A Brooklyn design studio had built an architecture firm’s original Squarespace site in 2021. Four years and 86 projects later, the portfolio was hard to browse, slow on mobile, and painful to update. The studio commissioned a white label Squarespace to WordPress migration from Softvole that kept the firm’s minimalist look while giving it real project filtering and faster images.
more project inquiries
less time to publish a project
faster mobile LCP on project pages
projects migrated and tagged
Architecture sites live or die on imagery. This firm’s Squarespace pages loaded full-resolution photography at sizes the platform did not control well, and the portfolio had grown into one long, unfiltered gallery. Prospective clients looking for ‘residential renovation in Brooklyn’ had to scroll through hospitality and commercial work to find it.
The design studio did not want a redesign. It wanted the same restrained aesthetic, rebuilt on a platform that could handle structure. Softvole recreated the look closely and added the portfolio logic underneath.
Executive summary
Short answer: A Squarespace to WordPress migration transfers pages, images, and blog content to WordPress and sets up redirects from old URLs. For a Brooklyn architecture firm, Softvole kept the original design, added a filterable portfolio, and saw project inquiries rise 48% in matched 56-day windows.
The firm’s marketing coordinator spent about two hours publishing each new project: resizing images, building a gallery, writing captions, and manually updating three separate index pages. Projects were often months late going online.
Prospective clients had told partners that they could not find relevant work on the site, which meant the portfolio was underselling the firm.
Project type, location, size, and year existed only in captions. There was nothing to filter or sort by.
Some project pages loaded more than 18 MB of images on mobile.
The studio’s reputation rested on this site’s look. Any visible change to typography or spacing would be noticed by the firm’s partners.
We measured the existing site before proposing anything, so the client could see exactly what the migration would fix.
| Measurement | Finding |
|---|---|
| Largest project page image weight (mobile) | 18.4 MB |
| Projects with structured metadata | 0 of 86 (type, location, year only in captions) |
| Index pages updated manually per new project | 3 |
| Average time to publish a project | About 2 hours |
| Projects completed but not yet online | 5 |
We rebuilt the existing design pixel by pixel first, then added structure behind it.
We matched type scale, spacing, and grid from the Squarespace site, then had the studio’s designer sign off on side-by-side comparisons of every template.
Each project is now a custom post with fields for type, location, year, size, collaborators, and awards. We migrated and tagged all 86 projects.
Visitors can filter by residential, commercial, hospitality, and interiors, and by borough or state, without page reloads.
Images upload once at full resolution. The CDN serves modern formats at the right size for each screen.
All 142 Squarespace URLs redirected to their WordPress equivalents. The coordinator received a 30-minute recorded walkthrough presented by the studio.
The studio’s reputation depended on the site looking the same after the move. We used a simple, strict process.
Two rounds were needed. The only intentional change was faster image loading, which nobody noticed except as speed.
The platform export included pages and posts but not gallery captions, which held the project details. We extracted captions from the live pages with a script, mapped them to the new structured fields, and had the marketing coordinator spot-check 20 projects before import.
The firm’s display font had been served through the platform’s font integration. The license for self-hosting had to be purchased separately. We flagged it in week two, the firm bought the web license, and launch stayed on schedule.
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project inquiries (56 days) | 46 | 68 | +48% |
| Average portfolio pages viewed per session | 2.3 | 4.1 | +78% |
| Minutes to publish a new project | 120 | 25 | -79% |
| Median mobile LCP on project pages, lab (seconds) | 6.2s | 2.1s | -66% |
| Projects published in the period | 2 | 7 | +250% |
We compared the 56 days before launch with the 56 days after launch. We also confirmed that late fall is not a seasonal peak for the firm’s inquiries.
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project inquiries (56 days) | 46 | 68 | +48% |
| Average portfolio pages viewed per session | 2.3 | 4.1 | +78% |
| Minutes to publish a new project | 120 | 25 | -79% |
| Median mobile LCP on project pages, lab (seconds) | 6.2s | 2.1s | -66% |
| Projects published in the period | 2 | 7 | +250% |
The marketing coordinator now publishes projects in about 25 minutes using structured fields, and filters and related projects update automatically. The five backlogged projects went live in the first month. Softvole maintains the site through white label care.
Related reading: our design to WordPress conversion guide explains how designs become blocks, and the theme customization guide covers why a custom block theme was chosen over adapting an existing theme. Compare with the Wix to WordPress brewery migration.
We would check font licensing in discovery; platform-provided fonts often do not include self-hosting rights. We would also test the platform export on day one to see exactly what it leaves behind, because the missing gallery captions required extra scripting. Knowing that earlier would have made the estimate more precise.
Softvole services used: White Label Website Redesign, Website Care and Optimization.
Related guides: design to WordPress, custom themes, SEO checklist.
External references:
Want to see how a project like this is priced? Review our published starting prices or book a call to talk it through.
When the look is the brand, match it first. Clients accept new features faster when nothing familiar disappears.
The value was not WordPress itself. It was project data that powers filters, related projects, and faster publishing.
Training editors to resize photos rarely works. Automatic image handling does.
Inventory every URL, export content, rebuild templates in WordPress, transfer and optimize images, set 301 redirects, test, and monitor Search Console after launch.
Yes. Softvole can recreate an existing design closely in a WordPress block theme and confirm it with side-by-side comparisons before launch.
Rankings are protected when every indexed URL is redirected and content is preserved. This migration redirected all 142 Squarespace URLs.
It depends on page count and features. Softvole quotes a fixed price after reviewing the existing site, and redesign projects start from $3,500.
Proof before promises
A Raleigh marketing firm wanted to stop selling one-off contractor websites at thin margins and become
We compared the agency’s last six custom contractor builds in 2025 with the first five months of the subscription platform (April to August 2026).
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build hours per site | 34 | 9 | -74% |
| Days from signup to launch | 31 | 8 | -74% |
| Sites launched per month | 2 | 9 | +350% |
| Care hours per site per month | 1.6 | 0.4 | -75% |
| Monthly cancellation rate | 3.5% | 1.4% | -2.1 pts |
A Brooklyn design studio had built an architecture firm’s original Squarespace site in 2021. Four years
We compared the 56 days before launch with the 56 days after launch. We also confirmed that late fall is not a seasonal peak for the firm’s inquiries.
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project inquiries (56 days) | 46 | 68 | +48% |
| Average portfolio pages viewed per session | 2.3 | 4.1 | +78% |
| Minutes to publish a new project | 120 | 25 | -79% |
| Median mobile LCP on project pages, lab (seconds) | 6.2s | 2.1s | -66% |
| Projects published in the period | 2 | 7 | +250% |
A Seattle content marketing agency serving B2B SaaS companies had 140 open WordPress tickets across nine
We compared Q4 2025, before the engagement, with Q2 2026, the second full quarter with the dedicated developer.
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open WordPress tickets (end of period) | 140 | 12 | -91% |
| Median ticket turnaround (business days) | 4.8 | 1.0 | -79% |
| Tickets closed per quarter | 96 | 241 | +151% |
| Missed content publish dates per quarter | 17 | 2 | -88% |
| Pages built by writers without a ticket | 0 | 63 | +63 |
A Repeatable Workflow
Bring a client brief, an approved Figma file, or a project your internal team cannot take on right now. We will scope the work, identify dependencies, and tell you what it would take to deliver it under your brand.
