automation-software

This includes everyone from a solopreneur building their agency, to a Fortune 500 marketing team shipping to millions of people, and everyone in between. We plan to achieve this in multiple ways, but one very important method is to expand the capabilities of our App ecosystem. That’s why in August of 2023 we launched our new developer platform to enable our community to build Apps that can be used by every Webflow customer. 

One piece of our developer platform is our Designer APIs that power Designer Extension Apps. Designer APIs allow developers to directly interact with the Webflow canvas by managing elements, styles, page metadata, and more. These APIs need to be exposed in a secure way, while allowing developers to feel the same power as our Designer. To bring this idea to reality, we needed to come up with a way to concisely and powerfully allow developers to interact with the internal logic of our frontend architecture — the Webflow Designer.

Seamless App integration

To ensure we maintain a secure connection between the client (a third-party developer’s App) and the host (the Webflow Designer), we needed a way for developers to build an App in their IDE of choice but launch it in the Designer with access to all APIs. When thinking of a frontend SDK, typically developers would install it via npm or reference a JavaScript bundle via CDN that exposes various global methods. This works great for some use cases, but we wanted the ability to immediately ship new APIs or bug fixes without needing to publish a new npm package and forcing developers to install it. We landed on an architecture to securely serve Apps that have all of the latest and greatest Designer APIs available immediately as they are shipped. It works like this:

• Build: A developer builds their App as a single page application, bringing along their choice of technology (React, Vue, JavaScript, etc.)
• Bundle: We published a CLI tool to allow developers to run a single command to bundle their App and upload it to Webflow. There’s also a command that can be used when developing an App on localhost.
• Launch: Apps in the Designer are injected into an iframe. Before their entry point (index.html) is rendered, we first inject our own Designer API JavaScript bundle into the head of their HTML. This exposes all of the Designer APIs to the App and allows the latest version of each API to be available as soon as it launches.
• Secure: The App is hosted on a separate domain from the Webflow Designer to help mitigate cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. Additionally, we have set up a content security policy to ensure the App is only loaded where we expect.

App ⇔ Webflow communication

Once an App is launched and we inject our JavaScript bundle into it, we need a way to communicate between the iframe (the App) and the host (the Webflow Designer). For this, we use window.postMessage (MDN docs) along with an internal JSON-RPC library to send JSON between the two sources. We need to ensure the payload sent from the App is valid, so we have an intermediary layer that validates the JSON payload. Here’s an example of what happens when you set the title of a page using page.setTitle():

Processing the request

The central logic of Designer APIs lives within the Webflow Designer codebase, referred to as the “host”. Internally, we use a Flux architecture to manage state across the entire application. Therefore many of the Designer APIs are augmenting state or dispatching a Flux action. A high-level example of how we process a request would be this example below for updating the title of a page:

// logic in the "host" (Webflow Designer codebase)

designerApiResponder(setPageTitle, (state, payload) => {

  const {pageId, title} = payload;

  const page = state.PagesStore.getById(pageId);

  if (!page) return {status:'Error', value: 'ResourceMissing'};

  const updatedState = {

    ...state,

    PagesStore: updatePageTitle(pageId, title),

  };

  return [

    {status: 'Success', value: null},

    updatedState

  ];

});

The above code can be broken down into these components:

• We set up a “responder” that listens for the setPageTitle API to be executed. 
• Once the API has been executed (and we have already validated the payload), we get the page by id from the PagesStore.
  • If we don’t find the page, we return an error response that the client handles.
• We then merge in the updated state to the PagesStore.
  • Internally we are listening for state updates and syncing data to the server if changes are detected.
• Finally, we return a tuple (an array with two items).
  • The first item in the array is the response we want to return to the client. In the above example, we return null for this API.
  • The second item is the updated state. We have a Flux reducer that grabs this second array item and merges it with the primary state of the Webflow Designer.

The host handles both fetching and updating state, depending on the API being executed. Internally we have a queue of requests to ensure we keep track of the successes and failures for each API so that we can return the appropriate response for the executed API. The host responds with a status as well as the response data so that the client knows if we should throw an exception or return the response. Each API has a defined response (we publish some TypeScript types to help with this). If the response is an error, we have a list of possible error “causes” that a developer can read to determine what went wrong. Here’s an example of handling an error:

try {

  const style = await webflow.createStyle('Heading');

  await style.setProperty('someIncorrectProp', '10px');

} catch (error) {

  const tag = error.cause.tag;

  const message = error.message;

  if (tag === 'InvalidStyleProperty') {

    alert('Invalid style property used');

  }

  console.log(message);

}

We’re just getting started

Apps throughout the Webflow ecosystem grow stronger and more impressive by using Designer APIs. We continue to expand the capabilities of Designer APIs and strive to bring much of the power of the Designer into the hands of developers. Since launching our APIs, developers have created powerful Apps that have increased the productivity of their users and made previously complex tasks easier. There are Apps on the marketplace that bring the power of AI into the Webflow Designer, help build complex SVGs by dragging and dropping a file, and so much more.  

We keep developer experience, performance, and security top of mind as we iterate. We believe that by enabling developers to create new and effective Apps, we’re bringing development superpowers to everyone. Stay tuned for part two of this series where we dive into optimizing the performance of various Designer APIs and how we’re working to make the experience faster and easier to use for developers.

