Do you have a unique brand with a unique style that just doesn’t quite fall in line with a template or theme on one of the other platforms? Are you looking to build incredible custom experiences from first glance to purchase?
Then look no further than Webflow’s ecommerce platform.
With so much noise in the marketplace and new brands popping up everyday, it’s becoming more and more important to lean into educational experiences, branding, and increasing buyer confidence through design.
So how can you break through the noise, stand out from the crowd, and make your store’s traffic whip out their credit card faster than Usain Bolt can run 100m?
Keep reading to learn how you can leverage Webflow’s powerful ecommerce tools to 10x your sales.
Perhaps the most commonly known feature about Webflow is the no-code builder that lets designers and developers build websites without the constraints of themes or templates. Sure you can get a theme, but for the seasoned designer or developer, you can start with a completely blank canvas.
Why is this important?
Let’s use an example!
If you’ve ever built a store with one of the other platforms, like Shopify or BigCommerce, you’ve probably wanted to build a section to help educate your audience or show your product in action, but when you go to add a section, there is a section template that really fits what you’re looking for.
Maybe it doesn’t fit well with your content, maybe you need more space, maybe mobile looks funky… it could be a million things, but one thing is certain: your theme doesn’t have a section that you need to optimize your store.
With Webflow’s “blank canvas” designer, this problem is a thing of the past! No matter what your pages need to perform, you can create it in Webflow.
From scroll controlled interactions to true, mobile-first designs, your Webflow store can have the wow-factor that your brand needs to stand out in the crowd.
No matter what platform your store is built on, you’re going to have abandoned checkouts. It’s completely normal!
However, your cart and checkout are two of the most powerful pages that have an impact on your overall conversion rate.
If someone has taken the time to add products to their, they are either going to buy (woohoo!) or they just need a little extra nudge to push them over the edge.
A well designed checkout is a great way to help them finish up.
Unlike with Shopify, Webflow’s customizable cart and checkout lets you build a value-packed buyer journey that’s moldable around your brand.
For brands that have a high add-to-cart to purchase ratio, this is especially important because Webflow gives you more control over the checkout process so you can build a better flow to help improve your overall conversion rate.
It’s no secret that utilizing offer or angle specific landing pages is one of the best ways to increase conversions for your ecommerce store. However, building amazing landing pages isn’t always as easy as it sounds.
Similar to the foundation of your store, other platforms make it tricky to build landing pages. Typically you’ll either need to use a page builder that’s slow and clunky, you’ll be stuck to the available templates within your theme, or you’ll have to custom code one from scratch which can take time and be tricky if you’re not a developer.
With Webflow’s page builder, you can build anything you want natively within your store.
Why is this helpful for your store?
Webflow helps you bridge the gap between templated and full custom pages and gives you the ability to quickly and efficiently build the perfect landing page for your offer.
No matter what your page needs to effectively sell your products, you can build it with Webflow without being stuck within any theme constraints.
One of Webflow’s biggest strengths is selling digital products. Thanks to the native email notifications, selling digital products is a breeze because you can make sure your emails are synced with your products.
When it comes to physical products, Webflow lets you set up your shipping parameters similar to other platforms, however because of Webflow’s customizable checkout, you can build the actual checkout process to match the products you’re selling. This lets you make a tailored and streamlined checkout process that actually makes sense to your customers.
To come full circle with your store, because of how customizable and buildable Webflow is throughout the store, you truly have the control that you need to build something very unique and specific to how you want to sell your products.
From landing pages to unique checkout flows, you can build something special that makes a lot of sense for your customers.
Now that we know how Webflow works and some of the more powerful aspects of building an ecommerce store on Webflow, let’s shift to look at some of the more power growth aspects of Webflow.
Although often overlooked and underutilized, SEO is an incredibly powerful growth channel for ecommerce brands that can help lower customer acquisition costs.
Unlike other platforms that need plug-ins or apps to have more SEO control, Webflow has all the tools you need to to grow your store’s organic traffic.
From title tag and meta description management to the sophisticated content management system, building and implementing a rock-solid SEO strategy is a great way to increase your organic traffic.
This is especially important for brands that are very media focused because you can utilize Webflow’s CMS throughout your store.
One of the minor downfalls of Webflow is the lack of built-in analytics. As any ecommerce brand owner knows, you can only scale as well as you know your numbers, so having accurate data is crucial.
Thankfully, Webflow makes it easy for you to integrate your pixels and Google Analytics account. From there, you can start tracking your sessions, conversions, AOV, etc… and actually have more insights than any other platform gives you natively.
Plus, as your brand scales and you want to test specific aspects of your store, Webflow makes it easy to integrate Google Optimize for A/B testing.
Then, when you top off your analytics stack with Triple Whale’s attribution software, you’ll have a powerful ecommerce analytics stack that gives you the data you need to scale.
Now for the million dollar question. Who is Webflow best suited for?
For the majority of ecommerce brands, Webflow is lacking in a few crucial areas, such as platform integrations, that make it tougher to scale from an operations standpoint. For example, you are far more limited on your operations stack if you need to use 3rd party tools.
Sure, you can make a lot of integrations work, but you might be stuck using tools like Zapier or Integromat to connect your store to other platforms. At the end of the day, this can still work, but your operations might not be as seamless as other platforms.
That being said, there are a few niches that can utilize Webflow’s unique ecommerce platform to scale like crazy.
Digital product sellers like course creators, photographers, or even web element creators can benefit from Webflow’s ecommerce platform because of the design flexibility and ease of use of digital downloads.
For businesses like this, educating your customers around your offer is huge. Unfortunately most themes and templates aren’t designed to build as much value as you need to sell your products so your product and landing pages are usually not as optimized as they could be.
With Webflow’s “blank canvas” starting points, you can build the perfect product and landing pages to build as much value as you need to sell your products like crazy!
Tech hardware, like headphones or laptops for example, can build powerful pages with Webflow to help break down the tech in a custom visual manner. With so much variance in tech products, showing exactly how products work can be tricky without custom dev and interactions. Fortunately for Webflow users, building custom sections specifically for your products has never been easier.
Gone are the days of trying to explain how your products work with a simple heading and paragraph. With Webflow, you can create an experience that matches how you would sell your products in person.
In fact, a popular challenge for Webflow developers is to recreate the Airpods Pro landing page. Although Apple utilizes a full custom build, Webflow would allow brands to create a similar landing page with a fraction of the development time.
Gaming brands, who need to create immersive experiences to draw their customers closer to their ecosystem can also see massive benefits from Webflow’s ecommerce.
For these brands, the actual ecommerce functionality is less important than being able to design an experience that gets people excited about your games.
Although the Xbox team opts to build a full custom page, creating a similar page experience and buying experience would work well with Weblow’s builder.
In conclusion, for the right brand, Webflow’s versatile ecommerce platform can be a powerful asset to building a high-converting store. From its sophisticated CMS to the virtually limitless design capabilities, Webflow can give your brand the tools you need to create an incredible online shopping experience that your customers will love.