For many years WordPress has been my go-to platform for web design, It’s hard to beat such a robust infrastructure, but WordPress does come with some concessions when it comes to speed, design limitations, and ongoing maintenance needs. In 2023, Webflow has become the answer to those problems. I would like to begin by stating that Webflow doesn’t make sense for all websites, if your website has requirements for certain functions like booking or e-commerce, you may want to stick to WordPress or Shopify. If your website is primarily for information, media, and lead generation, you are a perfect candidate for Webflow and I would 100% recumbent giving it a try for a less restricted, simpler, and faster experience.
Webflow is the best way to build a website. It uses sections, containers, and classes to organize your project. You can use built-in elements to build structures. This completely frees you from the restricted nature of themes that other platforms like WordPress, Wix, and Shopify use. As a result, you build on a clean canvas, almost like designing in XD or Illustrator. My favorite example of what’s possible in Webflow is the variety of animations you can apply. You are no longer restricted by preset animations, but instead, have access to a control panel that works very similarly to a timeline and keyframes interface. This allows you to customize every detail of the animation from the rate to the path, even the trigger. Customizing animations will set your website apart in a big way, and can even be used to control how and when visitors see certain information. Aside from animation, Webflow allows you customization at custom breakpoints, making your website far more responsive to more screen sizes. You can choose any pixel ratio, allowing you to specifically correct layout issues happening on specific screen sizes.
Webflow is all about simplifying everything while also giving you finite control, this is due to the use of classes in the builder. By using classes, you can set styles for things like the size and style of sections that will be used throughout your website.
This allows you to define style to a common section, and use it again and again by placing a section and calling the class, then if you decide to make a change to the style of that section, you can make it in one place on the site and have it change in all instances of that class across the site. If you instead want to make a customization to one section, you can define a subclass and leave all the other instances of your class the way they were. Webflow also does not use plugins, this is the reason it is best for information and media over function. While not using plugins may limit what you can do with your website, it also limits the amount of maintenance needed to keep your site healthy. There are no plugins so there is nothing to update or patch, and therefore requires fewer platform updates as well.
One thing that makes Webflow stand out is how fast your website will load. This is because, as I've been explaining, Webflow builds websites the way a programmer would code them. This means that the code the builder creates is very clean and lightweight. If you build your website correctly, it will run extremely fast—faster than if you built it in WordPress or any other builder. This will improve your user experience and decrease the bounce rate, as well as help with SEO. The freedom to design your website is great, but it also eliminates the need for 3rd party builders like Elementor. This makes for a more efficient website. All of these factors add up to a very light, very efficient website and load times as you have never seen. Our team recently launched our first site in Webflow and we are hooked!mintcompetitors.com was a site that constantly suffered from unnecessary low page speed errors and all of the other built-in problems of WordPress. We rebuilt the site to see what Webflow could do for it and MAN, you almost need a racetrack to safely load this website now; it is FAST! https://youtu.be/NolhjD8itIE
Here’s to the first launch of many, Thank you tomintcompetitors.com for fearlessly being the first of our clients to try Webflow, I hope you reap all the rewards of your new high-performance website.
https://youtu.be/cCKDPxJrH9c