From a marketing and branding perspective, your domain is the linchpin that ties your brand and offering together. It’s the hub that customers head to to make purchases, access subscriptions, and check orders. And without a thoughtful domain management system, it’s also a potential cybersecurity weak spot.

Thankfully, cybersecurity experts have developed best practices for domain management to safeguard your domain. With precise configuration and an intelligent strategy, you can prevent typical impersonation attacks and avoid service interruptions.

Why domain management is so critical

Domain management involves safeguarding your company’s online spaces. When you don’t manage domains well, scammers might copy your site and create one that looks nearly the same but with a slightly tweaked domain. This tricks customers into thinking they’re on your site, leading them to give away personal info like passwords and credit card numbers.

Say a scammer sets up BestTechs.com to imitate a popular store called BestTech.com, with a site design that mimics the original. Unsuspecting customers might purchase items from the fake site and give away their payment details in the process. When these customers realize something’s amiss, they’ll likely call on the real BestTech to complain, which can harm the brand’s reputation.

Having a strong domain management strategy means you’re ready to deal with these situations. You can act fast to take down fake sites and support affected customers to reinforce your image as a secure and reliable company.

How domain protection works

Your domain is the web address your brand uses for its website, and it’s often just your brand name.

Basic domain protection typically involves two things:

• Reserving other domain names scammers could use to imitate your site
• Configuring your domain security to reduce vulnerabilities

When you register your domain with a registrar like HostGator or Web.com, they provide domain name system (DNS) options that enable you to reserve more domain names and configure security options. That’s where you’ll do the bulk of your domain management.

Here are a few security features you’ll usually interact with when managing your domain:

• Domain locking. When your domain is locked, no one can transfer ownership — not even you. If someone hacks your account, they could still change a few options but can’t adjust the domain owner.
• Domain name system security extensions (DNSSEC). Security protocols like DNSSEC add a step to the DNS lookup procedure that authenticates digital signatures to prevent spoofing and cache poisoning.
• Two-factor authentication (2FA). Adding 2FA to your login ensures hackers can’t access your domain management account even if they learn your password. Just remember to save your backup codes so you don’t lock yourself out.

7 domain management best practices

Cybersecurity has never been more important with scammers constantly finding clever ways to break into systems. Luckily, you can protect yourself with a few smart steps. Although no method is foolproof, these best practices can stop the most common tricks.

1. Unify your domains

If your company already has a collection of domains, your first step is to unify them under one top-level domain name. There are two ways to do this:

• Place all your content into a single site. For example, Zoho offers many different services that all fall into directories under one top-level domain name, like Zoho.com/enterprise and Zoho.com/crm.
• Select similar domain names. For example, Virgin oversees various brands that all have their own domains. Each one consists of the word “Virgin” followed by the brand name, like VirginGalactic.com and VirginGames.com.

2. Establish domain naming conventions

Define naming conventions for how your domain and directory names are structured. Say your company name is Exemplify and you have a few different business units. You’d establish a similar syntax for their domain names, like exemplify-enterprise.org.

If your sites follow the conventions consistently, customers know to be suspicious if they see Exemplify_Enterprise.org because it doesn’t match the pattern. The same principle applies to directory names like exemplify.org/enterprise-edition.

3. Register diverse variations

After establishing naming conventions, consider all the ways those conventions could be slightly tweaked. Then, register those variations as well.

Here are a couple common variations:

• Misspellings. Domain registration is precise, so even a slight misspelling can land a user on the wrong site. NameHero.com, for example, also registered NamHero.com to ensure people find the right site.
• Different punctuation. Register domain names that use hyphens where you don’t and vice versa, such as Virgin-Galactic.com instead of VirginGalactic.com or Example.us.com instead of Example-us.com.

4. Enhance domain security protocols

In your DNS security options, enable 2FA and lock changes wherever possible. If a hacker manages to access your domain management profile, they’ll be prevented from wreaking havoc on your settings or unregistering domains they want to hijack.

5. Trademark your domain name

Trademarking your brand name — and its domain name — is an excellent way to protect against imitators. If you don’t have a trademark, negotiate with the person imitating your domain to purchase it from them. And if you have a trademark, you can make a legal case that the domain name they’re sitting on (called cybersquatting) represents copyright infringement.

6. Select the best domain provider

Excellent domain registrars (like IONOS and DreamHost) let you check for similar domain names and configure your domain for maximum security. It’s important not to cut corners here. The security of your domain affects more than how people view your brand. For example, if your site stores company data, weak security could expose this sensitive information to hackers.

Think about a store with a weak lock on the door — it’s an easy target for theft. Similarly, if your domain isn’t secure, it’s like leaving the door open for cyber thieves to sneak in and steal customer data.

7. Opt into auto-renewal

If you don’t renew your domain name on time, it becomes available again for others to register. Setting up auto-renewal keeps your domain secure and continuously registered under your name, preventing cybersquatters from grabbing it.

The most critical domain security risks

While hackers continuously find new ways to steal sensitive data, these are some of the most common strategies to watch out for.

Phishing

Phishing sites closely resemble a reputable site so customers are none the wiser. Scammers usually select a domain name similar to another site, such as ExampleDomain.com instead of Example-Domain.com. Since the user interface (UI) looks identical, customers might try logging into the site, which gives the scammers their login credentials.

DNS spoofing

DNS spoofing (sometimes called DNS cache poisoning) takes the above approach a step further. Rather than selecting a similar domain name, hackers use your cache to manipulate back-end DNS records. As a result, users get redirected from the reputable site to their phishing site.

