access
Developer-friendly ecosystem - Familiar tech stack, established workflows
Cost-effective long-term - Open source, cheap hosting, established maintenance procedures
Future-proof - Been around forever, huge community, won't disappear
This wisdom exists because it worked great when websites were mostly static and updates happened monthly. WordPress became the default because developers could build once and maintain forever.
But here's where this falls apart in 2025: Your website isn't just a presence anymore - it's a marketing asset that needs constant experimentation and iteration. While your team debates whether every heading should start with a verb (yes, I've seen two weeks wasted on this), competitors are shipping landing pages daily.
The real question isn't "What CMS has the most features?" It's "What platform enables marketing R&D?"
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
I once watched a manager spend two full weeks obsessing over whether every heading on their site should start with a verb. Two weeks. While competitors were launching new features and capturing market share, this team was stuck in grammatical paralysis.
This wasn't an isolated incident. Throughout my freelance career building landing pages for SaaS and ecommerce businesses, I've seen this pattern repeatedly: managers focusing on the wrong priorities while their conversion rates stagnate.
The client was a B2B SaaS startup with ambitious growth targets. Their marketing team was sharp - they knew exactly what needed testing. New value propositions, different social proof arrangements, updated case studies. But here's what their typical "simple" update looked like:
Marketing writes new copy in Google Docs
Submits request to development queue
Developer estimates 3-5 days for "simple" changes
Change gets pushed to next sprint because of "more urgent" product features
Two weeks later, the market has moved and the copy is already outdated
Meanwhile, I was watching their competitors ship new landing pages almost daily. The velocity difference was staggering.
The breakthrough came when the CMO finally said, "We need to own our marketing experiments." That's when I knew we needed to fundamentally rethink their website architecture - not as a technical asset owned by engineering, but as a marketing laboratory owned by the people who understood the market.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's exactly how I approached the migration, and why it worked when previous attempts had failed.
Phase 1: The Mindset Shift (Week 1)
The first step wasn't technical - it was philosophical. I had to help the team understand that your business website is a marketing asset, not a product asset. This seems obvious, but most companies treat their marketing website like product infrastructure.
I've watched engineering teams treat marketing websites like product infrastructure - requiring sprints for simple copy changes, deployment windows for adding a case study, and code reviews for updating a hero image. Meanwhile, competitors were shipping landing pages daily.
Phase 2: SEO Migration Strategy (Week 2)
The biggest fear was losing SEO juice. Here's the truth I discovered after migrating dozens of sites: the SEO performance remained strong - and in many cases improved. Here's why:
Faster page load speeds - No plugin bloat slowing things down
Cleaner code output - Framer generates optimized HTML/CSS
Better Core Web Vitals scores - Modern architecture wins
More frequent content updates - Because marketers could actually use the CMS
The missing plugins? Most were crutches for poor site structure anyway.
Phase 3: Content Architecture (Week 3-4)
The key was rebuilding content architecture around marketing velocity, not developer convenience. Instead of complex custom post types, we focused on flexible, reusable components that marketing could remix without code.
I created templates for:
Landing page variants (8 different structures)
Case study layouts (3 formats)
Feature announcement pages
Event and webinar pages
Phase 4: Team Training & Handoff (Week 5-6)
This is where most migrations fail. You can't just hand over the keys and hope for the best. I spent two weeks training the marketing team on:
Component-based thinking vs page-based thinking
Brand consistency within flexible systems
A/B testing setup and measurement
When to ask for help vs when to experiment freely
The result? They went from 2-week update cycles to same-day publication. More importantly, they started thinking like a marketing R&D team instead of a content production line.
Velocity Gain
From 2-week update cycles to same-day publication for marketing experiments
SEO Protection
Maintained rankings while improving Core Web Vitals and page speed metrics
Team Autonomy
Marketing team gained complete control over website experiments without developer dependencies
Migration Process
6-week structured migration prevented common pitfalls and ensured smooth transition
The transformation was measurable and immediate:
Before Migration:
Average time to publish updates: 14 days
Monthly A/B tests: 1-2 (limited by development capacity)
Marketing team satisfaction: 3/10 (constantly frustrated)
Page load speed: 4.2 seconds average
After Migration:
Average time to publish updates: 2 hours
Monthly A/B tests: 12-15 (limited only by marketing bandwidth)
Marketing team satisfaction: 9/10 (finally autonomous)
Page load speed: 1.8 seconds average
But the real victory wasn't in the metrics - it was watching the marketing team transform from order-takers to experimenters. They started testing bold changes instead of playing it safe, because iteration was no longer expensive.
Six months later, their conversion rates had improved 40% simply because they could test more hypotheses faster.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After dozens of migrations, here are the insights that matter most:
1. The tool isn't the bottleneck - the workflow is. You can have the most flexible CMS in the world, but if your approval process requires three stakeholders and a developer, you're still stuck.
2. "Future-proof" often means "change-resistant." WordPress's biggest strength (infinite customization) becomes its biggest weakness when you need marketing velocity.
3. SEO plugins were mostly solving problems caused by bad architecture. Clean, fast sites with good content beat plugin-heavy sites every time.
4. Team training is more important than feature completeness. A motivated marketing team with 80% of the features they need will outperform a frustrated team with 100% of the features they can't access.
5. Migration timing matters more than migration perfection. Don't wait for the "perfect" moment - Q1 and Q3 are ideal because traffic is predictable.
6. Have a rollback plan, even if you never use it. Knowing you can revert reduces migration anxiety and helps teams take the leap.
7. Start with high-traffic pages, not homepage. Blog posts and landing pages are safer testing grounds than your main conversion pages.
The biggest lesson? Stop treating your website like a monument and start treating it like a laboratory. The best conversion optimization happens when marketing teams can iterate freely.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups looking to implement this approach:
Start with landing page experiments before migrating main site
Train marketing team on component-based design thinking
Set up proper analytics and A/B testing from day one
Create templates for common use cases (feature launches, case studies)
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores considering this transition:
Focus on promotional landing pages rather than full product catalog migration
Keep existing ecommerce platform, use Framer for marketing pages
Test seasonal campaign pages first to prove ROI
Ensure proper tracking between marketing pages and shop