You’re Giving Me Spaghetti When You Need Lasagna

Website Optimization, why Triage Helps - But Sometimes You Need a Rebuild...

When Triage Works — And When It Really, Really Doesn’t

A triage project is the “stabilise now, rebuild later” approach. You fix the obvious issues, streamline the UX, improve indexing, clarify messaging - enough to stop the bleeding and buy time.

Triage is great when:

◼️ The platform itself is solid

◼️ The site is just disorganised, not fundamentally flawed

◼️ The content is salvageable

◼️ You’re preparing for a future rebuild but need results now

But sometimes?
Triage becomes a money pit with nicer bandages.

Some sites are too tangled, too outdated, or too structurally broken to optimise into success.
If your platform fights you every time you try to improve it - that’s not a triage problem, that’s a rebuild problem. You can sprinkle herbs on spaghetti, but it still won’t become lasagna.

You need layers, structure, intention, and scalability.

**A Word on WordPress

(And Why I Approach It With Educated Caution)**

Let’s be clear:
I don’t dislike WordPress. I simply have educated caution. Years of audits, rescues, and rebuilds have taught me that

WordPress can be powerful... if:

◼️ It’s built well

◼️ It’s maintained consistently

◼️ Plugins are kept in check

◼️ Hosting is good

◼️ The build isn’t a patchwork of theme-builder layers

But too often, I’m brought into sites that look like:

💀 47 active plugins

💀 Three abandoned page builders stacked on top of each other

💀 Conflicting SEO plugins

💀 Slow hosting

💀 A checkout that breaks if Mercury is in retrograde

WordPress is not the problem. How it’s used often is. For SMEs with modest needs? Fine.

For scale, performance, enterprise logic or reliability?
Not usually the best fit.

That’s why myself and team approach it with educated caution — not disdain, not fear, just realism.

Platform Choices: What’s Best for Who?

Below is the straightforward, no-nonsense breakdown your marketing director, business owner, or board loves because it skips the fluff. Of course there are so many other web builders and custom options out there depending on needs for content delivery. Below is our run-down of our top picks currently.

Enterprise Platforms

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)

Best for: Multi-brand enterprises, complex digital ecosystems
Pros: Robust, integrated, enterprise-grade
Pitfalls: High cost + heavy maintenance

Sitecore

Best for: Enterprise marketing teams needing personalisation
Pros: Deep automation, segmentation
Pitfalls: Requires skilled internal team + budget

Sanity (Headless CMS)

Best for: Enterprises needing structured content across apps, sites, and platforms
Pros: Infinite flexibility, developer-first, truly future-proof
Pitfalls: Requires engineering resources; not plug-and-play

Webflow Enterprise

Best for: Modern marketing sites needing speed, reliability, brand control
Pros: Fast, clean, secure, no plugin drama
Pitfalls: Not ideal for large e-commerce or deeply custom logic

Shopify Plus

Best for: International high-volume retailers
Pros: Bulletproof checkout, global scaling, security
Pitfalls: Custom work becomes expensive

SME Platforms

Duda

Best for: SMEs, Agencies running many sites, Multi-location/franchise businesses
Pros: Ultra-fast, secure, zero plugin headaches, multi-site control
Pitfalls: Can be limited for complex custom functionality or deep integrations, but

sub-domains can be used for e.g a shop platform

Webflow

Best for: Professional services, SMEs, high-design brands
Pros: Fast, structured, low-maintenance
Pitfalls: Poor builds still create technical debt

Squarespace

Best for: Small shops, hospitality, creatives
Pros: Easy, reliable, elegant
Pitfalls: Limited flexibility for scale

Shopify (Standard)

Best for: Product-based SMEs
Pros: Stable, user-friendly, great product SEO
Pitfalls: Customization requires devs and once you move out of the box will need to retain a good developer and hopefully the one who deployed the customization.

WordPress (Use with Educated Caution)

Best for: Content-heavy sites with dev support
Pros: Flexible, familiar
Pitfalls: High maintenance, plugin bloat, performance inconsistencies

Best E-Commerce Platforms for SEO

Any good SEO worth their salt can add optimized SEO to any platform - below are some off the shelf platforms we rate. That said, I see so much developers

⭐ Shopify

Fast, stable, structured — the safest choice for most retailers.

⭐ Shopify Plus

Enterprise-level e-commerce with global scaling and customisation.

⭐ Headless Shopify + Sanity

The gold standard for advanced SEO, multi-language, multi-region, and programmatic content.

⭐ Webflow E-Commerce

Beautiful, clean, ideal for curated shops or lifestyle brands.

⭐ WooCommerce (With Educated Caution)

Flexible but dependent on clean development and strong hosting — otherwise slow.

⭐ Squarespace Commerce

Good for micro-retailers, not for large catalogues.

⭐ Framer (Via Integration)

Great for small shops using buy buttons or simple catalogues — not suited for scale.

Data Migration vs Rebuild — How to Decide

Migration makes sense when:

✔️ Content is valuable

✔️ Structure is okay

✔️ You’re moving to a better platform

Rebuild makes sense when:

🛠️ UX is outdated

🛠️ Architecture is broken

🛠️ Technical debt is massive

🛠️ Performance is consistently poor

🛠️ Growth is impossible on the current stack

🛠️ Sometimes the bold choice is the smart choice.

Triage or Rebuild? That’s Where We Come In.

At Nuance Collaborative, we’ve helped businesses across industries untangle digital spaghetti and when needed design & build the clean, modern lasagna they actually need.

◼️ We don’t sell platforms.
◼️ We don’t push band-aids.

We give you the clarity everyone else avoids.

◼️ If your site needs triage, we’ll tell you.

◼️ If it needs a rebuild, we’ll explain why — with evidence, not ego.

◼️ If migration is the smartest route, we’ll map it clearly.

Need an honest opinion? Let’s cut through the noise.

Book a consultancy session and get a clear, unbiased evaluation of your platform, structure, SEO, UX, and scalability. Because the right digital foundation doesn’t just perform better, it makes everything else easier.