Here we will give a short but important description of Shopify Webflow. For eCommerce stores, we normally use Shopify, and for regular websites, we usually use Webflow. To compare both of them here and choose the best one for your use.
Webflow does, however, offer eCommerce capabilities, which are improving year after year. We’ve recently received inquiries from a few businesses interested in adopting Webflow for their online store, so I thought now would be a good time to publish an article that completely explains the process.
Is it better to use Shopify or Webflow?
Here’s a quick response:
If you want to get your eCommerce site up and running quickly without spending a lot of money on design or development, Shopify is the way to go. Shopify allows you to focus on your product and marketing immediately.
You don’t care about having a unique design. People buy your goods, not your website, after all.
You want to go big, with hundreds of goods or international sales and marketing across multiple platforms.
If you really need your website to tell a story, go with Webflow. Your product is difficult to comprehend, or it is extremely unusual or expensive. As a result, you must educate your customer by pleasingly structuring your content.
You work for a startup and have an in-house UX/UI designer or some design or development experience.
You have a limited quantity of items. Alternatively, your company sells both tangible goods and specialized services.
You solely offer digital things for sale (like ebooks or courses).
What is the difference between Shopify and Webflow?
I’m going to assume you’re familiar with Webflow and Shopify by the end of this article, but here’s a quick refresher and comparison table to get us started. This may be all you’ll need to acquire your response.
What about the Shopify and Webflow resemblances?
They’re both more modern systems than WordPress, for example. They’re both equipped with sophisticated features that will make your life easier.
The solution that is hosted. They both feature built-in hosting, so you won’t have to hunt for a hosting provider to upload your site to like you would with WordPress.
Secure. They’re both in charge of the backend, such as security upgrades, server stability, and in the odd event that you’re hacked, etc…
Extremely adaptable. Shopify and Webflow, for example, are far more configurable than Squarespace. Although the approaches differ, both Shopify and Webflow allow you to create a fully customized website.
The growth of a large community and the progress of a product. Both platforms have active development teams continually delivering new features throughout the year and a loud community in the forums.
Tutorials and help articles are available. On any platform, you will have no trouble finding information. Webflow has amazing tutorial videos (with a sense of humor) on just about any difficulty you might have, and Shopify has well-developed and mature documentation and tutorials.
Will you need assistance from a designer or developer to get started?
Assuming you aren’t a web designer or developer, this is the single most critical thing to consider when selecting an eCommerce platform.
If you don’t plan to hire anyone and aren’t a creative specialist, Shopify is almost certainly the way to go. It’s designed to be simple to set up and use for non-technical users.
It can be difficult for you to set up Webflow. So I only recommend it if you want a unique look and are a technical and creative person who can quickly pick up tools like Photoshop, video editing, and other creative software.
Editing and maintenance:
Making text changes is fairly simple in both Shopify and Webflow, and you won’t require any assistance. It’s a different story if you want to tweak the design.
You can alter certain fundamental settings in Shopify, but only within the theme’s constraints. You can’t move stuff around with your hands. This is beneficial since it makes it more difficult to break items. However, if you wish to do more than the theme settings allow, it can be restrictive. You’ll need the assistance of a developer in this scenario.
Webflow, on the other hand, provides you complete control over how you move things around, but if you don’t know CSS, it’s quite easy to ruin something or struggle to achieve the desired outcome. Webflow isn’t your ordinary page builder. It’s a high-performance layout tool with advanced features. So, depending on your degree of expertise and your objectives, you may want professional assistance with Webflow.
Collaboration with designers:
It’s also worth noting that you can’t just ask any designer to build you a Webflow site if it’s not something they specialize in. It takes some time to learn how to use it, much like Photoshop or any other professional program, and it’s unlikely they’ll be able to do it straight away. They may not even want to because it isn’t their area of expertise.
If you’re a startup with a UX/UI designer on board and eager to learn Webflow, there’s an exception. In that instance, I’d think there’s a strong chance they’ll be able to learn everything about Webflow in a matter of weeks or months, and you won’t need anyone else’s aid after that.
