AI & Automation

My 7-Year Journey: From WordPress Loyalists to No-Code Converts (And Why Most Companies Are Still Getting This Wrong)


Personas

SaaS & Startup

Time to ROI

Medium-term (3-6 months)

I've sat through countless meetings where CTOs insisted on keeping WordPress while marketing teams desperately needed faster deployment. 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 Webflow.

Here's what most companies don't realize: Your business website is a marketing asset, not a product asset. 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.

After migrating dozens of company websites over 7 years, I've learned that the shift happens when companies realize their website should live where the velocity is needed most: with the marketing team.

In this playbook, you'll discover:

  • Why the "technical superiority" argument for WordPress is actually holding your business back

  • My decision framework for choosing between Webflow, Framer, and traditional platforms after testing all of them

  • The exact migration process that preserved SEO while dramatically improving team velocity

  • Real case studies from SaaS startups that made the switch and never looked back

  • When to choose each platform based on your specific business needs and team structure

Industry Reality

What the "experts" tell you about platform selection

The web development industry has been pushing the same narrative for years: "Technical platforms are always better than visual builders." Here's what every CTO and developer evangelist will tell you:

  1. Full Control: "You need complete control over your codebase"

  2. Customization: "Visual builders are limiting and inflexible"

  3. Performance: "Hand-coded sites are always faster"

  4. SEO Superiority: "WordPress with plugins gives you better SEO control"

  5. Future-Proofing: "What if the visual builder company goes out of business?"

This conventional wisdom exists because it's true for product development. When you're building a SaaS application that needs to scale to millions of users, yes, you want full technical control. The problem? Most businesses apply product development logic to their marketing websites.

Here's where this falls short in practice: While your engineering team is debating the perfect headless CMS architecture, your competitor just launched three new landing pages, tested five different value propositions, and captured leads you'll never see. The "technical superiority" argument ignores the most important metric: marketing velocity.

The shift happens when you realize that your website isn't just a digital presence - it's a marketing laboratory that needs constant experimentation.

Who am I

Consider me as your business complice.

7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.

The turning point came during a project with a B2B SaaS startup that was hemorrhaging opportunities because of their website bottleneck. Their situation was painfully common: brilliant product, solid market fit, but their marketing website was trapped in engineering workflows.

Every small change required a developer. Adding a testimonial meant opening a ticket. Launching a new landing page took two weeks minimum. The marketing team had brilliant ideas but zero execution power. Sound familiar?

I'd been a WordPress loyalist for years, convincing myself that the flexibility was worth the complexity. But watching this startup's frustration made me question everything. Their competitors were running circles around them, not because they had better products, but because they could iterate faster.

That's when I started my real-world experiment: migrating multiple client websites to visual platforms and measuring the actual impact. Not just the technical performance, but the business velocity. What I discovered challenged everything I thought I knew about "proper" web development.

The first migration was terrifying. Moving from WordPress to Webflow felt like giving up control. But within the first month, something remarkable happened: the marketing team stopped asking me for help. They were making changes themselves, testing new approaches, and moving at speeds that would have been impossible with the old setup.

That was the beginning of my 7-year journey testing every major visual platform, understanding their strengths and limitations, and developing a framework for when each one makes sense.

My experiments

Here's my playbook

What I ended up doing and the results.

Here's the exact approach I developed after migrating dozens of websites and testing every major platform in real business scenarios:

The Platform Selection Framework

Step 1: Audit Your Current Bottlenecks

Before choosing a platform, I map out exactly where the current system breaks down. For most businesses, it's not technical limitations - it's human workflow problems.

I track three key metrics:

  • Time from idea to live page (usually 1-3 weeks with traditional setups)

  • Number of people required to make a simple change (often 3-4 with developer handoffs)

  • Frequency of marketing experiments (almost zero when technical barriers exist)

Step 2: The Decision Matrix I Actually Use

After testing Webflow, Framer, WordPress, and headless solutions across multiple client projects, here's my decision framework:

Choose Framer when:

  • Design differentiation is your competitive advantage

  • You need to go from concept to live in days, not weeks

  • Your team values animation and interaction over complex functionality

Choose Webflow when:

  • You're building beyond 20+ pages

  • You need robust CMS capabilities for blogs, resources, or directories

  • Custom integrations and workflows are part of your roadmap

Step 3: The Migration Process That Preserves SEO

This is where most migrations fail. I've developed a systematic approach that maintains search rankings while improving performance:

  1. Content Audit: Export and categorize all existing content, identifying what drives actual traffic vs. what's just clutter

  2. URL Mapping: Plan redirects for every important page, maintaining URL structure where possible

  3. Parallel Build: Construct the new site on a staging domain while the old site remains live

  4. SEO Transfer: Migrate all meta tags, structured data, and technical SEO elements

  5. Performance Optimization: Use the migration as an opportunity to improve page speed and Core Web Vitals

Step 4: Team Training and Handoff

The real success metric isn't the migration itself - it's whether your team can actually use the new platform effectively. I spend significant time training marketing teams on:

  • Creating new pages without breaking existing design systems

  • A/B testing different approaches quickly

  • Understanding which changes affect SEO and which don't

Quick Wins

Immediate velocity improvements you'll see within the first week

SEO Preservation

How to maintain rankings while dramatically improving performance

Team Empowerment

Training your marketing team to be self-sufficient

Cost Analysis

Real numbers on platform costs vs. developer time savings

The results from platform migrations consistently surprise even skeptical technical teams. Here's what I've measured across multiple client projects:

Velocity Improvements:

  • Average time to launch new landing pages: from 2 weeks to 2 hours

  • Marketing team autonomy: from 0% to 95% of website changes

  • A/B testing frequency: from quarterly to weekly experiments

SEO Performance:

Contrary to the "WordPress is better for SEO" myth, the SEO performance remained strong - and in many cases improved due to:

  • Faster page load speeds (no plugin bloat)

  • Cleaner code output

  • Better Core Web Vitals scores

  • More frequent content updates (because marketers could actually use the CMS)

Business Impact:

One B2B SaaS client saw a 40% increase in qualified leads within three months, not because the new platform was magic, but because they could finally test and optimize at the speed their market demanded.

Learnings

What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.

Sharing so you don't make them.

After 7 years of migrations and hundreds of hours testing different platforms, here are the key lessons that will save you months of trial and error:

  1. The "Technical Debt" Argument is Often False: Most businesses never use the advanced customization they think they need

  2. Speed Beats Perfection: A good landing page that goes live today beats a perfect one that launches next month

  3. Team Adoption is Everything: The best platform is the one your team will actually use consistently

  4. Migration Timing Matters: Plan platform switches during low-traffic periods and have rollback plans

  5. SEO Myths Die Hard: Visual builders can perform as well or better than traditional platforms for most business websites

  6. Cost is More Than Platform Fees: Factor in developer time, opportunity cost of slow iterations, and team frustration

  7. Not Every Business Needs the Same Solution: E-commerce has different needs than SaaS marketing sites

The biggest lesson? Your website is a marketing asset, not a product asset. Once you make that mental shift, the platform choice becomes obvious.

How you can adapt this to your Business

My playbook, condensed for your use case.

For your SaaS / Startup

For SaaS startups specifically:

  • Choose Webflow for CMS-heavy content strategies

  • Framer works best for design-forward positioning

  • Plan for rapid landing page iteration from day one

  • Budget for team training, not just platform costs

For your Ecommerce store

For ecommerce businesses:

  • Shopify remains essential for transaction processing

  • Use visual builders for marketing pages, not product catalogs

  • Focus on conversion optimization capabilities

  • Ensure platform integrates with your commerce stack

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