Since opening December Oak, it's taken us time to find the tools and solutions that work best for us and our clients. Being a website studio, the platform our own site was on and the ones we offer is of the utmost importance. So you can imagine with all the options out there, we take a lot of time weighing our options and trying them all out. Back in 2014, we used WordPress and Squarespace. After a year or two, I realized there were too many issues that were coming up, like client's sites going down, and I needed a change.

That's when I discovered Showit. It was a dream come true. With their drag and drop capabilities, I could create whatever I imagined more quickly and my clients could maintain their own site. I wanted to empower my clients at this stage because I worked with a lot of creatives where site maintenance wasn't a priority in their budgeting which is totally understandable. The fact that you could double click and image or text and make changes was fantastic! I've used Showit exclusively since 2017. But as I'm growing December Oak and my own skill set and style are evolving, I was having some hiccups with Showit.

I had tried Webflow a couple of years ago in my usual research and I really loved using it. It stood out from the rest and I knew I wanted to offer it one day. While I was on my recent break, I was using it even more and realized it answered a lot of the concerns I had when it comes to Showit as a long term solution. So I committed to first creating my own new site on Webflow to see if I'd like to offer it this year as a platform option. So, let's go over the reasons I switched my own website and why we're now offering Webflow to our clients.

For our own website

We were able to achieve a lot of features Showit doesn't offer on my previous website and client's sites using code, like checkboxes in forms and custom cursors. But figuring out how to add the JavaScript proved to be its own challenge and we needed a more solid solution.

Responsive Design

Responsiveness works very differently between Showit and Webflow. On Showit, you can design the mobile and desktop versions of your site separately. Because of that, Showit doesn’t do any of the designing for you so you essentially start from scratch both times. What I like about Webflow’s responsive design is that you design the laptop version of your site and a larger desktop, tablet, mobile landscape, and mobile landscape version are all created. You can still customize how they look and have a lot of freedom but it’s helpful to know what the site will look like on so many devices.

The other way they are different is how you develop the site. With Showit, everything is an exact size. Sections, textboxes, and images are all set by pixels for both their width and height. There are tools to help you stretch elements but they only stretch the width, not the height, which can lead to my clients having trouble updating their copy especially. If the wording they use in a section is much longer or shorter than the set size of the textbox, things tend to bleed over. Webflow has flexibility with settings like minimum and maximum heights and widths, making my designs much more fluid. Either solution can work but I wanted the fluid style for my new site.

Code-Focused

I’ve achieved some really amazing features in Showit using code. But something I noticed and appreciated with Webflow is that because the platform is code based, you get all the features and possibilities of coding a site with the ease of a drag and drop platform. Alignment tools, positioning, and sizing are all way more customizable. You can even create classes for your elements so you can control padding, margin, and more so it stays consistent throughout the site without any extra work. While I still may need to use code in Webflow, they also have an easier way to add it to your site. On Showit, we had to add code to interesting places to make things work. So I appreciate that I can use code more cleanly now.

Advanced Animations

Something I love about both Showit and Webflow is they include animations. Movement on a site creates a lot of immersion and adds visual interest. Showit does have a few animation options but I was looking for more advanced animations for my site. You can add multi layered animations and animations that happen over a longer period of time that would usually require JavaScript. But with a few clicks you can create hover and scroll animations that look like you coded them all day. I can’t wait to get creative in this way for future versions of my own site and for clients.

‍Collections

‍One thing about Showit that was starting to trip me up was how many pages I had on my site. It was getting a little overwhelming with portfolio pages, shop pages, and all the pages I needed for my blog. While I absolutely love that I can make every page unique (especially for my portfolio), managing my portfolio was time consuming. I was willing to make the sacrifice of unique pages to save time. Webflow offers collections which are basically repeating information on your site. It’s so powerful because you can make them for anything you need. For example, you could have your team in a collection and it auto-updates on the about page. Like I said, powerful. You can customize what information you need from each collection so you can make it entirely your own .I currently use collections for my portfolio, blog, and post categories. I can’t wait to use it for even more purposes as my site and business continues to grow.

For our clients

So now you know why we made the switch for the December Oak website. But we needed to investigate when the experience was like from a client’s perspective. We were really happy with the features Webflow offered so now both platforms we offer, Showit and Webflow, work well for our clients which is always the most important thing. Let me tell you about features that made us say, “Yes, let’s offer Webflow!”.

More Creative Freedom

Remember how I mentioned Showit was my dream come true in 2017 because I could create anything I imagined? That’s how Webflow is for me in 2023. I feel like with all their features, integrations, and all that I’ve already mentioned, clients would hugely benefit from being on Webflow. We can create custom websites with advanced, immersive aspects in the same time it takes us to design and build in Showit. So if a client wants all the bells and whistles, we can provide that.

Client Interface

This is another feature that can be a pro or con depending on the client but I love that Webflow has a simplified user interface for clients to update their own site. They can update their text, collections, and images with a click of a button with no worries at all that they will break the design. Showit is easy to learn when you’re not having to build a whole site so I feel confident that my clients will continue to update their own sites on there as well. But for clients with less time or who are not the biggest fan of tech, Webflow’s interface is wonderful because they aren’t feeling overwhelmed opening the Webflow backend with their whole site editable. They even provide a training video for my clients so I don’t have to make a new one every time I create a website. I think this solution will help even more of my clients maintain their sites. And if they don’t have the time, we’re here to help!

Why we still offer Showit

So you may be asking why we’re still offering Showit if we like Webflow so much! December Oak attracts clients that can benefit from both platforms and we are happy to help people choose what works best for them. We still think we’ll have clients that love Showit and want to use it for their site. Photographers particularly come to mind since Showit has fantastic gallery features to showcase our clients’ work beautifully. We also believe Showit has some of the best templates in the industry and we’re happy to offer Template Restyles for both Showit and Webflow. But Webflow, being a newer platform, doesn’t have as much variety in their templates currently. But we’re excited to work with clients on whichever platform is best for them!

Too long, didn’t read

If you got all the way down here and skimmed, I get it! Basically we’re saying Webflow now helps us create anything we can imagine with our new approach since our relaunch. We cannot wait to work with new Webflow and Showit clients! If you’re ready for a new website or brand, reach out!