Webflow & Shopify Product Management:
For a small number of products, Webflow is preferable. If you have a huge inventory (50+ products), Shopify may be the best option.
Shopify will provide you with a variety of tools and add-ons, including:
Shopify has built-in reporting and analytics.
Accounting and financial integrations if you’re also selling on other platforms like Amazon Inventory synchronization if you’re also selling on other platforms like Amazon
3rd-party fulfillment and warehousing services:
You must give a ‘product feed’ to Google Shopping and other marketing platforms.
For some, this may be excessive. You probably don’t need all of this if you sell a limited number of handcrafted items. Despite this, Shopify is straightforward to set up and use, so it currently dominates the eCommerce market.
That isn’t to say that Shopify is right for everyone. Webflow might be a better fit for your particular business strategy. In truth, Shopify has one big flaw, which also happens to be an area where Webflow excels.
Custom product fields are Shopify’s Achilles’ heel.
If you wish to include information about a unique product in Shopify, there is just one place to do so: the product description.
You can’t add additional fields to a Shopify product page’s admin screen.
This means that all of the product information is crammed into the same location on the page. If it’s merely a description written in regular paragraphs, this is OK.
For a typical Shopify product page layout, this works great.
However, this makes it difficult to incorporate product information that necessitates a precise layout in the website design. Consider a specifications table in which all of the data should be nicely ordered in columns.
Let’s go one step further. What if you wanted your product page to create a story and display various product features with images, icons, and little description blurbs strategically placed throughout? Essentially, it’s a marketing landing page for your goods.
A more complicated product page design that highlights product attributes.
Check our blog on Sell Online With Webflow.
You’re out of luck in this case. Because doing so in Shopify is notoriously tough. You’d almost probably require a developer’s aid, or you could utilize a page builder tool like Shogun or Pagefly (I will talk about this later).
When you need to add custom fields to your goods one by one, Webflow is the way to go. You may certainly accomplish that if each of your items has unique features and specs that require a lot of space and a particular layout.
Webflow Shopify for design:
Creating a Shopify theme with the Shopify theme editor
After you’ve installed a Shopify theme, you may adjust its settings and homepage content via the theme editor.
It isn’t a drag-and-drop system. It takes the shape of a sidebar with numerous text fields and features that you can enable or disable. People often expect to drag elements around like other page builders (e.g., Divi or Elementor on WordPress). However, this is not the case with Shopify.
The Shopify theme editor has a sidebar where you may adjust settings.
There are certain restrictions. You might not be able to attain the desired outcome depending on the theme you’re using. Many of our Shopify clients came to us because their theme didn’t add the functionality they needed.
For Shopify, you can use a page builder (such as Pagefly or Shogun), but this is not the same as the theme editor. Those page builders only let you edit the web site’s main content; they don’t let you change things like the header and footer or more intricate functions like the cart’s functionality.
Shopify does not have any custom fields. You receive a title, price, description, and a few other fields for products, but you can’t add your own custom fields. Some apps can aid with this, but they make it more difficult than it needs to be.
There are restrictions on the content types that can be used. This isn’t directly linked to design, but it’s worth mentioning nonetheless. There are several sorts of content in Shopify, including goods, pages, and blog entries. However, you cannot generate new types of content, such as Recipes. If you want to publish recipes, you have to create a recipes category and use blog articles to do so. You can also read our blog on How To Build a Website With Shopify: The Detailed Guideline In 2021.
The visual editor for Webflow:
This is Webflow’s most important feature. It is by far the best page builder of any type I have ever seen, and using it is remarkably comparable to real coding, only you use a visual interface instead of code.
The primary pieces are drag-and-drop. The styling sidebar is then used to style and add more exact positioning. It won’t let you drag things around; instead, you’ll have to separate your content into parts, give them widths and paddings, and set up columns the way they operate on the web.