Domain hijacking

If your domain name registration lapses or hackers gain access to your profile and remove it, they can scoop up your domain name. Usually, they do this to ransom it back to you for a sizable sum. In 2018, many GoDaddy domains were hijacked through their DNS service, and the hackers demanded $20,000 to return each domain.

Typosquatting

Sometimes, a domainer will purchase domain names similar to those of established brands to sell those domains for a profit. Goolge.com and Amizon.com are good examples, and those companies already reserved those domains expressly so a domainer couldn’t.

Secure site hosting with Webflow

A great domain management first step is to host your site on a reliable platform like Webflow. Leverage enterprise-grade security like single sign-on, security audit compliance, and advanced distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection.

Head to Webflow University to learn how to connect your current domain with Webflow, or explore other ways to secure your website.

Psychographics look deeper than surface-level demographic factors like age, location, and gender to reveal intimate details about your target audience. They delve into the psychological aspects of consumer behavior — like lifestyle, interests, personality, and values — to help marketers understand what motivates their target audience to buy.

With psychographic marketing data, you’re better prepared to employ more effective marketing strategies that resonate with consumers on a deeper level. We’ll explore what psychographics are and how to use them, along with the different types of psychographic characteristics that can help you further segment your audience to make your marketing efforts more targeted.

Psychographics defined (and why to use them)

Psychographics is a market research method that classifies people according to lifestyle, values, and interests. This valuable information helps you accurately understand ideal buyer personas and your target market.

Say your target demographic is middle-class, employed American women in their 30s. You can narrow your focus further by asking psychographic questions like:

• What does this audience value?
• What are their interests and hobbies?
• What does their lifestyle look like?

Understanding your audience psychographically clarifies details about purchasing decisions in a way that demographics can’t. Demographics are still important, but adding psychographic data to user personas brings new specificity you can use to pivot marketing strategies accurately.

Here’s why it’s important to capture and use this data.

Aligns your values with your audience’s

Your target audience might think and act very differently from you, and psychographic data helps you bridge that gap. When you know what your audience values in a brand, you can learn how to align your content and marketing strategy to better resonate with them. 

Saves money with cost-efficient targeting

While conducting psychographic research has a high upfront cost, it often provides data that saves money in the long run.

Targeting vague demographics like “women in their 30s” might mean pouring resources into reaching the wrong people. But focusing on more precise segments like women who value data privacy, enjoy reading LinkedIn articles about technological advancements, and tend to live in metropolitan cities increases the chance you’ll reach the right audience — those who are interested in your offering.

Psychographic traits also often persist even as demographics shift (like this same audience moving into their 40s). So you don’t need to update and validate psychographic research as often as demographics, and you can generally use it longer.

Fine-tunes your marketing strategy

Your audience’s lifestyle and personality significantly impact how you should market to them. Learning how they use social media, whether they enjoy reading or prefer video content, and if they respond well to ads helps you choose more effective advertising tactics.

How to find psychographic data

Psychographics examine intimate details about your audience, so typical research methods like location analytics won’t help. You’ll need to get creative and go straight to the source.

Here are a few ways you can conduct psychographic research.

Interview current clients

Everyone is a source for psychographic data — why not start with people who already love your offering? Interview current clients to discover who your audience is (and what initially drew these happy customers in) so you can adjust strategies to accommodate these insights.

Explore website analytics

Website analytics help you deduce psychographic data without having to collect it explicitly. For example, if your audience denies optional cookies on your site 90% of the time, they likely value data privacy. This approach is assumptive, but you can always take these theories to your target audience through client surveys and website polls. You can also integrate test marketing into your marketing strategy to see which approaches and ideas resonate most strongly with your customers.

Use focus groups

Assemble a focus group to observe and question your target audience. Ask pointed questions, like “How do brands earn your trust?” and “What makes you stop trusting a brand?”

Ask open-ended questions, and consider asking them in both a group and one-on-one setting to see how answers shift.

Gather data from market research firms

Market research firms like Oracle gather and broker data. But, while purchasing data is currently the easiest acquisition option, it’s also the most expensive and least monitored regarding data privacy.

The relationship between demographics and psychographics

Demographics create simplified user personas, and psychographics paint a richer picture. So, while demographics help you select a target audience according to location or spending power, psychographics identify who within those categories might buy your product. Together, both data points help you craft brand messaging that resonates with your target audience.

Here are a few ways these data points differ.

Access

Demographic data is readily available and easier to acquire than psychographic data. You’ll need to conduct interviews and host focus groups to gather psychographic data, which can be expensive and time-consuming.

Qualities

Demographic data measures quantitative factors like how many people live in a particular city or what percentage are married. Psychographic data measures qualitative details, such as what people care about or do in their free time. This information works well together and offers a more holistic view of your audience.

Purpose

The purpose of demographic classifications like “unmarried” and “30–35” is to broadly categorize your audience. And the purpose of psychographics is to add specificity so you can get to know them better (and, in turn, market more effectively to this group).

Various types of psychographic audiences

When you classify your audience psychographically, your audience becomes segmented in interesting ways. Here are some psychographic segment examples you might discover.

Lifestyle

How people live their lives has an enormous impact on their purchasing decisions. It determines what they need and how they go about getting it. Here are a few lifestyle segment examples:

• Travelers. People who travel for work, fun, or as a permanent lifestyle might look for portable, compact solutions to everyday problems.
• Entrepreneurs. People working solo or in startups likely care about money-saving options and effective time management.
• Caregivers. Professional caregivers and those living with family members will want products and services that help them better care for clients and loved ones.

