Migrating from Wordpress to Webflow
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Wordpress is a popular choice for websites, particularly with small businesses and start ups.
The CMS boasts easy customisation through free and cheap plugins, and because of its open-source nature, many think Wordpress is the best choice for a beginner website. The reality is that Wordpress is actually best suited for complex functionalities with a dedicated developer, due to additional features being needed to run a quality website.
While there is a broad scope of plugins that can offer customisations, the issue is that all of these plugins need constant updates, and having too many can lead to conflicts with the functionalities. Site speed will also be affected with multiple plugins, impacting user experience and the site’s rankings. Maintaining Wordpress websites can become a full time job which, if not stayed on top of, can pose a security risk. Wordpress is a frequent target for hackers which no owner wants, but particularly if your website hosts sensitive information.
On the other hand, Webflow provides an all-in-one solution and uses an integrated drag-and-drop interface. Without the need for additional page-builders, sites can benefit from faster performance along with it being easier for businesses to update their own content.
Audit
Before making any large changes to your website, it is always important to carry out an audit to find out which pieces of content perform best and where your users navigate to on your site. You don’t want to make any changes with the idea of improving your site, only to take away the one thing your users were using or the site was ranking highly for.
- Map out all plugins and what they do, establish how often they’re used and what functionality they serve, then compare this to what Webflow offers natively. Where possible, simplify and define the operations and potentially replace entire plugin stacks.
- Define both static and dynamic content. Static content is any page that largely stays the same, whereas dynamic content updates and alters the page such as blog posts or changing team pages. For dynamic content, map your schema and make sure existing post types and fields map to your new Webflow CMS collections. Recreate schema in a way that works natively in Webflow.
- Create a backup of everything on your site, and record sitemaps and URL structure, which will help when creating the new Webflow site. It may also be worth analysing stats such as site speed which can be compared once the new site is live.
- Access the design. Going into the website project, you will have an idea as to whether you want to keep the same design or change it. This is the perfect time to analyse what you like about your existing site to determine what is worth maintaining with the new one.
Migration
When it is time to build, you will need to map out the core functionality which can be done using the audits of the plugins and the sitemap. You can rebuild your design system through classes, variables, components, and templates. Shared libraries are great for maintaining consistency across the site. For dynamic content, Webflow Collections can be used to maintain a structure, allowing for easy interactive elements.
Wordpress allows you to export all of the content into an XML file, you will need to use an XML to CSV converter to end up with a final CSV file. Once a Webflow site has been created, this CSV file can be uploaded and the fields mapped to the fields in your Collection.
Publish & Manage
When all of your content has been uploaded and you’re happy with the structure, preview check the site and the responsiveness across different devices. Webflow makes it easy to carry out SEO tasks, so make sure you’re utilizing all of the elements and filling in fields such as alt tags, meta descriptions, and headers. Now is also the time to check your URLs and put in place in redirects if necessary.
You can manage user access in a way that is more collaborative. Depending on the team member, you can set user permissions that allows specific content to be changed by specific people.
Unlike Wordpress, Webflow is an all-in-one solution which includes website hosting, security, and backups. This means that there are less things to worry about and you don’t find costs mounting up with additional services. You’ll find that a Webflow site is faster, cleaner, and more collaborative.
Don’t Want to Handle the Migration Yourself?
If you have a web agency such as Jolly Good Web manage the project, you don’t have to worry about any of the details that go into migration. Instead, you’ll be asked about the goals for the new website and involved in conversations surrounding prospective design and ideal functionalities. Once handed your Webflow site, you will be shown how to use the backend and details on any specific features you find yourself needing to update.
A lot of our clients have come to us unhappy with their Wordpress sites. An example of a business we migrated to Webflow is Metis Aerospace. The project was exciting, helping to update their design and push forward their service offering. From a migration standpoint, the project was a smooth transition and the launch of the new website resulted in higher visibility in search results and a happier client who has more flexibility in their updating.
Let us handle your Wordpress to Webflow migration.