It closely resembles how real HTML and CSS coding works. This implies that the settings you make in the Webflow editor are the same ones displayed on the website. There isn’t any software in the middle that transforms your design into anything else. This implies that you have a great deal of influence over the layout. It’s simply more dependable and stable than other page builders.
It’s a little more difficult to work with than other page builders. It gives you many options that aren’t easy to understand for the average Joe because it’s so near to real coding. You’ll need to know about the CSS box model and flexbox, as well as HTML best practices. Ideally, you should be familiar with the fundamentals of HTML and CSS, as well as having attempted coding at some point in your life.
You can design your own custom fields in Webflow, which you can then fill out for each product.
In a nutshell, Webflow is far more customizable than Shopify while being dependable and quick to load. Also, go through our blog on Webflow Pricing.
Using Shopify to create a totally customized experience?
Everything possible in Webflow is also possible in Shopify, except that you will require the services of a developer.
In fact, if you’re working alongside a developer, you’ll find that Webflow is much better and more adaptable. There are no restrictions because Shopify offers developers complete access to the template code.
The distinction is in the budget. If you choose to implement a custom design in Shopify, you should be aware that it might be rather costly. Your designer must first pay for the visual design files. This will be delivered in Figma or Sketch format. Then there’s the matter of paying your developer to put it all together. Depending on the number of pages, this could get costly.
With Shopify, there is a technique to cut costs by having a designer stay relatively close to a chosen theme that you’re using as a template. Consider it a re-skin of the theme. As a result, the developer will have less work to perform and not completely modify the layout.
Webflow vs. Shopify page builders:
Shogun and Pagefly are two-page builders for Shopify.
They can be used with any Shopify theme. And, in a similar way to Webflow, it may assist you in creating bespoke layouts for your pages. They provide an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface (even easier than Webflow), and they allow you to tell a story and present your product in the best possible way.
However, there is a performance penalty, which is the fundamental issue with page builders. They have to load a lot of extra code on top of what Shopify is currently running, which is the equivalent of loading two websites, slowing down page loading dramatically.
It would help if you struck a balance between improving the design of your website and slowing down the loading speed.
Page builders are often priced similarly to Shopify, with a monthly membership of at least $30 depending on the package.
Would you please take a look at our list of the most popular Shopify page builders?
Webflow connectors vs. Shopify Apps:
Shopify has a plethora of apps for adding new features and behaviors to your store. Page builders, review apps, subscription applications, inventory management, and connectivity with other channels like Amazon are just a few features available. All of them can be found in the Shopify App Store.
Shopify can adapt to your business needs thanks to its app ecosystem. Alpaca is an app that allows you to schedule local pickups. If you use Quickbooks for your accounting, you can utilize their app to sync your data automatically. Additionally, Bold Product Bundles makes it simple to construct discounted product bundles.
There are several integrations in Webflow, but they aren’t actually apps. An app can assist you in adding additional behavior or interactivity to your website, whereas integration is simply a connection to something else. Click here for Best E-commerce platform-2021.
Let’s imagine I want to include a delivery date selector in my store. So that when a consumer orders a gift box for someone’s birthday, they may specify the date of delivery immediately on the shopping page.
In Shopify, adding a delivery date selector is simple, but in Webflow, it’s more difficult.
You can easily add a delivery date picker to your cart in Shopify by searching for an app. It will just take 15 minutes to add and install the app on the page.
You’ll need to use a combination of the visual editor and some custom javascript code — which you can easily find in the Webflow forums — to create the date picker in Webflow. Still, you’ll need to connect that code with what you’ve generated in the editor. Then you must include that as a field in your order notes and ensure that the data is provided to you whenever someone places an order. We have also written blogs on Bigcommerce, and Woocommerce, etc.
More plug-ins and better solutions may be created as Webflow matures. However, Webflow integrations are not as powerful as Shopify apps at the moment. See our comparison also on Best Online Store Builder.
Read more: myshopify
Read more: How to Delete Shopify Account