Personality

Prominent personality traits say a lot about one’s attitudes and purchasing motivations. Here are a few examples:

• Nurturing: Caring, empathetic people who want to better themselves and others
• Ambitious: Goal-oriented folks who wish to progress in life, work, and social circles
• Independent: Self-motivated people who value autonomy and self-reliance

Values

Your audience’s values indicate how to build trust with them. If your values don’t align with theirs, you’ll cause unnecessary friction.

Here are a few examples of audience values:

• “Animal testing is unacceptable.” Especially for beauty and pharmaceutical products, these people won’t buy from companies who don’t follow ethical testing practices.
• “Corporations should invest in surrounding communities.” Creating volunteer programs and making charitable donations is a great way to appeal to people who value corporate responsibility.
• “Sustainability is imperative to mitigating climate change.” Highlight when your company substantially improves its environmental impact, and you’ll win this audience over.

Activity, interest, and opinion

People’s hobbies and interests provide cues about what they buy and where. Seasonal hobbies, such as certain sports, can even help you determine when they make purchases.

Here are a few examples of interests, along with the cues each might indicate about your audience:

• Sports. Health-conscious, physically active people might resonate with a “go hard or go home” ad.
• Crafting. Creative, often quirky, individuals with niche interests might respond to a funny ad that teaches them something new.
• Video games. Tech-savvy people who enjoy solving puzzles could enjoy an ad that challenges them to try something difficult.

Build content that resonates with Webflow

Robust psychographic research helps you develop a clear target audience. And the next step is to track that audience’s behavior as they interact with your site, which is where Webflow comes in.

Webflow supports integrations with analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Nocodelytics, which can give you critical insights about how your audience interacts with your website and, therefore, your brand. These tools can show you how many users and page views your site gets, where your traffic comes from, how long people stay on your site, and more.

Our visual web development platform’s collaborative workflows and scalability give your team the power to build and manage your site. Get started with Webflow Enterprise today.

Whether you’re rebranding, shifting your market focus, or updating outdated functionalities, redesigning your website redefines how you interact with your audience. It’s an opportunity to refine your digital operations, boost your digital marketing, streamline processes, and declutter, making your website more user-friendly and functional for both your internal teams and external audience.

While this process brings excitement and potential for innovation, it also demands careful planning and thoughtful execution to ensure the final product reflects your vision and business objectives.

Here’s how to get your website redesign right the first time, as well as six mistakes to avoid when embarking on the journey.

How to redesign your website in 9 steps

Redesigning your website requires a structured approach, similar to initial website design, that’s focused on improvement and updating. Project plans help organize your efforts, define the scope, allocate resources, and set achievable goals and timelines. Detailed plans also help produce project documents and road maps that clearly communicate the process and objectives to ensure your team remains aligned and focused.

Check out these nine steps to build a project plan and successfully redesign your site.

1. Start with “why”

Starting a website redesign plan begins with understanding the core reasons driving change. A deep understanding of your business, its goals, and your current web presence can help you assess your existing website and articulate why you’ve decided on a redesign.

Key questions to determine the “why” for your redesign include:

• What’s your brand story?
• Are you rebranding?
• How is your brand currently perceived or performing?
• What are your company’s objectives for this year?
• What specific goals do you aim to achieve with this redesign?
• How does the redesign align with and support these goals?

Analyzing these aspects pinpoints the exact requirements of your website redesign and makes every change and update purposeful and aligned with your broader business. It also helps set a clear direction for the project so you can strategically plan each step to reach your desired outcome.

2. Set clear goals

After establishing the “why” of your redesign, use this understanding to articulate clear, achievable goals. The “why” helps you understand why you’re redoing your site, and goals establish what you want to achieve with the process by translating your broader organizational objectives into tangible redesign-specific targets.

For instance, if your current website doesn’t get much organic traffic, don’t just aim to address this issue broadly. Set a quantifiable goal, like implementing search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to boost organic traffic by 20% by the end of Q4.

Common website redesign goals include enhancing conversion rates, improving website performance, reducing bounce rates, or showcasing a rebrand. Whatever your goals are, defining and documenting them before you begin the website redesign helps guide the process and measure its success.

For example, Dell initially developed and maintained its website through an in-house team, but they moved to Webflow in search of a more user-friendly, responsive platform that could bridge the design-development gap. They had their “why” — increased user-friendliness and responsiveness — and their goal — find a web development and maintenance platform to get them there.

3. Create a plan to meet your goals

A project plan transforms your “whys” and goals into actionable steps, such as building new features, revamping existing ones, or refining certain design elements, like a hero section, while preserving the original site structure.

For instance, let’s say you want to increase web traffic with the specific goal of designing a site with built-in SEO features to increase organic inbound traffic by 20% by the end of Q4. With your goal clearly defined, you can break down the larger objective into smaller, more manageable tasks, like keyword research and on-page content optimization, and develop a project timeline that outlines when you should complete each task, setting specific milestones along the way. This systematic approach helps you track progress and adjust as needed, ensuring each step brings you closer to achieving that 20% increase in organic inbound traffic.

