Groupe Potel et Chabot

—An empire of French event gastronomy

Groupe Potel et Chabot is France's leading luxury event catering group. A subsidiary of the Accor Group, it orchestrates hundreds of prestigious events each year — from gala dinners at Place Vendôme to receptions at Parc des Princes, weddings at Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, and international congresses in Geneva.

The Group is built around three complementary Houses:

• Potel et Chabot — The founding House, over 200 years of French gastronomy excellence (since 1820)
• SaintClair — Contemporary and creative gastronomy, led by Executive Chef Sabrina Théodon, with its PetitClair range for large-scale events
• Dalloyau — Iconic French pastry institution founded in 1682, recently acquired by the Group

The challenge was clear: unite these three Houses under a single digital platform worthy of the brand's standards, while absorbing a complex domain migration and making the site 100% manageable by the marketing team.

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01 — High-risk multi-domain SEO migration

The project involved consolidating 7 custom domains under a single Webflow site:

• poteletchabot.com / www.poteletchabot.com
• groupepoteletchabot.com / www.groupepoteletchabot.com
• saintclair.com / www.saintclair.com
• en.poteletchabot.com

Each domain had its own SEO history. The goal was to merge domain authority, implement an exhaustive 301 redirect plan, and preserve acquired rankings — all without losing a single indexed URL.

02 — Massive content volume to structure

The Group covers a wide content spectrum: exceptional Parisian venues, catering services, international destinations, trades and expertise, news, press releases, FAQ, sports projects... Each content type has its own requirements (image galleries, PDF files, videos, cross-references).

The challenge: design a custom CMS architecture enabling the marketing team to manage all content in complete autonomy, without technical intervention.

03 — Creating a digital experience worthy of luxury

How do you translate the sensory experience of a Potel et Chabot dinner onto screen? The site had to embody the brand values — elegance, precision, discretion — while ensuring smooth navigation and flawless performance. All in both French and English.

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A project of this scope cannot be improvised. Each phase was structured to guarantee a controlled delivery, preserved SEO, and a client made 100% autonomous from launch day.

Phase 1 — Development: Webflow Build, Integrations & CMS

—CMS Architecture Design

Before opening Webflow, work began with an exhaustive audit of existing content across the Group's legacy sites. The goal: identify every content type, its attributes, its relationships with other content, and its display requirements on the front-end.

This mapping work resulted in the design of 21 interconnected CMS collections, organized with a color-coded system by content universe to facilitate back-office navigation:

• 🟦 Venues & Sub-Spaces
• 🟪 Services
• 🟨 Destinations
• 🟧 Trades & Trade Details
• 🟩 The Houses
• 🔴 Articles, Categories & Authors
• 🟣 Press Releases
• ❓ FAQ & FAQ Categories
• 🟫 Histories (Potel et Chabot + Dalloyau)
• 🎬 Dedicated slider collections (Gastronomy, Achievements)
• ⚽️ Sports & Entertainment Projects

Each collection was built with extreme granularity. Take the Venues collection, with over 20 structured fields:

• Dedicated SEO fields (Meta Title, Meta Description, OG Image) directly editable by the marketing team
• Factual venue data (Address, Capacity, Area, Number of rooms, Terrace, Auditorium) enabling automated technical sheets
• A MultiImage gallery supporting up to 25 photos per venue
• A Plan PDF field allowing visitors to download the venue floor plan
• A Next Venue (Reference) field automatically feeding the "Discover next" block — creating internal SEO linking without manual intervention
• A FAQ Category (Reference) connecting each venue to its frequently asked questions, displayed dynamically
• A Position (Number) field to control display order

This same rigor was applied to every collection. The Articles collection features a complete editorial system: Author, Category, Next Article (internal linking), Reading Time, Image Layout (left/right), and dual Body + Body 2 fields separated by an image gallery. The Trade Details collection introduces a double reference — to both Trades (parent) AND The Houses — creating a cross-matrix enabling displays like "Pastry at Dalloyau" or "Service at Potel et Chabot".

—HelpText Writing: Turning the CMS into a Self-Guided Tool

One of the project's most important investments — and least visible — was writing custom helpTexts in French for every CMS field. Over 120 fields were documented directly in the Webflow interface:

"Title displayed in Google results and browser tabs. Ideally 50-60 characters."

"Parent venue this sub-space belongs to. Choose from the Venues collection (e.g.: Hôtel d'Évreux)."

"Suggested 'read next' article at the bottom of the page. Choose another article from the list."

"Image displayed when sharing on social media. If empty, a default image will be used."

