In 10 years, you're bound to grow not only as a business but as a person. While we are still figuring out a lot about December Oak day by day, we recognize that we've experienced a lot of growth. When I first started in 2014, my priorities and what I wanted from the work I do looked very different than it does now. And that includes what I am looking for in the website platforms that I use in my own business and for clients. When I first started, I used WordPress and Squarespace and wasn't feeling like I could create the types of websites I knew I was capable of creating. There were a lot of factors that went into that but I was looking for something new. Then in 2017, I found Showit and my wishlist was met. I became known for being a Showit designer, going as far as launching my own Showit course teaching others how to use the platform.

But recently, things have changed again for me. I was noticing things about Showit that made me really unhappy and I wasn't feeling as confident recommending it to clients or using it myself. So I made a big change. I want to share what drove this decision in case this information could help someone else make a decision on the platforms they offer their clients. And to be clear, some things have not changed when it comes to my priorities, such as ease of use for my clients so that they feel empowered to update their own sites and creating conversion-driven and aesthetic websites.

What I looked for in the past

When I found Showit, I was sold pretty quickly. There were a lot of features that I had been looking for and I jumped right into offering the platform exclusively.

Drag and drop

I felt total creative freedom with the drag and drop platform that Showit is. I could put items anywhere on the page and create unique layouts easily. I even could create a unique mobile experience with full creative control of the mobile design. However, Showit is not built to create clean, accurate code in HTML and CSS. The drag and drop that I loved so much meant that everything on the page was absolutely positioned. If you're not familiar with HTML, absolute positioning just means that an element has a spot on the page and it stays there no matter how big or small the website gets. This drastically hurts the responsiveness of a Showit website. It seems responsive because you can design the mobile view however you want, but everything being absolute and defined by pixels means your site doesn't resize between a tablet and a larger desktop monitor. Your site feels cramped on a tablet but small with tons of white space on a desktop computer. I started noticing this issue and this was a huge reason I started looking for another platform. In 2024, this approach is not only archaic but puts ease of use above creating a modern website with a solid foundation.

WordPress blog

I was an original user of WordPress and have always felt it's best as a blogging platform. So having Showit as my site and WordPress as my blog was a dream come true! The biggest learning curve when learning Showit was connecting the blog and developing those pages the right way so everything worked. But once you get used to it, it's not bad. However, I believe now that it's best to have your CMS as a part of your main website platform. Having another part of your site that can break is not a benefit. I've had clients who didn't update their plugins and WordPress itself and had their blogs mess up. This was the whole reason I left WordPress as a website platform in the first place. Showit support is great at getting back to you to fix things but the blog being down was a problem that I didn't want to have to figure out with clients.

Galleries

Showit started as a platform for photographers and a huge benefit of that was their easy to use galleries. They are so easy to style and use for portfolios especially. While their galleries are fantastic, they are not a part of any CMS so when you needed to create a focused page for a client's portfolio galleries, it was harder to manage and update. Thumbnails had to be manually developed and didn't auto update when you added more galleries. And you'd have sometimes dozens of pages on the site's backend. I was finding myself spending more and more hours updating client's portfolios and it was tedious every time. I wanted to spend more time optimizing their site and refining it based on the analytics we set up. But most of the time when clients hired us again for updates, the hours booked were used for adding galleries. There had to be a better way.

What I look for now in a website platform

I discovered Webflow in my search for a new platform and so far, it's meeting my new wishlist. I took everything I learned from using and offering Showit and thought how can I make even better websites? Here's what I've prioritized in my chosen platform and why I now offer Webflow.

Solid foundation

As someone who originally coded websites from scratch back in 2001, I loved that Webflow was built in a way that followed HTML and CSS code but in a visual way. It helps you create cleaner code for your website. You can name the class of anything on your site and reuse classes to streamline your site and make it easier to do site-wide updates. Webflow also allows for multiple units for measurement like rems and percentages. This makes creating a responsive website a breeze. Elements scale based on the screen size and you can view up to 5 break points on Webflow and make sure everything is working the way you planned. I feel confident delivering websites to clients because I know they will look perfect on every screen size.

Stronger CMS

In Webflow, you can create a CMS collection for just about anything you need to regularly update and manage, making the whole process take less time. I use a CMS collection for my blog, but I also use it for my portfolio. This means I can design a page once and just fill out a simple form every time I need to add a new post or project. This keeps my backend organized and decluttered. You can use a collection for podcast episodes, team members, and more.

Diverse Animations

When looking for a new platform, I really wanted to create more immersive websites. On Showit, the animations are pretty limited and I felt like my websites were too static. On Webflow, I can create layered, elevated animations both big and small. There are so many possibilities and I now can create sites that are more interactive and immersive which helps my clients stand out in their industries.

Focus on better websites

At their most recent conference, Webflow announced some truly amazing new features, such as component libraries, Optimize, and analytics. I feel like Webflow is focused on growth and making better websites on the internet. The component libraries make it easier for clients to make new pages on their own site without fear of them being off brand or lower quality than the rest of the site. Optimize is a smart use of AI to personalize the experience your audience will have on your website to boost conversions. And their analytics helps to show what pages are doing well on your site and which could be improved, also boosting conversions. Webflow listens to their community and adds new features not only that developers are asking for but also ones that we didn't even know to ask for. I appreciate this forward thinking approach to their business.

Makes me a better designer and developer

There are some essential issues with Showit that I've been waiting years for them to update and it just hasn't happened. These are things that made my sites not as good as they could be and I am surprised have not been fixed. The fact that Showit does not have buttons in a way that creates clean code is a huge issue for me. Not only does it make the site less interactive because you can't animate a button on hover, but a div (or rectangle in Showit) and a text box do not make a button in the code. It's a clunky approach at best. Forms also do not have dropdowns, radio buttons, and checkboxes which are all standard form inputs. It creates a weird user experience. I know you've seen the 'type X to confirm' boxes on a Showit form. Finally, I originally used Showit for the freedom but did you know you can only develop in Showit using the Chrome web browser? This felt very limiting to me and I don't understand why this is the case. Webflow solves all of these issues and I'm happy to use it now for myself and clients.

So what does this mean?

As of 2025, we no longer will offer Showit and will be offering Webflow (and Shopify) instead. This decision wasn't easy, even with the hangups I've expressed. It's been a lot of investing in education but the end result is something I'm proud to put out into the world.

Are you ready to have a website that is both immersive and modern? We would love to hear from you! Reach out to start your project now.