Regularly revisit and reassess your plan, and adjust it as needed to adapt to unforeseen challenges or emerging opportunities. Creating a detailed and adaptable project plan sets the stage for a website redesign that meets and exceeds your goals.

4. Establish a project team

Bring together individuals with specialized knowledge for a successful website redesign. Here are three key team members you should consider bringing on board:

• Project managers oversee timelines and tasks. They keep your project on track and ensure team members work together cohesively. For instance, a project manager might foresee potential delays in content migration during a website redesign and implement strategies to maintain the project’s momentum.
• Designers, including user experience (UX), user interface (UI), and graphic designers, craft the website’s user journey and focus on aesthetics and functionality. For a redesign, they might enhance the user interface to improve navigation and reduce user friction or update images and graphics to reflect a new brand identity.
• Developers build and support the digital infrastructure behind your website’s functionality and performance. They work on web development, problem-solve, and ensure the site’s performance meets current web standards. In a redesign, developers might implement new features, optimize site speed, and address coding conflicts to maintain the website’s functionality and performance.

5. Update website design elements

Part of a redesign is keeping up with design trends and standards. However, updating design elements isn’t just a cosmetic touch-up — it’s a process that involves understanding user behavior and preferences to create designs that capture and retain attention.

To do so, you’ll need to thoroughly evaluate existing design components — like color schemes, typography, imagery, and layout — and analyze their impact on the overall user experience. For instance, a color scheme should reflect your brand’s personality, while typography design choices must ensure readability and convey the right tone. Imagery should be relevant and resonate with your target audience, and the layout should be intuitive, with a visual hierarchy that naturally leads users through your websitFor example, a tech company might opt for a sleek, minimalist design with bold imagery and clear typography to convey innovation, while a children’s educational site might use bright colors and playful graphics to engage its young audience. By scrutinizing each element for its impact on overall interaction and engagement, you ensure every design decision purposefully contributes to a cohesive, captivating user experience.

6. Improve user experience and website functionality

Even though “design” is in the name, a website redesign doesn’t stop at aesthetic updates — it also focuses on improving your site’s overall usability and performance.

Look at how Skuid worked with creative agency Whiteboard to revamp their site. Before, the homepage displayed a “Get a demo” button. Now, a more positive “Start building for free” button replaces it with new colors that are more cohesive with the site. The design is also more generous with white space, letting bold text and statistics stand out to attract potential customers. Overall, the redesign adopts modern design trends through small tweaks without disturbing the brand’s visual identity.

In other words, don’t just make your website prettier — make it usable, too. To improve user experience, consider:

• Incorporating accessibility features like captioned videos and detailed alt text for images to make your site more inclusive
• Developing a robust search function that enables quicker access to information people are looking for
• Placing vital information prominently on the homepage or in the navigation bar for better user guidance

Since website performance also influences site functionality, your redesign should also address issues such as:

• Reducing slow page load times to improve user retention
• Ensuring mobile responsiveness for a seamless user experience across devices
• Strengthening security measures to protect user data and build trust

7. Build an SEO strategy

An effective website SEO strategy ensures your redesigned site ranks well in search engines, which enhances your site’s visibility and organic traffic. When updating your SEO strategy, it’s vital to:

• Benchmark current site performance using metrics like bounce rate, organic traffic, ranking keywords, backlinks, and domain authority to identify improvement opportunities and track your SEO efforts’ impact.
• Set up 301 redirects for old URLs and create a sitemap for efficient search engine crawling and indexing to ensure they’re discoverable in searches, maintain link equity, and improve site visibility.
• Ensure your site includes comprehensive management of SEO metadata, like meta titles, descriptions, and alt text, to enhance your site’s SEO and make it more likely to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).

8. Craft a style guide

A style guide is a living document that’s a comprehensive reference for your brand’s personality and visual identity. It covers a wide range of things, including writing tone and specific design elements like button colors and shapes, ensuring all future content and pages align with your established brand aesthetic.

Maintaining a consistent design across your website is crucial. By sticking to your website style guide, you ensure that every page reflects the hard work you put into your website’s redesign.

For example, before switching to Webflow, Mural’s team faced challenges in maintaining brand consistency without the help of a designer. To overcome this, Mural used CMS Collections to design templates that enabled their team to create landing pages that adhere to brand style guidelines without always relying on designers. This approach streamlines content creation and upholds brand consistency across the website.

9. Optimize site maintenance workflows

Optimizing website maintenance workflows is as crucial for your team as it is for your users. Streamlining processes like publishing blog posts or updating images improves organizational efficiency and helps you deliver a more resonant user experience to your audience.

For example, before Mural’s website glow-up, their marketing team had to loop in designers and developers for minor website updates. After the redesign, their content team can independently manage blogs and edits. This provides content management autonomy that speeds up the process and reduces the workload on design and development teams.

Incorporating such optimizations into your redesign can dramatically enhance your team’s productivity and website management. To cover all technical aspects of your website redesign, review our performance optimization guide and security checklist.

6 website redesign mistakes to avoid

A redesign is the perfect time to improve your aesthetic, rethink the tools you’re using, and optimize your team’s workflow. But as you assess your current site and decide what to keep or scrap, the process can seem daunting.

Here are six mistakes to avoid when you revamp your website.

1. Skipping planning for design

The first mistake that often happens in a redesign is diving straight into building your site without taking the time to plan. This can be especially tempting if you’ve just switched to a visual development tool like Webflow that empowers multiple team members to construct pages without consulting a designer or developer. Your final result will be better if you prepare first and set up systems to help your team collaborate.

