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Need honest opinion - Is webflow good for larger sites?

#1

I need to redo my ecommerce site which is roughly 200 pages. I know basic HTML/CSS and usually use WYSIWYG editors. I tried using Adobe Muse but decided its more geared for smaller sites. I've also tried nearly every major ecommerce builder out there however they are restricting or require extensive programming experience to make any substantive changes. I found an add on shopping cart with snippets that will work fine for my needs.

Will Webflow work for my purposes? My concern is that most of the sites I see built with Webflow feature a simple navigation or are under 10 pages in total. I am also concerned about Webflow's complete lack of template features. I can't imagine having to change promotion verbiage, for example, on 150 or more pages by hand.

Is Webflow more of a prototype and mock-up tool? Or could I use it from start to finish for my lager site?

Perhaps someone knows of an ecommerce or multi-page site built with Webflow?

Thanks in advance for your help. I just don' want to waste my time if this is not a good fit for my needs.

-Brian

#2

I would contact webflow@support to see if your project is right for the tool. :grinning:

#3

This isn't true.

Symbols.

It's a full design suite, you can use it on as large a project as you can imagine, it enhances your abilities, doesn't limit them.

Check the Discover tab.

#4

Thanks for the feedback JW. I did peruse the templates and user showcase and I didn't see any large sites, hence my question. I like Muse my issue is that it can be very time consuming to make changes and updates. For example, say you decided to change the font and size of all your headers. With Muse your entire layout would need to be updated, above and below the element. All from a simple change. That's the obvious downside of pixel perfect design.

It might help if I added my website: www.omega-direct.com

Keep in mind this is the old, out date version. The new site would basically have the same layout however updated in design and responsiveness.

Thanks!

BTW, I wanted to add that Webflow looks phenomenal. I just wonder if its the best for my needs.

-Brian

#5

@Bghead8che

http://help.webflow.com

  • huge site
  • Updated daily
  • multiple content editors

Built on Webflow, maintained on Webflow and hosted on Webflow :slightly_smiling:

#6

Nice one Pixel Geek. :wink:

I'm sure there is a large site out there somewhere built with Webflow, outside of Webflow. Maybe I need to be a pioneer?

-Brian

#7

I think you should use shopify since you have a lot of products. You can design your entire site in webflow but you will need help from a developer to port your design in to shopify.

#8

With Shopify you pay credit card fees plus 2% per transaction. Over 5% per transaction. Love Shopify, hate their pricing.

#9

You are handling very sensitive information so you need the best and most secure platform and open source platforms cost a lot of money to maintain.

The shopify fees you pay are small for what you get.

#10

I can see it working for some people. No doubt.

#11

Webflow is a great tool, it could be used to build an expansive site for sure, but I wouldnt use it for ecommerce - thats a different ballgame. there is a limit on the amount of collections you can create in the cms, making a multilingual site is not really addressed yet, its not set up for managing payments - you would need to integrate lots of external add ons. There arent any ecommerce solutions as easy to use as Webflow either - regards altering the design - for best designed templates I would say shopify - it will cost though - and you need to know code to alter them.

Regards design though - I would say for a shopping site its all about the photography, so I wouldnt get to bothered about being able to adjust a pre made template - IF your coding skills arent up to it. A fluid, robust payment system is the most important thing. Shopify is weak on languages if thats an issue.

For language support OpenCart Ive found to be the best - I made a 4 language site a while back - you can find a good template on themeforest and take it from there. But the crunch with shopping sites is traffic, unless you are a big brand, I would consider a shopping platform like etsy/dawanda/folksy - or a more specialist one depending on what you are selling. On etsy now you can also create your own shop with your own domain that crawls your etsy shop and populates the site with the products. Styling is limited, yet minimal, so again - all about the photography - but you get the best of both worlds then - a site and traffic.

I would NOT recommend Woo commerce and wordpress, loads of hidden costs, and endless updates - slow and cumbersome - I know through my own experience! dont go there. Open cart now have something called opencart lite - look into that perhaps. what else Business Catalyst - with muse even - again, tried it, dont go there, just another adobe half arsed attempt at staying relevant.

I been on this journey a while now, Webflow is the best ive found for a designer - that and learning to code. a shopping cart solution that is as design friendly as Webflow is probably a few years away, but definately something thats needs to be made. Good luck.

#12

Try looking at http://trends.builtwith.com/. There you can find out which sites use webflow but you have to register for the unlimited list. Im not registered so it shows only 5 random sites but this one was more on the complex side http://boundtreeuniversity.com/.

#13

I'm about to launch http://wesandgold.webflow.io for a client, which is somewhat more expansive than a lot of webflow sites I've seen. There are a lot of things in webflow that made this actually really easy to do. it's not perfect, but I'm pretty happy and the client couldn't believe my turnaround time. There are definitely some limitations in regards to ecommerce, but in this particular case the client wanted an order form, not a payment process. Payment almost would have been easier to implement using shopkick or something.

#14

hey. I really like some of those rings.

#15

boundtree doesn't appear to be webflow ?

#16

Use Ecwid for the ecommerce portion of your site. Problem solved.

#17

Their old site is archive.wesandgold.com to see what they were working with. They already had so many wicked ring photos, they really just need to be displayed big and bold methinks.

#18

Woocommerce powers over 35% of all online stores, and doesn't have to cost alot if you do enough research.

#19

You're not using Muse correctly. Set your type/paragraph styles before you start the site design using the Paragraph Styles panel, then apply that style to all your headers as necessary. When you need to adjust all those headers you just adjust the style that you made. Regardless, Webflow is better.

#20

The ability for webflow to take on a larger site really depends on how large your site is (number of SKU's) and your e commerce platform of choice. I am currently designing an entire e commerce site with over 50,000 SKU's in webflow to be ported over to shopify. Keep in mind shopify will not be embedded, we will be using the design from webflow to import into shopify's liquid code base. If you are interested in a template based site that looks good and is responsive, I suggest just looking at pre built premium shopify themes. They allow a lot of customizability and can be modified by a developer.

https://themes.shopify.com
http://www.templatemonster.com/shopify-themes.php
http://line25.com/articles/100-premium-shopify-themes-for-ecommerce-stores