AI & Automation
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
After 7 years of building websites as a freelancer, 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 I've learned: 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.
This isn't another "Webflow vs WordPress" comparison post. This is the complete migration checklist I wish I had when I started moving clients from traditional CMSs to no-code platforms. Here's what you'll learn:
How to audit your current WordPress setup for migration readiness
The 3-phase migration strategy that prevents SEO disasters
Why most migrations fail (and how to avoid these pitfalls)
Real migration timelines and what to expect in each phase
When NOT to migrate (yes, there are scenarios where you should stay put)
Whether you're a frustrated marketer who can't update your own website or a founder tired of waiting weeks for simple changes, this playbook will show you exactly how to regain control of your marketing asset. No technical background required.
Industry Reality
What every marketing team has been told about CMS migrations
Most agencies and developers will tell you the same thing about CMS migrations: "It's complicated, expensive, and risky." They'll list all the reasons why you should stick with WordPress - the plugins, the flexibility, the developer ecosystem. And honestly, they're not entirely wrong about the complexity.
The conventional wisdom goes like this:
WordPress is more flexible - You can build anything with enough plugins and custom code
SEO will suffer - Moving platforms means losing rankings and starting over
Migration is too risky - What if something breaks? What if we lose traffic?
Developers prefer WordPress - It's what they know, so it's easier to maintain
Cost concerns - "We already invested so much in our current setup"
This advice exists because most web professionals are thinking about websites from a technical perspective, not a business perspective. They're optimizing for developer convenience, not marketing velocity. The result? Marketing teams become dependent on engineering resources for every small change.
But here's what this conventional wisdom misses: your website isn't just a technical asset - it's your primary marketing tool. When your marketing team can't iterate quickly, you're not just losing time, you're losing competitive advantage. While you're waiting two weeks to update a landing page, your competitors are testing three different versions and optimizing based on real data.
The shift happens when you stop thinking about your website as a technical challenge and start thinking about it as a marketing laboratory that needs constant experimentation.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The decision point came during a meeting with a B2B SaaS client whose CTO was spending 2 weeks for every marketing landing page update. Their marketing team wanted to test different value propositions for an upcoming product launch, but each variation required developer time, staging environment setup, and deployment schedules.
I watched their head of marketing pull up competitor websites that were clearly iterating daily - new testimonials, updated copy, fresh case studies. Meanwhile, their own site hadn't been updated in three months because everything was stuck in the development queue behind "more important" product features.
That's when I realized the fundamental problem: we were treating their marketing website like product infrastructure when it should have been treated like a marketing experiment platform. Their WordPress setup required developer intervention for everything - even changing a button color needed a code review.
I'd seen this pattern across dozens of client projects. Beautiful WordPress sites that became digital prisons for marketing teams. The initial promise of "flexibility" turned into dependency. Yes, WordPress could do anything - but only if you had a developer available, a staging environment set up, and time to test everything.
The breaking point came when they lost a major prospect because their case study page was three months out of date. The prospect had asked about recent client success stories, and the marketing team knew they had amazing new case studies - they just couldn't get them live without going through the development process.
That's when I proposed something that made the CTO uncomfortable: migrating to Webflow where the marketing team could own their own updates. The CTO's first reaction was predictable: "But we'll lose flexibility. What about our custom functionality? What about SEO?"
I knew we needed a systematic approach to address every concern and ensure nothing broke in the process. That's when I developed the migration checklist that would save us from the disasters I'd seen other teams experience.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
The first thing I learned: most CMS migrations fail because teams try to do everything at once. Instead, I developed a 3-phase approach that minimizes risk while maximizing the chances of success.
Phase 1: Audit and Planning (Week 1-2)
Before touching anything, I created a complete inventory of the existing WordPress site. This wasn't just about content - I needed to understand every piece of functionality, every integration, and every SEO element that needed to be preserved.
The audit checklist I developed covers:
Content inventory - Every page, post, image, and document
Functionality mapping - Contact forms, integrations, custom post types
SEO elements - Meta tags, URL structure, redirects needed
Third-party integrations - Analytics, CRM connections, marketing tools
Performance baseline - Current loading speeds and Core Web Vitals
The key insight: you're not just migrating content, you're migrating a business system. Every form submission that goes to your CRM, every analytics event that tracks conversions, every integration that automates your workflows - all of this needs to work seamlessly after migration.
