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What A Custom Webflow Site Can Do For Your Business
We explore some of the main benefits of investing in such a site and what you can expect from one.
In previous articles, we talked about the essential questions around getting a new website and described our entire web design process.
As we showed in these articles, finding the best approach to a modern, fast, reliable and cost-effective website for your business can be a daunting task. There are hundreds of options, each with its pros and cons, risks, opportunities and unknowns. Alternatives need to be weighed and trade-offs made.
How can you be certain that you’re setting yourself up for success instead of disappointment? There seems to be advice online, but it’s often too general or contradictory, and you’re not sure if you can trust it. Who can you rely on to help you make the best decision?
As a web agency we are here to guide you and consult you throughout the entire process to ensure the best possible fit to your specific needs. If you are a startup founder, entrepreneur, small business or even an established brand, a high-quality custom-designed site built on Webflow might be the ideal solution for your business.
In this article, we will explore some of the main benefits of investing is such a site and what you can expect from one. Let’s begin!
Perhaps you have heard of popular web design platforms like Wordpress and no-code web builders like Squarespace or Wix. In recent years, they have become a popular way for businesses, especially ones starting out, to try to create a web presence quickly and at a lower cost compared to hiring developers and designers. As we discussed in a previous article, they all have their own specific features, pricing models, pros and cons.
Among those platforms is Webflow, the one that we use to build quality designer websites for our clients. We believe that in many respects it is the best among its peers, an opinion widely shared in the web design community.
It allows for visually stunning, fast, search engine friendly and secure websites to be built that are customizable down to the detail.
We will now look at these main strengths in detail, to show how you can personally benefit from them.
Perhaps the main benefit of Webflow that most appealed to us as web designers was the deep customization that the platform allows. A typical web design process typically involves the cooperation between web designers and developers. The web designers create a visual mock-up of the site, which is then translated by the developers into a functional website.
This “translation”, however, often results in a finished site that is very different from the original design. Sometimes the final product is unrecognizable from the designer’s vision.
A main reason for this is the limitation of the technologies used. This is especially the case with templates, which can often only be adapted to a limited extent to the designer’s vision. Webflow eliminates this problem by allowing for the original design to be realized down to the detail in its visual editor. In it, the designer crafts each element, often from scratch, and can see in a live setting how it interacts with other elements, whether it fits or not, and how it looks on screens of different sizes.
In short, Webflow allows for the web designer’s vision to be realized so that you, the website owner, can benefit from a site that is finely tailored to your preferences.
Related to the question of visual customization is the issue of responsive design. Put simply, a design is responsive if it looks and performs well on multiple device types with varying screen sizes, e.g. desktop, tablet, mobile, etc.
Today’s users more than ever expect a seamless experience with a business’ website across multiple screen sizes. Opening a website on a smartphone, for example, has to be just as fast, pleasant and frictionless as doing so on desktop. If the page loads slowly on mobile because it’s not properly optimized, a potential client might be lost, never to return. If something feels or looks out of place on mobile, e.g. if an image is too large or too small, the site might be perceived as broken by the user and the entire brand might be damaged.
That is why it is an absolute necessity for sites to be adapted to multiple device types, in other words, to be made responsive. On some platforms, that is easier said than done. Sometimes it is even impossible, depending on the case. Once again, Webflow equips designers with the proper tools to ensure that the design is responsive. If done properly, you as the website owner might not even notice that the site has been made responsive. The experience will be seamless.
The most common phrase we hear our clients say when describing the requirements for their new website is “I want the website to be on top of Google’s results”.
What people are referring to when saying this is that they want the website to be search engine optimized, so that it ranks higher in the organic results. Google Search, being the most popular search engine, is the most cited place our clients would like their site to appear.
This is where the term SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, comes in. It includes a list of actions that can be taken to improve the organic ranking of a site in a search engine’s results page. Like most other aspects of a website, the popular web platforms handle SEO differently. Some have built-in (native) SEO capabilities, while others require plugins to be installed to perform it.
Once again, Webflow provides an entire list of built-in SEO capabilities that allow web designers to optimize a website for search engine performance as much as possible, quickly and easily. For example, Webflow supports the use of .webp images, which are lighter and load faster. It also allows for meta descriptions and open graph settings to be set for each page. Think of the preview of a site you see when you send a link to it in a popular messaging app. Typically there is an image, a title and even a short text. Webflow allows the web designer to create these settings for each page of your website.
One aspect of owning and running a website that is frequently overlooked, ignored and poorly understood, especially by first-time site owners, is site security. It seems that every week now cybersecurity and cyberattacks are the cause of major news headlines, for all the wrong reasons. But how can you as a site owner protect your site and business from cyberattacks?
A very important part of the equation is to have an SSL certificate. If you have visited a site that doesn’t have one, you would have likely noticed your browser showing a “not secure” warning next to the address. When such messages are displayed next to your domain name it can easily cause a loss of confidence in your brand. Some users might be turned away. But how do you install an SSL certificate?
Luckily, like many other aspects, Webflow makes this quick and easy. Every site hosted on Webflow comes equipped with a free SSL certificate out of the box. Webflow offers a whole list of other security-related services such as site backup, protection against DDoS attacks, and more. In fact, Webflow’s culture has a definite tilt towards security.
We as a web agency working with Webflow have never had a cybersecurity event with a client’s website.
Finally, web builders differ in terms of pricing.
As with many things in life, what can appear cheap at the beginning can prove expensive in the long run. That is because the different web builder platforms differ not only in their offering, but also in terms of their pricing models. Some operate on a freemium model, some offer basic functionalities for free but charge for important add-ons, and most require a subscription.
In the case of Webflow, the platform offers a tiered pricing list depending on the website’s scale and functionality. It operates on a subscription basis with monthly and yearly payment options. As a site becomes more mature and developed, as it grows in scope and new functionalities are added to it, it will gradually move up the Webflow pricing tiers. For most starter websites, a Beginner subscription is enough. Most of the core features of the platform are included in the price. A notable exception is the localization of the site into multiple languages which is paid on top of the existing subscription as an add-on.
Webflow’s prices are comparable to those of other website builders. We find them reasonable given the quality and convenience of the platform’s offering.
In this article, we have touched on a few of the areas an aspiring business has to consider when planning the launch of a new website. We said that in today’s oversaturated environment, a website needs to be responsive, fast and secure. Moreover, its development and support need to be cost-effective, fast and reliable. In order to make the most of it, the website needs to be highly customizable and future-proof, to be upgraded easily as your business and its requirements expand.
As a web agency we are here to advise you every step of the way in order to make ensure that your new website provides the most value to you and your clients. We achieve this by bringing our web design vision to life on Webflow – one of the leading web builder platforms.
Have a website project? Get in touch today!
