Top 5 Reasons why Small Businesses Should Switch to Webflow
It’s exciting and scary at the same time. The freedom of owning your own business, working for yourself, and doing things the way you want is the dream for most people.
So you hammer out a business plan, go to the bank, maybe look around at the cool shops for lease downtown and you get the feeling that it’s all coming together. Now with some of the work done and your company open for business the customers should be rushing in the door. But they aren’t, and you’ve drank all the coffee and chewed off all your fingernails.
What did I miss?
Am I too late at grabbing my corner of the market?
Maybe no one wants to buy my stuff?
There are a million questions you ask yourself while laying awake in bed, and it could very well be one or all of the above. Then you have an epiphany… I need a website! I need to sell online!
What happens now is getting to be cliche for the most part, and it goes like this…
Google... web designers near me... find one with some reviews, get an estimate, it's too expensive, I’l do it myself because its easy. Sound about right?
Now that you have a website up and running, and you got all your goodies on there to sell, the magic isn’t happening. Then you go back to asking yourself those same questions I listed above.
Here is where thousands and thousands of small businesses and start-ups find themselves at the beginning. Grabbing a template, dropping in some photos and putting your product online is, in all fairness where everyone starts, and everyone has to start somewhere. But if the value isn’t there, wouldn’t it be better to start somewhere else?
This brings me to the 5 reasons why small businesses should start or switch to Webflow.
1. Webflow developers have a good grasp of how the internet works.
And I don’t mean googling stuff, and typing and clicking (although most devs are professional Googlers lol). What I mean is that they know a bit of code, they know the box model, HTML tags etc. Structuring a website properly is extremely important not only for function, but for scalability; and for SMBs it’s all about scalability right? Sell some stuff, then sell more, introduce new products, increase website traffic etc.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
How your clients find you is pretty much the most important reason to be online in the first place. All those questions running through your mind in the past was because no one knew you existed. Unlike other site builders such as Wordpress, Webflow prioritizes clean code. This ensures that search engines - Google - can index and understand your site easily, which in turn ranks the website and it’s content higher. The best part about this is you don’t even need to be an SEO expert to have this integrated in your site as Webflow contains the tools you need out of the box.
3. Hosting
Most hosting services rely on one server, and that server is in one location. If a client accesses your site on the other side of the globe this means a slow load time as your information bounces around the internet to get to them. For example, riding the bus to school as most of us have. There are a bunch of stops on the way, other traffic slowing down the ride, and alot of noise. This is more or less what your site would experience riding the internet pipeline. On a technical note there are also security vulnerabilities that could potentially be there as well which we will get to in a moment.
Furthermore, on other platforms once your site is done and you’re excited to get online and reach the masses you will have to undertake yet another task and find a provider. This might get confusing, and costly trying to find the right one and even then the process can be daunting for the non-technical people that just want visitors to the site.
Webflow has approached this issue very well by having an intuitive button right in the editor called ‘publish’. That’s it! (kind of), but once the site is published you are online AND you are worldwide. How you may ask? Well Webflow utilizes AWS (Amazon Web Services) which I don’t think I need to explain too much about. Basically your site is everywhere, and quick to load because you have your own private jet to school rather than the bus.
4. Security
I touched on this earlier so I will elaborate a little. Scammers are everywhere these days, and not only do they phone, or spam your inbox, but they love small businesses. Almost half of the cyberattacks reported target the little guy nowadays which is pretty sad if you ask me. So not enough can be said about the importance of security on your site especially if your customers are giving you their info like credit card numbers. The creators of Webflow understand this and have taken the measures necessary to have security built into the bones of your website.
To start off, Webflow is SOC-2 compliant. This means they have gone through a vigorous third-party audit and must meet the criteria.
Secondly, as I said above Webflow hosts on AWS. This hosting service provides security and encryption so the information stored stays private, and that’s the way it should stay.
Lastly, Webflow hosting provides SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption meaning your site will be safe out in the crazy world. You will see this (https://) rather than this (http://). The ‘s’ means secure.
5. The client facing editor
With the technical stuff out of the way, the real reason to use Webflow is to build a website. There are so many articles out there that run comparisons, lay out the pros and cons, or try to sell this or that. I’m not going to go through that here. What I will say though is after you have decided to hire a developer to build your site is that all you get? Not really. With a little run through of how the designer interface works, and how you can add a blog, or change a picture or 2 - you have started your journey and taken control of your property. Most webflow developers today offer a 1 hour session in their proposals to do just that.
In conclusion, starting a business should remain an exciting time for you. Yes there will be anxiety, and long days, and coffee out your ears but in the end all the hard work will be rewarding. Taking those first few steps at the start are crucial, and I hope this article helps you get off on the right foot.
Thanks for reading!
Curtis.