9 reasons for loving Webflow as a Website Design Agency
Webflow is a powerful website developer and designer. Our communication design agency loves webflow and strongly advocates it for these reasons.
Everything Design is a Bangalore-based agency with UI/UX and Graphic Designers who specialize in Webflow design and development. As a communication design agency, we love webflow for multiple reasons.
To put it simply, “Webflow closes the gap between what you can imagine and what you can prototype, then bring to life”Marshall Taylor
The quote you just read is from webflow, and we completely agree with it.
Marshall breaks up 14 benefits into four categories: for clients, for designers, for developers, and for the agency itself. And these four are the main stakeholders in any website design and development project. I am including copywriters, SEO specialists, and strategists in the agency team for now 🙂
I am going to share the benefits I noticed after shifting from WordPress to Webflow. In case you’re wondering, I never liked Squarespace or Wix in the first place. They are simply not meant for me.
1. As a communication design agency, we love our peace of mind – so webflow it is
As obvious as it may sound, agency owners have often told me that trouble with clients means more revenue for the agency. Well, don’t get me wrong. As much as we like the revenue, we intend to accomplish that by solving genuine problems for our clients, such as offering business solutions or improving the website for better communication and sales.
And Webflow hits the nail right on the spot!
2. Websites made in webflow just work well, period. Why?
Webflow-websites are capable of self-maintenance. It has zero maintenance and security hassles. It uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing for hosting within which you receive a free SSL certificate, HTTP/2 compliance, backups, sitemaps, password protection, form control, and site search. Not just that, the hostings automatically scale to match the load and handle millions of concurrent visits.
Another underlying reason is that webflow, unlike WordPress, does not depend on plugins. Trust me, plugins can often turn into a nightmare.
The thing is, plugins have shelf lives. They require (seemingly constant) updates to keep up with the ever-changing web. Plus, plugins can require micromanagement, can behave unpredictably, and support for them can vanish entirely.
A website’s job is to function all the time and do a sales person’s job.
If you think of your website as a salesperson, you’ll begin to think of it as more than just a glorified brochure. You’ll even want it to be better designed since you probably want your sales reps to look good.Entrepreneur
Remember, your website is probably one of your best–if not the best–sales assets you have. If nurture and take care of, it will boost your sales and grow your business, just like a human salesperson.
3. Closes the gap between visual design mocks and the final website
As a Design Manager, I’ve dealt with this too frequently in the past. To put things into perspective, let me walk you through the stages of website development.
It all starts with a client’s unreasonable deadline; let’s talk about the budget later.
Time for research – find references, benchmarks, dream, think wild, think small, etc.
Time for Strategy – toss about jargon like holistic design and come up with a design from Behance with little to no connection with the research or business for which you are creating the website. It then enters the stage of argument amongst the Design Manager, Strategist, UI Designer, UX Designer, Visual Designer, and N number of Designers 😂
Time for the presentation – more jargon. A mood board that the client doesn’t understand, yet the feedback starts to pour in.
Design Time – Low fidelity, mid-fidelity, high fidelity, and so on, with additional disagreement between managers and designers. Then there’s client feedback. Now it’s SEO vs creative copywriting. Phew!
Long story short, let’s say we finally have a design that actually works for the business. Then comes the time for the actual development.
The design looks good, and the interactions are amazing, however, the development team would require a five-member team with JavaScript and CSS experience to finish the project in this tight timeline.
Did I mention we’re on a limited budget? This leaves us with a quick solution: create a simple website that the developer can complete within the time and budget.
Finally, all of the effort and time spent on a design never comes alive. This is something that happens a lot of the time.
PS – I’m not suggesting this is how everyone does it or that we can’t get pixel perfection with WordPress or any other platform, but that it’s not an easy task. However, with Webflow, you close this gap just fine.
You can read 100s of case studies on the webflow website itself, where people were able to close the gap between design and development.
4. 10% design and 90% coding to 95% design and 5% coding.
Webflow prototyping and development provide designers immediate access to the final product, changing the current design-development paradigm and allowing designers to unleash their creativity directly to the web, without any mediation.
This is a significant benefit for any designer, as it allows them to provide the finest potential solution for their clients.
I would say it’s more to do with the confidence webflow gives to the team.
What Does it Actually Take for Designers and Engineers to Work Together in Perfect Harmony?