Besides creating a project plan, as mentioned above, you’ll need to standardize a few technical elements. Consider standardizing class nomenclature by using systems like the block, element, modifier (BEM) method for clarity and consistency so any team member can jump into the project and understand what’s going on.

You also want to figure out what the basic building blocks of your pages will look like and how they will function. Consider elements like nav bars, buttons, columns, alerts, and inputs. Then, decide on a design system that gives your team a shared source to draw from. This preliminary organization will speed up development and maintain order throughout your site’s life span.

2. Assuming visitor preferences without user testing

Instead of redesigning your website based on assumptions about what your visitors want, turn to user testing and research. This approach helps you identify impactful changes that will actually optimize conversions and profits.

For instance, user research helps you create detailed personas that give you a deeper understanding of different audience segments. Follow this up with A/B testing tools to assess specific changes, like refining a call to action (CTA) that resonates more effectively with the target audience. This enables you to tailor your website’s features and content to meet their specific needs, ultimately enhancing user experience and engagement.

On a related note, ensure your tracking and analytics still work after you relaunch your site so that you can continue testing, tracking, and improving your site’s performance over time.

3. Starting a website redesign from the outside in

When you start a website redesign from the inside out, you prioritize your core content and landing pages — in contrast to starting from the outside in with the homepage or external elements, like branding and messaging.

While visitors typically encounter the homepage first when they land on your site, they’re often less critical to the user experience than the deeper, content-focused elements like individual landing pages or product information sections. The purpose of the homepage is to get visitors to that content as quickly as possible, so it doesn’t make sense to start building from your homepage before you know where it’s directing users.

For example, Edgar Allan’s website uses a content-first approach. The site’s portfolio section has several visually appealing example homepages on display, with a heading highlighting their design philosophy: “We believe our work should be story-first, but that the browser is a close second.”

4. Forgetting about your existing content

Make content strategy part of your website redesign to ensure you don’t end up breaking backlinks or losing content — both of which can negatively impact your SEO and domain authority.

To successfully port over your content, thoroughly audit your existing content. This includes listing all current URLs for setting up 301 redirects and creating a 404 page for broken links. A content management system (CMS), like Webflow’s, facilitates this process.

Additionally, use this opportunity to review your content for relevance, update or remove what’s outdated, and create evergreen content that remains valuable over time. This approach ensures content continuity and contributes to a stronger, more effective website.

5. Not managing site bandwidth upfront

During a redesign, adding unoptimized images to pages for quick design reviews might seem harmless. But it can result in slow-loading pages that frustrate users. To prevent this, optimize images and digital assets early in the process. Treat bandwidth like a budget and use it judiciously to ensure your site’s accessibility to users with varying internet speeds. This foresight in optimizing content and other resources ultimately contributes to a faster, more user-friendly website, enhancing the overall user experience.

6. Leaning too hard on trends

When redesigning your website, it’s important to balance trends with your brand’s identity. Chasing after the latest web design trends can be tempting, but they might not always align with your brand’s core values or resonate with your audience. An overreliance on trends can lead to a generic look or quickly outdated designs as the trend cycle evolves.

Still, a particular trend may be perfect if it compliments your brand story and identity. Your website should reflect who you are as a brand. Adopt design elements or trends with intention, ensuring they enhance the authentic representation of your brand to your audience.

Mural’s site design clearly aligns with their brand messaging: being a flexible and visual-first collaboration hub. The primary design element on the homepage is an interactive video — reflecting Mural’s visual approach — and the simple CTA button “Start a whiteboard” invites viewers to customize and collaborate on their platform. Plus, it has a modern, sleek appearance that aligns with today’s design trends.

Redesign with confidence

Website redesigns are involved processes that require cross-functional collaboration and a structured approach. Webflow is here to help you get started. Our visual development platform enables teams to collaborate quickly and securely, to launch redesigned websites that fit their brand needs.

Check out our design courses, layout tips, and perspectives from designers before getting started on your enterprise site redesign.

Whether it’s a startup or a scaling enterprise, you’ll rarely find a business without some kind of online presence. Standing out among this crowd requires thoughtful internet marketing strategies that engage a more diverse — and distracted — audience.

This pivot toward digital tactics allows companies to transform every online interaction into an opportunity for impactful connection. And it also means your team can leverage valuable insights, like website traffic and social media engagement metrics, to better understand and target potential customers.

What’s internet marketing?

Internet marketing, also called online or digital marketing, encompasses strategies and techniques to promote products, services, and content over the internet. It uses diverse digital marketing channels like websites and search engines to connect with and captivate target audiences.

As more and more people go online to work, socialize, and interact with the world, internet marketing becomes essential. The good news is that internet marketing tactics, like social media posts or email campaigns, are often less expensive than traditional advertising methods like billboards or TV ads. Marketers can take advantage of these cost-efficient solutions and use real-time analytics to monitor performance across multiple digital platforms. This makes internet marketing a dynamic way for businesses to engage with customers.

