By Mireille Sampson
You’reprobably familiar with website development platforms WordPress and Shopify—but have you heard of the rapidly growing Webflow platform? It’s a favourite among innovative companies, and many website developers are making the switch to bring Webflow’s benefits to their clients.
Highly flexible platform with many uses
Custom-built websites
UX (user experience) prototypes
Template websites
Custom-built websites are favoured by innovative tech companies and media companies.
“Before we moved to Webflow, updating an existing webpage or adding a new page would take a minimum of three weeks. That degree of rigidity was unsustainable.”
—Tiffaney Fox Quintana, VP of Marketing, HelloSign
HelloSign is an innovative tech company that provides a secure and legally binding eSignatures product. They hired a Webflow developer to create the marketing part of their website in such a way that it could be run by the marketing team. That left their in-house developers free to focus on the product side of their website.
With Webflow, you can have a top-quality, professionally developed website, without having to rely on a developer for future content updates—and security updates are automatic.
Custom-built websites
fit the specific goals of the business
consider the perspective of the website visitor (user experience)
include page layouts built around the business’s unique content.
Webflow’s Content Management System (CMS) is the most flexible on the market, allowing for unparalleled design freedom in the creation of dynamic page layouts. This is valuable for building custom-made websites, especially for media companies, business directories, and companies on the cutting edge of innovation.
Several large media websites have moved to Webflow, including the New York Times, Vice, and TED.
Innovative tech companies and media companies prize excellent SEO in addition to compelling design, because their customers are not just local, they are often national or global. High-quality SEO is necessary to reach those people.
Webflow’s SEO features are varied and useful:
Website hosting is secure, fast and scalable.
Content creation—add new dynamic pages as easily as you fill out a form.
Light-weight and compressed semantic code.
Meta tags are easily edited.
Dynamically generated pages can have automatically defined meta tags.
Indexing and sitemap controls are included.
Simple image alt tag editing for SEO and accessibility.
Robust 301 redirects’ management mean that your visitors won't be served a 404 error page.
UX prototypes are coded and responsive—not static mock-ups.
I’m not just a website developer, I’m a UXer too—that means I do user experience research, design, and testing. Traditionally, UXers designed prototypes in visual design software, making prototypes that look like a website, but are only slightly more interactive than a poster. That’s so last-decade. Now, with Webflow, I can design user interface (UI) elements or full pages, test them with website users, and then export the code—lightweight, production-quality HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—to tech company clients who will integrate the UI code with their existing custom-built website or digital product. Copywriters can even write and edit content in the prototype on the real website design. The prototype is fully interactive, whether it’s being tested on a desktop, tablet, or phone.
Webflow is the prototyping tool of choice at NASA, Salesforce, Pinterest, MTV, and IDEO.
Template websites are great for service business showcase sites.
Are you smart enough to install your own website template? Undoubtedly. Should you? Probably not. A typical custom-built marketing website for a small or medium enterprise (SME) can cost anywhere between two and six thousand dollars. Installing a template yourself looks like the cheap option, but what if tech is not your wheelhouse? It will probably cost you a lot of time and aggravation to install a template, taking you away from running your business—the thing you’rereally good at. Time is money; also, you’re unlikely to be able to customize the template to fit the needs of your specific business—templates rarely fit straight out of the box.
We all know that Google rankings are important, and that means your website must be search engine optimized (SEO). I once searched online for “Webflow Newfoundland” and a construction company was one of the top results. Clearly, a construction company is not building Webflow websites. The website had been made with a template and the installer had not updated the default SEO keywords of the website’s meta tags, so the website did not rank for the correct search words.
The affordable and flexible option that’s best for many SME service companies: have a professional install and customize your template. Why?
Get found on Google (for the right search keywords).
It costs less than a website made from scratch.
The site can be infused with your distinctive visual branding so that you can build your brand recognition.
Sections, pages, or features can be added, deleted, or rearranged to fit your business.
Optimized website navigation and information structure can improve your SEO and user experience.
Professional copywriting can improve your SEO and user experience.
A wide range of service business templates are available on the Webflow template marketplace, including those for construction companies, architectural firms, law firms, accounting firms, interior design companies, veterinarians, consultants, and many more.
Get in touch
Whether you’re looking for a custom website, a UX prototype, or a template website, get a top-quality, professionally developed Webflow website.
I’m an award-winning international artist who has turned my creative skills in a new direction: tech! I’m a user experience (UX) designer and a Webflow developer—and I own and operate User-Friendly Website Design. My not-so-user-friendly name is Mireille (she/her); I’m originally from Stephenville and now live in Corner Brook after 14 years abroad.
Mireille Sampson, 709-703-5001,