Is Webflow good for e-commerce?

Users choose Webflow to create websites thanks to its unique visual design and development process, which is more streamlined than traditional builders.

If you examine the pricing structure, you'll notice that an entire section is dedicated to e-commerce.

So, the short answer is: yes, Webflow is excellent for e-commerce. It offers a range of useful features, making it one of the top choices for many e-commerce owners. It uses the same drag-and-drop solution to create product and payment pages as it does for any other page when creating with Webflow. What's more, it offers a range of features to improve the SEO performance of your online store. That said, Webflow is not ideal for ALL types of e-commerce, as it is primarily a design and development tool.

In this article, I'm going to show you how Webflow can help you create an engaging and competitive online store, up to date with industry trends. But first, let's see if you should use Webflow for your e-commerce right from the start.

Who is Webflow e-commerce ideal for?

Before we move on to Webflow e-commerce, here's a brief overview of the types of solutions that should consider Webflow's online store capabilities.

Businesses that should focus on using Webflow e-commerce

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs):

• Creative agencies and freelancers: Webflow's design flexibility enables highly personalized, visually appealing online stores.
• Fashion boutiques: Companies selling a selection of products can take advantage of Webflow's elegant designs to stand out from the crowd.
• Fashion and apparel: Brands requiring visually arresting websites to showcase their products will benefit from Webflow's design capabilities.
• Digital products and services: Companies selling digital goods such as e-books, courses or software will find Webflow's e-commerce features sufficient and easy to manage.

Design-driven brands:

• High-quality visuals: Companies that prioritize aesthetics and branding will find Webflow's design tools and templates advantageous.
• Personalized user experience: Brands looking to create a unique user experience without extensive coding will appreciate Webflow's capabilities.

Technophile entrepreneurs :

• Customization and control: Users with some technical knowledge who want to control the design and functionality of their online store without relying on developers.
• SEO and marketing flexibility: Webflow provides robust SEO tools and integration capabilities with marketing platforms, beneficial for businesses looking to optimize and grow their online presence.

Companies that might consider other options

Large companies and high-volume retailers:

• Scalability and performance: Webflow is perfect for corporate marketing sites. For enterprise e-commerce - not so much. Companies with extensive product catalogs, high traffic and complex backend requirements might find platforms like Shopify or Magento more suitable due to their robust infrastructure and scalability.
• Advanced e-commerce functionality: Businesses requiring advanced e-commerce functionality such as complex inventory management, multi-channel selling and advanced reporting may find Webflow's features limited.

Businesses requiring extensive custom development:

• Custom features: If a business requires extensive custom features or integrations that exceed Webflow's capabilities, a more flexible, developer-focused platform like WooCommerce or Magento may be more appropriate.

Budget-conscious startups:

• Cost considerations: although Webflow offers great design flexibility, it can be more expensive than other beginner-friendly platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce, especially when hosting and advanced features are taken into account.

Strictly speaking, thanks to the ability to integrate various third-party solutions, Webflow can work even for businesses that might not consider Webflow as their primary option. However, in some cases, choosing Webflow is simply not the right path. If you're not sure about hosting your e-commerce on Webflow, give us a call and we'll let you know.

E-commerce options for website owners

As such a popular website, e-commerce is covered by many other leading website builders, including Shopify, Wix and WordPress.

Webflow e-commerce is robust, allowing you a higher level of customization than Wix.

WordPress users typically rely on WooCommerce, the WP plugin, which offers a range of e-commerce features, including various themes, store customization, rating and review systems, and more.

It's no secret that WooCommerce is one of the most popular plugins out there right now, but it's tied to WordPress and an external plugin. In other words, although WooCommerce offers a good service, you'll still have to deal with all the drawbacks of using WP.

Shopify is perhaps the best-known e-commerce-focused service. It offers a range of beautiful templates, although they're not as customizable as Webflow's. What's more, Webflow's main advantage is that you can create rich, complex interactions and animations and incorporate them into your e-commerce platform. Shopify templates would require a team of developers to do this.

On the other hand, Shopify is easier to use if you want to stay within the constraints of the available templates.

Perhaps the most important thing is the robust CMS that is also part of Webflow's e-commerce offering. It allows you to quickly design and create product page templates, making it convenient to add and present products.

Overall, Webflow e-commerce is much more powerful in terms of design flexibility than its competitors. It's not easier, however, as there's a steep learning curve for everything Webflow. You'll still need a team of Webflow experts to use the platform's capabilities.

Webflow e-commerce pricing

If you're new to Webflow, I recommend reading our most popular blog, which covers Webflow pricing in detail.

In a nutshell, Webflow offers separate plans for those who want to use e-commerce functionality.

• Standard - The Standard plan is $29 per month if billed annually and includes up to 500 e-commerce items, 2000 CMS items, and all the features of the CMS plan (which is a standard website plan). A word of warning - this plan also includes a 2% transaction fee when you sell your products. You can also have 3 staff accounts.
• Plus - The Plus plan is $74 per month if billed annually, and features 5,000 e-commerce items, 10,000 CMS items, 0% transaction fees and all the other features of the Business plan. It offers 10 staff accounts.
• Advanced - The Advanced plan is $212 per month if billed annually, and increases the number of e-commerce items to 15,000. The only other improvement is that 15 members of your staff can have accounts.

Webflow e-commerce templates

Webflow offers a range of e-commerce templates, most of which are subject to a one-off charge.

Webflow templates are pre-designed website layouts that can be customized to quickly create professional websites. They offer modern, high-quality designs to suit a variety of industries and aesthetic preferences. Users can easily modify these templates via Webflow's drag-and-drop interface, even without coding skills. All templates are responsive, guaranteeing optimal appearance on all devices.