This work eliminates all ambiguity. The marketing team never needs to guess what a field expects: the answer is right there, in context.

—Front-end Integrations

Development combined Webflow's native capabilities with targeted JavaScript libraries:

• Lenis (Smooth Scroll) — Fluid, controlled scrolling compatible with anchors, Webflow interactions, and keyboard navigation
• Swiper JS (Complex Sliders) — Advanced carousels fed by 3 dedicated CMS collections, with a synchronized Grayscale-to-color hover effect for a signature visual interaction
• Schema.org Structured Data — OrganizationWebSiteSchema (Google Knowledge Panel) + FAQPageSchema (FAQ rich snippets)
• Dynamic CMS-driven SEO — Each CMS item automatically generates its own <title>, <meta description>, and Open Graph tags

—Bilingual Localization

The site was configured with Webflow Localization:

• French (France) as primary language, served on /
• English (United States) as secondary language, served on /en/

Each page has independently translated SEO tags — not duplicated automatic translations, but meta titles and descriptions written specifically for each language market.

Phase 2 — Migration: 301 Redirects Plan & SEO Monitoring

—The challenge: migrating from WordPress to Webflow without SEO damage

The legacy site ran on WordPress, with a URL architecture inherited from years of accumulated content: dated blog articles, orphaned WordPress categories, and a deeply nested structure — sometimes up to 5 levels deep. Example: a single venue page (Pavillon Dauphine) existed under 14 different URLs.

—Mapping and 301 Redirect Plan

Every URL from the legacy site was crawled, inventoried, and manually mapped. The plan of 148 redirects covers six families:

• Venues — Converging two concurrent paths into a single architecture
• SaintClair Content — Intelligent redistribution of case studies, expertise, and services
• Potel et Chabot Content — Splitting into the new multi-house architecture
• WordPress Blog & Categories — Redirecting dated articles and orphaned categories
• English URLs — Redirecting to the localized Webflow version at /en/
• Utility Pages — Contact, press, CSR commitments

—The structural gain: from 5 levels to 2

Shorter URLs, a clear semantic hierarchy for Google, and the disappearance of legacy WordPress structures.

—7 Domain Configuration

—Post-migration Monitoring

• Google Search Console: verification of 148 redirected URLs indexing, crawl error monitoring
• Redirect control: URL-by-URL testing
• Position tracking: monitoring strategic keywords
• Sitemaps: submission of the new unified sitemap, removal of legacy WordPress sitemaps

Phase 3 — Training & Handoff: Making the Client 100% Autonomous

—The philosophy: a delivered site must live without its creator

Most web projects fail after launch, not because of a technical problem, but because the team in charge doesn't know how to maintain the site. For Groupe Potel et Chabot, autonomy wasn't a bonus — it was an absolute requirement.

—Deliverable 1: Custom PDF Guide

A personalized operational manual covering:

• CMS access and navigation (color-coded system by content universe)
• Management of each collection (detailed procedures, image and text best practices)
• Autonomous SEO (Meta Title, Meta Description, OG Image with concrete examples)
• Publishing and updating (complete workflow, Draft vs Published)
• Multilingual management (pitfalls to avoid, translation workflow)
• Specific use cases (adding venues with sub-spaces, articles with galleries, FAQ linking)

This guide was written in the team's vocabulary, not a developer's.

—Deliverable 2: Video Tutorial Academy

A series of short tutorials (2 to 5 minutes) covering:

• Adding and publishing a new news article
• Creating a new venue page with its sub-spaces
• Updating images in a Gastronomy slider
• Managing FAQ and associating them with venues or trades
• Publishing a press release with downloadable PDF
• Translating a page to English
• Modifying SEO information for an existing page

—Deliverable 3: Post-launch Support

Ongoing support to answer the team's questions, correct data entry errors during onboarding, monitor post-migration SEO performance, and validate CMS workflows in real conditions.

The objective was achieved when the marketing team could publish their own content, in French and English, with optimized SEO, without asking a single technical question.

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—A site that embodies luxury, technically and visually

• 47 pages designed and developed in a deep, logical site architecture
• 21 CMS collections interconnected, forming a true content ecosystem
• 7 domains consolidated under a single platform with preserved SEO post-migration
• 2 languages (FR/EN) with complete SEO localization (meta, OG, content)
• Schema.org structured data maximizing SERP visibility
• 100% client autonomy through integrated helpTexts, PDF guide, and video academy
• An ultra-performant site, fluid and faithful to the brand identity of a luxury event industry leader