6 Things You Must Do for a Clean Switch From WordPress to Squarespace
Changing your website platform is rarely easy, but often it's necessary. Here are some ways to ensure your move to Squarespace from WordPress goes smoothly.
When a potential client gets in touch wanting to switch from WordPress to Squarespace, I often try and talk them out of it.
Why?
Migrating platforms is painful.
It’s similar to moving houses. You know it's going to be a big deal, but you figure you’ll just push through it. Pack up all the boxes, move them from old house to new, start unpacking, and that’s it.
The next thing you know, you find yourself knee-deep in old high school yearbooks and your kids’ third-grade art projects, spinning your wheels trying to decide if you should keep them or throw them away.
Migrating website content can be incredibly painstaking.
If a client has years’ worth of blog posts with comments, the blog posts can be migrated over, but they might lose the comments or the images. Or something will just go wonky in the export and import process.
I think Squarespace is a great website and business management platform for consultants and small business owners, but I know there is no perfect platform.
Sometimes people mistakenly assign business problems to their web platform when the issue lies elsewhere—but sometimes the platform really is the problem. You might also take for granted seemingly insignificant WordPress features only to find Squarespace either doesn’t have them or handles them differently.
What I’m trying to say is: Switching website platforms is a BFD, but sometimes it really is necessary.
These are real messages from clients and leads:
“I was increasingly frustrated with the backend of my 20+ year-old WordPress site and my inability to make design changes without external help.”
“My WordPress website is painful and annoying to manage.”
“I am so done messing around in WordPress!”
“The WordPress backend is unwieldy.”
“We had a WordPress theme. The theme didn’t update this year and the website fell apart. We need a new website!”
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When I consult clients on a potential switch to Squarespace, there are 6 things I advise them to do, regardless of whether they hire me for their website redesign project or not.
#1 Write Down Every Feature and Plugin You Use on Your WordPress Website
It’s easy to take for granted certain functions and capabilities you use when managing your website. Without a conscious understanding of which features you regularly rely on, you might miss them when they’re gone.
You don’t want to find out you aren’t able to do something important in Squarespace after it’s too late.
Usually you can find a workaround, or better yet, you just need to get used to doing the same thing a different way.
Identify your “must have,” “nice to have,” and “don’t need” features.
For example, does your site use an e-commerce plugin? Or how about translation? Maybe you have an SEO plugin or Zaps set up to connect software to your site.
Understand what you are already doing, need to do, and have to do when it comes to managing your website. Then, make sure you can do those things with Squarespace.
#2 Revisit Your WordPress Website Structure
Does it still make sense? Can pages be consolidated?
An important step in your new Squarespace website redesign project is creating a new site map. There's no point in recreating an outdated website structure on your new site.
If your existing site is not serving your current business, is unwieldy, or isn't user-friendly, now is the time to fix that.
For example, do you have two separate pages for “About Us” and “Team” with one paragraph of text on each? Combine this into one page on the new website.
#3 Conduct a Website Content Audit
Does your website showcase products or services you no longer offer? Are your pictures 10 years old? Sticking with our “moving house” analogy, you don't want to pack up and move stuff that has little value or that you no longer use.
Look through your website analytics. Do you have blog posts or pages that get zero hits? It’s time to retire those.
Bless them Marie Kondo style and download, archive, or delete. Be ruthless!
#4 Back Up and Archive Your WordPress Site Before Starting the Squarespace Redesign
Backing up and archiving your WordPress website includes things like:
Exporting blog posts and allowing time for cleanup!
Exporting URLs (these will be needed to preserve any SEO equity you've earned)
Exporting media, such as images
Important! Making a copy of your site on a staging server. Once you reconnect your domain to your new Squarespace site you won’t be able to access the old WordPress site any longer.
If you don’t already have your website images in a folder, now is the time to gather them up in one place. If you have no idea where the original images are, download them from your WordPress site.
There are WordPress plugins that allow you to export all of your website media, content, and URLs.
#5 Find Out When Your Domain and Hosting Subscriptions Expire and Decide if You Want to Renew
Your WordPress site will need to be live until you switch your domain to your new Squarespace site.
If you haven't downloaded or exported all of your old content, it may make sense to keep your old WordPress site on a staging server so it's not live, but you can still access the content.
You’ll likely need to pay for the WordPress hosting, so it may make sense to pay monthly rather than renew an annual contract.
Thinking about making the switch to Squarespace?
#6 Understand Your Email Setup
If you are planning on transferring your domain to your new Squarespace site, you need to understand who your email provider is. This process may disrupt your service. It can get quite technical as you'll need to also transfer over something called MX records. Here are instructions from Squarespace (skip down to the “Moving Email records” section).
Thinking About Making the Switch to Squarespace?
WordPress is a powerful platform beloved the world over, but it’s not for everyone.By the time someone comes to me wanting to switch over to Squarespace, they are usually frustrated and desperate.
Their business is blocked by their WordPress website, rather than enabled and supported by it.
They dread going into the backend of their site, and the platform is keeping them from critical business activities like:
Posting and sharing content
Updating outdated information or images on their website
Implementing functionality like automations that can help run their business: scheduling, newsletters, gated content like courses and classes, e-commerce
I don’t want to discourage you from making the switch to Squarespace—it’s almost always worth it. However, it’s important to understand what’s involved in the process and what you need to be prepared for a smooth transition.
Clients come to me at different stages—some already know about Squarespace, others just know they don’t want WordPress anymore.
For those unfamiliar with Squarespace, I tell them: “If you can use PowerPoint or Canva, you can use Squarespace.”
Are you thinking about moving your website to Squarespace?