Is it Right For You?
Webflow has gained a lot of popularity over the past few years, and a lot of people claim that it is the best tool out there for web design. Some even claim that it will take other companies out of business. However, from personal experience, we can tell you that it is an amazing tool for specific use cases. Webflow is a fantastic tool for branding websites, marketing websites, portfolios, blogs, landing pages, and even small boutique e-commerce websites. What do all of these have in common? They are all websites that would benefit from a highly customized look and style.
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When Should I Avoid Using Webflow?
Although Webflow is excellent for creating custom websites, there are other tools that are better in certain use cases. Webflow is not the best option for large e-commerce websites with many products and currencies. When it comes to ease of use when managing hundreds of products, nothing really beats Shopify. They simply offer more integrations, better payment options, and streamlined software that is designed for product and order management. Webflow is also not the best for media companies with big teams that all have to be working and publishing articles at the same time on the same website. When it comes to large media websites, WordPress is the best out there. Even though Webflow is a great tool for bloggers, WordPress is the best out there for blogging at larger scale.
How Long Does It Take To Learn It?
Its high customization is what makes this tool so unique for designers, but it also happens to be what makes this software a little bit complex to learn in the beginning. However, take into consideration that what this software helps you do is essentially code a website without writing any lines of code. If you ever want to embed code for any advanced integrations, you have the option to do so, but it is not necessary for most websites.
Webflow helps you organize your website into Sections, Containers, Divs, Grids, and so on by simply dragging and dropping elements from the left panel. For this, you will need to learn some basic knowledge of how these elements work together to form a website. If you have some basic HTML knowledge, this will be a breeze. Besides getting to know the different elements that make up a website, you will need to learn how to style each one with the right panel. If you have some knowledge of design software like Sketch, Figma, or Adobe XD, this will be easier to learn. The right panel may seem very complex at first, but once you get enough practice you will learn where to find everything with ease.
Aside from learning about website elements and styling, you will have to learn how to create animations. From our experience, this is the step that takes longer to master. However, you don’t necessarily have to create elaborate animations when you get started. Adding a couple of basic animations will make your website look fully professional.
Elements, styling, and animations are the main topics that you will have to learn to use Webflow. If you understand these, you can essentially build your own website. But there are a number of other skills you can learn to customize your website, such as integrations, CMS (Content Management System), and so on; the possibilities are endless.
So should you learn how to use Webflow?
Our take: Learning Webflow is an ongoing process. Ultimately you have to ask yourself what your goal is with Webflow. You can learn the basics in a couple of days and even build your first basic website in a couple of days. However, mastering Webflow is really a process that takes a lot of practice. We personally think that Webflow is an excellent tool for people who will be building custom websites regularly, but if you are just trying to build a single website, you may be better off going with a more straightforward tool to make the process faster and easier. You also have to consider that your first Webflow websites will probably not be perfect. In our case, our first Webflow websites were simply practice websites that were built as part of the learning process. If you are trying to build a nice website for yourself and it is your first time using Webflow, you may end up with a good number of bugs that you have to fix after the website is complete.