Internet marketing vs. traditional advertising

Marketing strategies are evolving from traditional methods to digital approaches. Let’s explore the advantages online advertising offers over conventional marketing:

• Global reach. Internet marketing breaks geographical barriers and helps you reach customers worldwide. With a significant portion of the global population online, businesses can market their products and services to anyone with an internet-enabled device, regardless of location — a common barrier physical stores face. You can use localization and internationalization to make your site engaging to audiences across the globe.
• 24/7 accessibility. Unlike traditional brick-and-mortar stores with fixed operating hours, online businesses operate around the clock. By leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) for personalization and automation, you can engage with customers anytime, enhancing convenience for your business and its audience.
• Precision in targeted advertising. Internet marketing lets you target people with specific demographics, interests, and behaviors with tailored messages. This focused approach helps you address relevant pain points to draw in more leads than traditional advertising. Unlike conventional advertising, which often disperses messages too broadly and misses the mark with uninterested audiences, targeted digital advertising provides the right message to the right audience, which can increase conversion rates.
• Measurable outcomes. Digital marketing solutions encompass tools and platforms that store data online and in analytics tools. These solutions let you track real-time metrics, such as website traffic, conversions, and engagement, so you can measure and refine campaigns with unmatched precision.
• Enhanced brand visibility. Strategies like search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing boost your online visibility and domain authority, which positions your brand higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). This visibility attracts organic traffic more effectively than conventional marketing methods, broadening your brand’s reach.
• Cost-effectiveness. Internet marketing offers more budget-friendly options than traditional marketing methods like print and television advertising. Digital strategies like email, social media, and content marketing let you allocate resources more efficiently and often drive a higher return on investment (ROI).

9 popular examples of internet marketing

You can adapt internet marketing strategies to all organizational sizes, but some may be more effective than others depending on your industry and objectives. Here are nine internet marketing strategies worth considering.

1. Search engine optimization

SEO boosts a website’s visibility and SERP ranking. By weaving SEO into your internet marketing efforts, such as incorporating relevant keywords into your platform, you’ll draw organic traffic to your site and enhance your brand’s visibility.

Some SEO best practices include using relevant and trending meta tags, keywords, and other metadata to help visitors find what they want. If your business specializes in fitness services, using terms like “best outdoor exercises,” “home fitness tips,” and “how to stay fit” in your content can help your site show up in SERPs when potential readers search for similar queries.

2. Email marketing

Email marketing involves sending emails to engage subscribers, promote products, and nurture customer relationships. By delivering targeted promotions and tailored recommendations directly to subscribers’ inboxes in well-designed email campaigns, email marketing helps to strengthen brand awareness, foster customer loyalty, and drive sales.

Consider a web design agency that boosts leads and site traffic through a monthly email newsletter. This newsletter might include design tips, case studies, and exclusive discounts on their service offerings.

By consistently providing valuable content that subscribers look forward to receiving, the agency establishes itself as a trusted resource in the web design community. This consistency and value create a sense of anticipation and exclusivity among the brand’s audience, which deepens their brand engagement and encourages a sense of belonging and loyalty.

3. Social media advertising

Social media advertising leverages platforms like Facebook and Instagram to target specific demographics with ads and curated content. This strategy stands out for its ability to segment audiences based on detailed criteria, such as interests, behaviors, and demographics, which allows social media marketers to craft highly targeted and resonant campaigns.

A local bookstore might use Facebook ads to connect with book lovers by targeting visitors who’ve shown interest in literary social pages and events. By creating engaging ads that highlight new arrivals and author events, the bookstore precisely reaches people most likely to respond. This approach ensures that market resources go toward engaging audiences most likely to convert, ultimately increasing marketing ROI.

4. Content marketing

Like social media advertising, content marketing focuses on crafting and sharing valuable content like blog posts, articles, and infographics to engage specific audiences. But unlike social media advertising, which is platform-specific, content marketing spans various channels, including websites and apps, to offer a broader reach.

This content strategy excels in helping you establish your brand as an industry authority. Consider a tech company. They might create an in-depth infographic about cybersecurity trends and share it on LinkedIn for professional networking, Instagram with tailored adjustments for visual appeal, and their website to enrich their content library.

Content marketing boosts not only visibility but also audience trust. Whether you’re publishing timely pieces in response to current news and trends, or crafting evergreen content that’s timeless and always relevant, by consistently delivering content that adds value, you enhance your brand’s reputation and appeal. This also increases your domain authority — your site’s credibility and trustworthiness according to search engines — leading to higher search rankings and more organic traffic.

5. Pay-per-click advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing involves launching targeted ads, selecting specific keywords on search engines and social media platforms, and paying a fee each time users click on an ad. When someone enters a specific query or term, the highest bidder’s ad appears as a top-ranking result, immediately giving them an advantage by driving traffic to their website and other digital channels.

If your business specializes in digital marketing services, for instance, your PPC strategy might involve bidding on keywords like “digital marketing strategies” or “online marketing services” within Google Ads. If you bid high enough, your ad appears at the top of Google search results when potential customers look up these terms. This boosts your site’s visibility and engagement potential.

6. Blogging

Blogging centers on regularly writing and publishing insightful content on a company blog. By crafting blog posts that provide helpful tips, answer common questions, and explore relevant topics, you position your brand as an industry authority.

Beyond building trust, this strategy also fosters strong relationships with your dedicated audience. Engaging content invites readers to interact, share their thoughts, and become regular visitors, transforming them from casual readers into loyal readers.

Optimized blog content also increases visibility on search engines, which draws more organic traffic to your site. As readers engage with your content by spending more time on your pages and sharing your posts, these positive signals to search engines further boost your SEO efforts.