I think webflow and no code revolution, in general, are making this seamless.
If you are a business owner, technically, you don’t care if it’s built on wordpress or webflow or wix, you just need the website to do its job. And what you see is the front end, so why not focus 95% on the front end. A crappy code can definitely break your website, and that’s where webflow comes to your rescue.
5. Everything gets done faster.
Who doesn’t like to get things done faster? Everyone is demanding faster solutions, faster iterations, and faster feedback, and webflow is an enabler.
Airtable, Coda, Notion, Webflow, Zapier, Zoho, Shopify – they are all enabling people to achieve more, faster.
We’ve saved thousands in the last few months since switching from WordPress to Webflow. Now my team can make changes in 20 minutes that would have taken an expensive programmer 4-5 hours. – SARAH SMITH, MARKETING OPERATIONS MANAGER, RAKUTEN SUPER LOGISTICS
6. No more updates which break websites
I know I already discussed this initially, the 1st point – having peace of mind. But I can’t tell how peaceful I am now and how many times I have broken sites in the past. Maybe I was careless, but that is not the point.
Human error is usually the result of poor design. Designers blame the users when something goes wrong, but in a way, they are blaming their designs. Blaming the person won’t fix the problem as the same mistake is likely to be repeated by someone else. Of course, people make errors. – UX Planet
WordPress requires regular updates. All the plugins need their own updates. Many times it takes them time to do the update. Hence there will be compatibility issues. End of the day, for any business owner, a broken website is the last thing they want to worry about. It is expected to just be live all the time.
7. Security
Rakuten Global approved Webflow as the “most secure option” among all the alternatives the team brought forward, which made the decision even easier – Casestudy of Rakuten
If a company like Rakuten says that, I don’t think I need to say anything else.
8. Faster page loads
Webflow comes with performance optimization features to make your site run even faster. You do not depend on any cache plugins, which creates a lot of headaches most of the time. I will expand on this as another benefit.
If your site’s content becomes popular and you receive a lot of attention on social media or other channels, the concentrated surge of traffic might knock your site to its knees. A great success might quickly devolve into a performance disaster.
9. No more cache plugins
Caching is the process of creating and serving a static version of your content.
Clearing cache every time you make an update and thus breaking a lot of things is a common problem with WordPress. Again it comes down to peace of mind.
List of cache plugin troubles I have encountered so far:
- Over-caching
Most caching plugins offer many features to help speed up your site, and it’s very tempting to check all the boxes. It requires a certain level of expertise to know which features to utilize without damaging your site.
- Not seeing changes in the front-end.
If you over-cache your site, changes to posts or pages may not appear in the site’s front-end.
- Minification
Many caching plugins offer to minify your CSS, JS, and HTML.
While compressing these files can help with site speed, it can also break the styling or functionality on your site. Yikes!
Figuring out how much to cache your site can be a delicate balancing act.
- Under-caching
Under caching could result in the site still using too many resources and not improving the site’s performance.
Bonus:
Designers are in control
A lot of designers don’t do logical thinking. They are not supposed to (I can’t believe I am saying this); that is why they are good at what they are doing.
“The fatal issue is that logic always gets you to exactly the same place as your competitors.” – Rory Sutherland
As designers are in control of the actual execution in terms of interactions and many other things they are good at, if they can visualize it in their minds, they can execute it. Which is very difficult when you are working with a developer who does not understand design.
This control gives them the confidence to think more creatively. I am not just in terms of visual design, overall website.
Finally, the output will be much better.
We are now able to deliver better outputs, and it is only going to get better.
Webflow needs less specialization—no more broken chains of communication between the designer and developer.
Conclusion
Webflow is an asset for our agency, which we happened to discover early. It is an enabler that aids productivity, innovation and saves time.
In this ever-changing market dynamics, webflow helps us stay relevant, competitive and allows agency owners peace of mind. The capabilities and possibilities offered by webflow surpass any other website builder’s and coding no more remains a limitation.
Webflow websites we have build
Looking for webflow website designer in Bangalore to scale your business?
Everything Design is a Bangalore-based webflow design agency and we have an amazing team of website developers, UI/UX, and graphics designers. We talk and walk design and are always excited to take up new projects.
Saurabh Chakradhari
Your go-to for technical queries, with engineering expertise, analytical thinking, and clear communication.