Templates often feature integrated e-commerce functionality, CMS features and interactive elements, making them suitable for online stores, portfolios, business sites, blogs and more. They're also optimized for SEO and performance, helping to improve site visibility and load times.

Using Webflow templates saves time and money, offering an efficient way to launch visually appealing and functional websites. They're ideal for businesses, creatives, and anyone looking to create a website quickly while retaining the ability to customize and evolve as needed.

Be sure to explore the Webflow template marketplace to learn more about the different options. Those marked "e-commerce" are suitable for online stores, which means they have built-in e-commerce functionality.

Overview of Webflow and e-commerce

So, what's Webflow's secret that makes it so powerful for creating e-commerce platforms? It all starts with a drag-and-drop interface that's part of Webflow Designer. It's a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) environment, which means you can see the result as you design and develop the site. In other words, you don't have to publish your site to see the changes.

What's more, you can implement a range of impressive integrations, animations and other engaging experiences, just like on any other page created with Webflow. This can dramatically improve the customer journey and present your products in a more intuitive way.

Popular shipping management systems, such as Shippo, can be integrated into your Webflow e-commerce site. This enables features such as tracking, managing and printing labels, sending package-related messages, obtaining shipping rates, and more.

Above all, adding various features to enhance the experience doesn't affect the overall speed of your e-commerce, which is one of the most important metrics for SEO.

Let's take a closer look at Webflow's e-commerce features.

Designing the perfect e-commerce platform

Webflow excels at creating an end-to-end customer experience, and flexibility plays an important role in this process. Webflow sites can showcase your products and increase sales in a variety of ways. For example, you can place featured products at the top of your e-commerce platform or even add them to key sections of your site, placing them in strategically important locations.

In addition to the various elements that Webflow offers for its standard pages, it also offers various customizable elements for e-commerce projects. These include :

• Payment form - Crucial to the e-commerce experience, these forms offer various options that customers must complete to finalize the product purchase. In addition to the standard option, Webflow also offers a special PayPal payment form.
• Item ordered - The item ordered field refers to the specific product or item a customer selects for purchase. It usually includes product details such as name, price, quantity and any variations or options selected.
• Order summary - The order summary provides customers with an overview of their selected items, quantities and costs before proceeding to checkout.
• Discounts - The discounts field allows customers to apply promotional codes or discounts during the checkout process.
• Additional information - The additional information field allows customers to provide additional instructions, preferences or special requests related to their orders.
• Basket button - This is a visual element that users can click to view their current basket or bag. It provides a quick way for customers to check added items and make any necessary changes before proceeding to checkout.
• Online payments - Online payments refer to the various payment methods available to enable customers to finalize their transactions. This field includes customizable options for accepting different payment types.

There's so much you can customize with Webflow, and you can even add your own branding elements.

Streamline and automate the sales process with Webflow

Webflow is suitable for selling any type of product or service, physical or digital. You can use the platform's CMS to easily add and modify different product variations and design a payment flow that best suits your business.

What's more, the platform offers customized delivery methods, including shipping, collection and e-mail delivery for digital products.

If you focus on digital goods, you can make the entire payment process simple and even add relevant links to order confirmation pages or e-mails.

Those who need to ship tangible goods can customize the shipping process for different regions and even automate order tracking. It's also possible to synchronize your shipping labels with the shipping software you use, making the entire sales process streamlined. Automation is also possible for taxes and VAT in certain countries, including the USA, EU, Australia and Canada.

Webflow e-commerce sites are also powered by a variety of payment methods, including PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay and credit card. All payment transactions are secured by state-of-the-art protocols that are part of Stripe and PayPal.

Webflow also offers an order management dashboard, providing a complete overview of all order details, order status updates and more. According to the official e-commerce page, Webflow plans to add customer accounts and order history to the offering in the near future.

Finally, sales are facilitated by a range of possible integrations via Webflow. We've already mentioned Shippo, but you can also count on services such as QuickBooks, Printful, MailChimp, and many other options.

Developing your online store with Webflow

Once you've launched your website, it's time to develop your business. The good news with Webflow is that you can run your e-commerce business even without Webflow experience. In other words, if Webflow professionals have built your website, all you need is a quick tutorial on how to add and manage products. After that, you won't have to depend on developers every time you need to update the content of your website. Webflow Designer even includes a checklist to help new users develop and maintain their e-commerce business.

With basic Webflow knowledge and a working site, you can also quickly create customized landing pages for a specific product or product line.

Webflow also offers the option of automating your SEO to some extent, providing useful suggestions for individual product titles, meta descriptions and other content relevant to search engines.

Webflow enables a range of other options relevant to running a successful e-commerce business, including integration of analytics and optimization tools, tools and integrations for nurturing lead lists, connecting products to social networks, running campaigns, and more.

Use the power of Shopify with Webflow

Shopify is renowned for its powerful e-commerce functionality and ease of use, making it a preferred solution for many online merchants. By integrating Shopify directly into Webflow, you can combine Webflow's design flexibility with Shopify's robust capabilities.

An integration allows you to add Shopify widgets, such as "Buy" buttons, directly into your Webflow site, making it easy to manage transactions and product catalogs.

For even smoother synchronization, we recommend the Smootify solution. Smootify enables centralized management of products and orders, while automating updates between the two platforms.

For more details on the different integration methods, see our full article on the subject: connecting Shopify to Webflow.

Create your e-commerce site with Webflow?

Having an e-commerce site with the most effective user experience, that showcases all the best features of your business and assists customers throughout their journey is what counts, and building such a site is simply better with Webflow.