Phase 2: Build and Test (Week 3-6)
This is where most migrations go wrong. Teams rush to rebuild everything exactly as it was before. Instead, I took this opportunity to improve the site structure based on what the marketing team actually needed.
The rebuild process focused on:
Marketing-first architecture - Organizing content around marketing campaigns, not technical structure
Component library - Building reusable elements that marketers could mix and match
Content templates - Standardized layouts for case studies, landing pages, and blog posts
SEO optimization - Actually improving technical SEO during the migration
The secret was building everything on a staging subdomain first, then spending weeks testing every form, every integration, and every user flow. I created a testing checklist that covered 47 different scenarios - from mobile form submissions to analytics tracking.
Phase 3: Launch and Optimize (Week 7-8)
The actual migration happened over a weekend, but the real work was in the monitoring and optimization that followed. I set up monitoring for:
SEO performance - Daily ranking checks for key terms
Site performance - Page speed and user experience metrics
Conversion tracking - Making sure all forms and CTAs still worked
User behavior - Watching for any unusual bounce rates or navigation issues
The result? The marketing team went from 2-week update cycles to same-day changes. They launched 12 different landing page variations in the first month post-migration - something that would have taken 6 months in their old WordPress setup.
Content Inventory
Map every page, post, media file, and custom content type. Include word counts and update frequencies to prioritize migration order.
SEO Preservation
Document all URLs, meta tags, and redirects. Create a redirect mapping spreadsheet to maintain search rankings during transition.
Integration Testing
Test every form, CRM connection, and third-party tool integration on staging before going live to prevent data loss.
Team Training
Schedule hands-on training sessions for marketing team on Webflow CMS. Create documentation for common tasks and emergency procedures.
The results spoke for themselves. Within the first month post-migration, the marketing team had:
Reduced update time from 2 weeks to 2 hours - Simple copy changes now happened same-day
Launched 12 landing page variations - Previously would have taken 6 months
Improved Core Web Vitals scores - Page load speeds increased by 40%
Maintained SEO rankings - Zero loss in organic traffic during transition
Reduced development dependency - Marketing team became self-sufficient for 80% of site updates
The unexpected outcome? The development team was actually happier too. They stopped getting interrupted for "urgent" marketing requests and could focus on building actual product features. The CTO, initially skeptical, became one of Webflow's biggest advocates after seeing how much time his team got back.
More importantly, the marketing team's conversion rate improved by 23% in the first quarter post-migration. When you can test and iterate quickly, you find better solutions faster. This principle applies whether you're B2B SaaS or ecommerce - marketing velocity translates directly to business results.
Six months later, they closed their biggest deal ever. The prospect specifically mentioned how impressed they were with the company's fresh, frequently-updated website as a sign of a "dynamic, fast-moving organization." That's when everyone understood: your website isn't just a brochure, it's a competitive advantage.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After dozens of migrations, here are the lessons that matter most:
Migration is a business decision, not a technical one - Ask "will this help us move faster?" not "is this technically perfect?"
Phase your approach - Trying to do everything at once is how migrations fail catastrophically
Test everything twice - Forms, integrations, analytics - if it's important to your business, test it obsessively
SEO doesn't have to suffer - With proper redirects and URL mapping, you can maintain or improve rankings
Train before you launch - The best platform is useless if your team doesn't know how to use it
Monitor for 30 days minimum - Issues can surface weeks after migration
Document everything - Create processes for common tasks so knowledge doesn't live in one person's head
What I'd do differently: spend more time on change management. The technical migration is often easier than getting people comfortable with new workflows. Invest heavily in training and documentation to ensure adoption success.
When this approach works best: when your marketing team is frustrated with slow update cycles and you have leadership buy-in for change. When it doesn't work: if you have complex custom functionality that would be expensive to rebuild, or if your team isn't ready to learn new tools.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups considering Webflow migration:
Start with marketing pages, keep product documentation separate
Focus on landing page velocity for campaign testing
Integrate with your existing analytics and CRM stack
Create templates for case studies and feature pages
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce businesses evaluating migration:
Webflow works best for marketing sites, not product catalogs
Consider hybrid approach: Shopify for store, Webflow for content
Focus on blog and landing page optimization first
Ensure seamless integration with your ecommerce platform