What is Webflow & How to Build Websites With Ease?

Websites remain the #1 digital marketing tool for businesses around the globe. There are 1.14 billion websites worldwide, and approximately 252,000 websites are built daily. That’s roughly 175 sites per minute, almost three sites per second.

Building websites has been streamlined thanks to services such as Webflow. Even though many website builders claim to have achieved advanced design and superb functionality, most of them fall short in these areas. The result: the user ends up drowning in the sea of complex processes. 

Webflow made a revolution of a sort by addressing these issues and making easy-to-use design and development tools that can save you months trying to build a perfect business website. 

The figures you’ve encountered in the first paragraph will likely become even larger by the time you read this article. It means that the website-building market has never been more competitive. All businesses need to be ready to launch their product and services quickly, including saving time in building the website representing them. That’s where Webflow comes into play.

Common Issues When Building a Website

What are the issues with other builders that Webflow managed to solve? Here’s a quick overview.

• Outdated design — Design trends change all the time, and obsolete website designs could negatively impact your business. Redesigning websites could take months, and relying on a website builder also comes with some limits due to poor design options.
• The gap between design and coding — Once a designer creates a website mockup using visual tools, the Webflow developer needs to use code to implement that design. This is often a complex back-and-forth process that takes ages.
• Coding animations and interactions is complex — If you want your site to be more engaging, inserting animated transitions and other visual effects is crucial. Unfortunately, they are difficult to code, and an inexperienced coder could also make them difficult to load, slowing your entire website down. 
• Mobile-unfriendly websites — Nowadays, all websites have to be responsive and adapt to the small screens of mobile phones and tablets. Unfortunately, many website builders fail to provide proper responsiveness for sites, rendering them unusable on the move.
• Limits — Using a website builder comes with various design and development options for websites. For example, you are doomed to work with a limited number of templates with few customization options.

Webflow: Low Code/No Code Web Design and Development Platform

Webflow is a website builder that revolutionized the way we create online experiences. It gives you all the creative freedom to design and develop websites without coding. It means you aren’t constrained by layouts and themes, although you can use one of the Webflow templates to kickstart your site development journey.

In other words, it provides the tools to put your initial idea on paper and develop it into a full-scale product.

All the nuts and bolts of making a successful website are set for you in Webflow, and you need to piece them together. Most of this is done via the drag-and-drop workspace called Webflow Designer.

If you prefer building anything from scratch, you just need to load a new project in Designer and start working your magic. Alternatively, you can use some pre-designed elements, including themes, to speed up the process.

Don’t underestimate the platform’s ease of use, as it’s powerful enough to impress even advanced web designers and developers. It offers various complex components they can adjust and play around with, including tabs, sliders, videos, lightboxes, and more. Some of them are pre-built and ready for use. Moreover, enterprise clients and big startups can entirely customize their online experiences with custom code, SEO schemas, and other customization options.

Advantages of Using Webflow

Webflow became one of the favorite options for creating websites inside and outside the web design and front-end development community. Let’s see some of this platform's main advantages that make it stand out from the pack.

Bringing Together the Visual Design and Coding

Webflow combines HTML, CSS, and JavaScript into a single visual designer where coding isn’t required to make beautiful designs. Experienced web designers or developers can harness the true power of Webflow and spend much less time doing the grunt work. 

Easy-to-Use User Interface

All essential tools in Webflow Designer are easy to reach using the navigator on the left. The right side is reserved for various design options to help you easily fine-tune elements on your Webflow website. 

The interface is laid out so that even complete beginners can get around quickly.

Webflow’s Content Management System

One of the main issues with CMSs such as WordPress is that you require many third-party plugins to optimize your content and make it more user- and SEO-friendly. All such tools are already part of Webflow’s content management system, which lets you easily create and edit the content on your website.

Provides Hosting Plans

In addition to designing and developing your website, Webflow also allows hosting it on one of the servers located around the globe. If you decide to host your site via Webflow, you can expect maximum uptime and speed. The service offers stand-alone hosting plans, with the basic hosting provided for free but running on the webflow.io domain (yoursite.webflow.io).

Why Choose Webflow?

Webflow took a bold step forward in the world of website design and development, offering an excellent Designer tool that connects visual design with coding. Moreover, it takes out many unnecessary steps in the website-building process, helping you quickly come up with robust solutions. Once you have a completed site in your hands, you can use Webflow’s hosting services and access the powerful CMS to organize the content on your web pages.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Webflow?

Webflow is a website-building tool and a hosting solution that connects visual design with development, enabling you to build complex and compelling websites with little to no code. It’s a comprehensive solution that doesn’t limit creativity in any way. On the contrary, it helps you explore creative solutions and push the boundaries of website design.

How to use Webflow?

Using Webflow starts by making a new project in Webflow Designer. It’s an easy process, and Webflow offers free resources for mastering the design and development process. If you just want to have a website built or maintained in Webflow, it’s best to contact a Webflow agency, such as Flow Ninja.

What is Webflow used for?

Webflow is used to design and develop websites, with little to no code used. What makes it unique is the set of tools that streamline the entire process without compromising quality. Webflow users can rely on the service for SEO optimization, easy-to-use CMS, high customization options, various branding capabilities for enterprise websites, accessibility, and, of course, speed.