Webflow Advantages for No-code Web Design A Case Study

Web flow is a visual development platform that allows anybody to develop custom websites with a very high level of control over their building blocks. The another website builder,” you may say. Well…yes and no. You can use Web flow as a typical drag & drop template customizer; that’s the “yes” part. 

Yet, it allows you to create unique website experiences for various customers and avoid relying on templates. You can use it and other no-code solutions to create something more complex. Web flow use cases could be a topic for another article, but you can learn more about them here.

What is web flow?

Web flow is the next-generation cloud-based Content Management System (CMS) or web publishing system. Webflow is suitable for most websites, minimizes maintenance, and maximizes reliability. Web flow is a fully dynamic cloud-based CMS that gives enormous freedom to build great-looking, dynamic websites that are reliable and require much less maintenance than WordPress. Webflow is 100% cloud-based, and all development uses a browser-based tool. Though it should not be mistaken for a simple tool, all the power of code-based platforms is still available. This means that Web flow still requires deep knowledge of web development but with little to no coding – a trustworthy No Code platform for web development.

Web flow is excellent when you want to build exciting websites that highlight the brand because the no-code web design tool simplifies the implementation of web design to the front end. The step from idea to final product is quicker since it is easier and faster to design for different screen sizes with a flow box, a visual tool in web flow. This is in contrast to writing code, which is more time-consuming. Of course, you can also build beautiful websites in WordPress; it just takes more time.

What is this benefits of Web flow, and why should we talk about it?

Many designers who do not have a coding background feel intimidated to try out Web flow. It may seem too technical and challenging at the beginning. Designers spent hours talking with different friends about Web flow, and that was the case for many of them.

More Realistic Designs

This has been a big one for designers. Using Webflow taught designers how to think like designers during the design stage. Before learning Webflow, many newbie designers sometimes learn from other designers that some stuff they design may be tricky to code. While this can also be true today, they can now spot many such issues earlier.

Once you have developed a few websites, you will start having “how they would develop this” moments during the design stage.

This enables you as a designer to think a few steps ahead and build more scalable solutions. You will also ship faster and improve your relationships with developers. Designers would say that’s pretty useful.

You may find me talking a lot about Webflow as a way of building a bridge between design and development in general. We cannot make this bridge without understanding each other’s work.

Responsive Web Design Better

Of course, this one may not apply to all designers. There is a good chance many of them already have an awesome understanding of responsive design. Yet, designers often notice a noticeable shift in their approach to responsive web design after learning to structure a website in Webflow to make the designs scalable.

Designers often design our “happy path website” on a 1440 or 1680px wide artboard. Then they throw in that ultimate 12-column grid and watch it get perfectly aligned. Their design ego is happy. They may also design a mobile version or a few additional versions on different screens. 

That ultimately leaves developers to figure out the parts in between for themselves. They can sometimes make life more complicated than it needs to be with our grid systems. We can also be unnecessarily picky about this or that thing being a pixel-off.

Regardless of the techniques they may use, developing responsive websites in Webflow has been a great way for designers to get out of the “one artboard box.” Designers focus more on alignment and scalability rather than on complex grid systems. Learning Webflow also informs designers of what is a natural way of breaking things down on smaller devices. 

Code in a Fun Way

Designers agree that it is good to know the basics of frontend development. They often communicate better with developers and produce more realistic designs. Yet, learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can sometimes be a long and theoretical journey. Designers are visual people. It will be challenging and practical for them to know inside a code editor without a live preview using a few rectangles instead of actual content.

If you were to take one thing from this article, it would be this: you do code in Webflow and don’t worry about the syntax in most cases.

You may have heard that web flow is a no-code tool website builder. The term no-code might wrongly suggest that no code is involved in using the product. To designers, it’s better to think about Webflow as a “code tool where they don’t have to write your brackets and semicolons.” Webflow does that very smartly by incorporating HTML/CSS language into the interface. If you want your stuff centred, use CSS solutions: flexbox, margin: auto, etc., instead of the ultimate button called “centre.”

Improve Your Relationships with Developers

Developers generally see a designer who knows how to code a website as a positive and unexpected surprise. Although it is expected to see HTML/CSS/JS as an additional nice-to-have skill for a designer, many designers will barely scratch the surface and move on to focus on more design-related topics. After all, it is logical that designers mainly focus on improving their design skills first,

Learning Webflow helps you to gain this nice-to-have skill efficiently. After that, your conversations with developers often go to a different level.

Knowing your way around coding websites allows you to start using the language developers use. For any frontend developer, the difference between a frontend designer who knows frontend basics theoretically and one who knows how to build stuff with this knowledge and understands its logic is straightforward to spot.

Adds Value to Your Skillset

There are some differences between the original project and its coded version. This difference can be minimal when designers work with great and attentive developers, but they rely only on their skills and approach here. If designers make a mistake, they have nobody else to correct it!

A different understanding of a website and its parts. Developers rarely attend all the client requirements meetings or strategy sessions where the goals of web applications solutions are discussed. As a result, they will need more overall context, which can lead to wrong assumptions during the development stage.

Now, if you know how to build a website and can develop it quickly and identically to the project, that is a significant value on many levels. It eliminates some or all of the points above. If you are a freelancer, it allows you to raise your rates. After all, you are doing design and development work now. You can also work with a more significant number of clients. Some clients will always look for a designer & developer in one person straightaway to cut the delivery time.

Of course, web flow is not the ultimate answer for building every type of website on the Internet. It has several important limitations for websites that need to be heavily content-driven.

Why Use Webflow

Eliminating code for web development can realize countless business benefits. Unlike substandard DIY web design tools, Webflow provides a compelling solution suitable for most professional web design needs. The platform keeps evolving, and more exciting developments are on the way.

Most designers can design and launch a company website with Webflow in less than two months. Webflow provides unprecedented flexibility in the design process, offering more creative control without worrying about the code. 

The rapid, no-code web design workflow provided a faster path to launch and lowered production costs by half vs. traditional web development. While only one designer at a time can make changes to a project in Webflow, multiple designers can have seats under a team account and work on different parts of a project at other times.

The learning curve is not steep. With tutorials, you can master all the ins and outs of Webflow in a few weeks—enough to start putting a fully-fledged website together. Once designers learn Webflow’s best practices, they may never return to traditional web development.

No-code web design tools are here to stay. The value and flexibility they provide are unquestionable. The no-code movement rests upon the fundamental belief that technology should enable and facilitate creation, not be a barrier to entry. Webflow allows designers to design and build elaborate products in less time. It helps designers keep up with the speed of business and opens up a world of opportunity for those who can’t code.

Conclusion

Of course, learning code besides Webflow is needed and worth exploring anyway. Yet it may be easier and more encouraging for designers to learn it through Webflow first. Overall, it may be easier to grasp, more visual, and quicker to put that knowledge into practical use in real-world projects.

Learning and using Webflow has been a tremendous continuing journey for web application development company designers. It allows designers to change the approach and perception of building websites. It also makes them aware of many development challenges they had not expected before. It increased their value as a design professional.

It is a great joy to build a working product instead of a prototype, even if it’s just an essential website sometimes.

And one last closing thing for all non-coders: there is no need to fear jumping into Webflow or learning code. Sure, it takes time, and it’s harder to grasp upfront than learning design software, but it is not rocket science that it takes years to start understanding.

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