MIGRATION GUIDES
By Joshua Jackai, Founder and Lead Designer · Updated September 2026
The fear that keeps businesses on platforms they have outgrown is losing the traffic they spent years earning. That fear is justified for careless migrations and unjustified for disciplined ones. These guides document the disciplined version.
Key takeaways
SEO loss during migration is a process failure, not an inherent risk. Redirects and on-page parity prevent it.
The three moves we handle most: WordPress to Framer, WooCommerce to Shopify, WordPress to HubSpot.
Budget one to six weeks depending on content volume; ecommerce migrations sit at the long end because of product data.
Expect a temporary ranking wobble of two to four weeks. Do not migrate the week before your biggest campaign.
The migration is the cheapest moment you will ever have to fix information architecture, kill dead pages, and upgrade conversion structure. Do not move the mess as-is.
WordPress to Framer
The most common move we see in 2026: service businesses and B2B teams trading plugin maintenance and slow load times for a fast, modern marketing site. Demand Designer itself runs on Framer, so this migration is our home turf. Read the WordPress to Framer guide for the eight-step process, the 12-point SEO-preservation checklist, and real costs from $3,250.
WooCommerce to Shopify
The highest-stakes migration, because products, variants, customers, and order history move with the site. Read the WooCommerce to Shopify guide for product data mapping, URL structure differences, and how to keep collection pages ranking.
WordPress to HubSpot
The B2B move: marketing site onto the same platform as the CRM, so forms, email, and attribution finally connect. Agencies quote $16,000 to $63,000 for these; the WordPress to HubSpot guide explains where that money goes and how a leaner scope reaches the same outcome.
Whatever the platforms, the discipline is identical:
Crawl and inventory the current site: every URL, title, meta description, and its traffic value.
Decide each page’s fate: keep, merge, improve, or retire. Migration is pruning season.
Rebuild with on-page parity: headings, titles, and internal links carried deliberately, not approximately.
Map 301 redirects for every URL that changes, one-to-one wherever possible.
Launch, resubmit sitemaps, and monitor Search Console daily for the first two weeks.
If a proposal for your migration does not mention redirect mapping, the quote is incomplete and the risk is yours. For what the full projects cost, see the website redesign cost pillar; if you are still choosing a destination platform, start with the platform comparison.
Will I lose SEO if I change website platforms?
Not if the migration is disciplined. Rankings dip for two to four weeks while search engines recrawl, then recover, provided every old URL 301-redirects to its new equivalent and on-page SEO moves with the content.
How long does a website migration take?
One to six weeks for most business sites. Content volume is the main variable; a 10-page service site moves in a week, a store with 500 products does not.
Can I migrate a website myself?
The content, sometimes. The risk concentrates in redirects, structured data, and analytics continuity, which is where most DIY migrations quietly lose their traffic.
Should I redesign during the migration or after?
During. You are already rebuilding every page; migrating a design you plan to replace means paying for the rebuild twice.
Pick your guide above, or skip the reading: book a free 15-minute fit call and tell us what you are on and where you want to be. You will get a straight answer on cost, timeline, and whether the move is worth it for you.
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