Platform migration to a Webflow system you can run

Patches buy months; they rarely fix architecture. If several of these are true, you’re past “incremental updates.”

• Site or CMS is 3+ years old in meaningful ways (stack, patterns, content model).
• Plugin-heavy WordPress, brittle Drupal, or lock-in on Duda/Wix — or an inherited “custom” setup no one documents.
• Accessibility status is unknown, or audits keep reopening the same issues.
• Content is hard to publish — editors work around the CMS instead of with it.
• No single source of truth for structure, URLs, or component behavior.
• SEO instability: redirects missing, duplicate URLs, thin templates after years of edits.
• Inherited Webflow that was layout-first — collections and classes don’t match how the org works now.

Technical debt compounds: every emergency fix adds exceptions, and exceptions become the system. Accessibility exposure doesn’t shrink when you decorate bad patterns — it shifts to forms, PDFs, and new content types.

Migration is a chance to normalize content into collections, fix relationships, and ship accessible components by default — then validate and govern so the same problems don’t return in six months.

1. Platform audit — inventory CMS, integrations, URL patterns, and failure modes.
2. Content inventory & mapping — what moves, what merges, what retires; URL mapping draft.
3. Accessibility risk review — exposure framing (CES-aligned), not a fake “pass/fail” sticker.
4. CMS architecture design — collections, fields, roles, component boundaries.
5. Structured rebuild in Webflow — build to the model, not the old templates.
6. Validation & launch governance — QA, redirects, monitoring handoff.

• URL mapping and redirect strategy (not “we’ll figure it out at launch”).
• Metadata and indexation plan; avoid mass duplicate routes.
• Structured content so templates earn queries — not one-off pages.
• Post-launch checks for crawl errors and analytics continuity.

We align to WCAG 2.2 AA as an engineering target: components, forms, media, and content workflows. Framing uses exposure language (see CES) — not legal advice.

• Nonprofits and associations with board or grant visibility on digital and accessibility.
• Mid-size orgs without a full in-house engineering bench.
• Teams that outgrew a commodity build and need a platform, not a reskin.

• You need a visual-only refresh with no appetite to fix structure or CMS.
• Budget assumes “move every page 1:1” with zero discovery — that’s how migrations fail.
• Overlay-only accessibility expectations — we don’t substitute widgets for engineering.
• Unrealistic timelines that skip inventory and URL mapping.

Governance is the practice layer: how content types change, who approves them, how releases run, and what documentation exists so the team is not dependent on tribal knowledge. BM Web Studio does not sell governance as a separate service line — it is embedded in platform migration and handoff, and reinforced through the Approach page

• Content modeling rules — when to add a collection vs a field vs a category
• Roles & workflow — who can publish, who approves structural changes
• Documentation — editor handbook, component usage, do / don’t for Webflow
• Change management — structural updates without breaking dependent templates
• Alignment with QA — what gets validated when templates change

Highest leverage during or immediately after migration — while patterns are fresh. Governance without authority to fix structure usually stalls; migration work is the natural container.