Imagine a gardening supply company that publishes weekly blog posts. Their topics might cover sustainable gardening practices, innovative tools, and step-by-step guides for various planting techniques. Through these efforts, the company not only educates their audience but also establishes their brand as a trusted expert in the gardening community.

7. Influencer marketing

In influencer marketing, businesses partner with well-known personalities and entities within their industry to market their offerings to the influencer’s followers. This strategy taps into the influencer’s credibility, extensive reach, and established audience trust. By working with trusted influencers, brands can enhance their brand visibility and connect with new, receptive audiences.

A fitness apparel company might collaborate with a fitness guru on Instagram to showcase their latest workout gear. Through sponsored content, like posts and videos featuring the influencer wearing the brand’s apparel during workouts, the brand gains exposure to a broader audience of fitness enthusiasts.

8. Video and podcasting

Videos and podcasts are dynamic multimedia content formats that you can distribute across various platforms, including YouTube and Instagram for videos and Spotify and Apple Podcasts for podcasts. These mediums serve as effective channels to connect with your audience on a deeper level. Through videos and podcasts, you can offer insights, entertainment, and information that enrich the audience’s experience.

As your content gains traction, integrating influencers and notable industry figures into podcasts or videos can introduce your brand to broader audiences. A tech company, for instance, could launch a podcast series discussing the latest trends in technology that features interviews with industry experts.

This strategic move demonstrates the company’s active role in shaping and discussing key topics, which can elevate the organization’s status to a thought leader. Such positioning attracts a more engaged audience that values insightful analysis and will likely become brand advocates.

9. Web design

Effective web design focuses on creating websites and landing pages that are visually appealing, user-friendly, and functional. The goal is to guide users toward specific actions, like making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, and ultimately convert them into customers.

If your website doesn’t meet your target audience’s expectations, leverage data visualization and heatmap tools to make targeted improvements. This data informs strategic adjustments to the site’s layout and user journey.

For a design services company, this might mean observing the user journey to identify improvement areas. Taking this data, the company could redesign their site to showcase their portfolio more effectively, simplify the consultation process, and make the site more responsive to mobile users. These refinements showcase the company’s deep understanding of effective service business marketing by demonstrating their ability to apply design principles in ways that meet user needs and elevate the overall customer experience.

How to implement an effective internet marketing strategy: 3 steps

Whether you’re focusing on a single campaign or juggling multiple projects, here’s how to market your business online with a successful internet marketing strategy in three steps.

1. Establish your objectives

Determine the specific goals you aim to achieve through your internet marketing efforts while considering the resources at your disposal. You might target a 25% uptick in website traffic over the next six months or aim to increase your email subscription list by 15% within the same period.

Whatever your marketing objectives are, explicitly outline these goals and share them with your team. Make sure your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). By identifying your objectives upfront, you provide a clear road map for your internet marketing strategy that allows you to accurately track and assess progress against your plan.

2. Identify your target audience

An effective strategy requires analyzing your target audience, including their pain points, preferences, and behaviors. This understanding helps you develop detailed buyer personas that represent different segments of your customer base, and you can use these buyer personas to enhance your ability to meet customers’ needs effectively.

Conduct market research, analyze competitors, study existing customer data, and gather insights from surveys and social media to understand your audience’s needs. Before moving to a public release, you can also deploy test marketing and A/B testing to trial your internet marketing campaigns with smaller sample groups. When your internet marketing strategies align with your audience’s interests and motivations, your ROI is higher.

Let’s say you have a food preparation app and usage data reveals that most users close the app if they can’t find high-protein meals they can prepare in 15 minutes or less. By strategically featuring quick and protein-rich meal options in your app and emphasizing their preparation ease in your marketing messages, you cater directly to the preferences of users seeking efficient meal solutions.

3. Choose the right internet marketing strategies

Opt for the internet marketing strategies that best align with your audience’s preferences and your objectives — whether that’s SEO, email marketing, social media advertising, or all of the above. If you aim to educate, leverage blogs and podcasts. But to maximize viral potential, explore influencer marketing and paid social media partnerships.

Consider both your available resources and budget when choosing which strategy to use. And integrating multiple tactics often proves more effective in engaging and converting users. Implement a marketing plan with key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can use to monitor performance and fine-tune your approach for optimal outcomes.

Reach new audiences with Webflow

Whatever your business’s internet marketing strategy might be, no approach is complete without a great website. Every marketing campaign ultimately directs traffic to your site, where its design and usability directly influence visitor conversions.

With Webflow, you can create a site that’s visually appealing and highly functional — ensuring an engaging and captivating experience that converts users.

Build and launch your company’s main site, reach new audiences, and grow your business with Webflow today.

When crafting a content marketing strategy, industry statistics can support resource allocation and tactic choices. Reading through what’s working (and what’s not) ensures you’re tapped into viewer preferences, behavioral patterns, and trending topics. You can then craft a thoughtful and data-driven marketing plan that helps you reach your audience and improve your return on investment (ROI).

Whatever your marketing goals, the following statistics show that content marketing is an effective way to achieve them. Despite any ebbs and flows in the top-performing marketing content types, the future promises to remain bright for this stable and well-established strategy.

What’s content marketing, and why is it so effective?

Content marketing involves creating content — like articles, visual media, and audio — that cover topics related to your business’s offering. The goal of content marketing is to engage, inform, and entertain your audience so you can establish your brand as trustworthy and ultimately convert visitors. Content marketing helps your site to rank highly in organic search results, leading to more web traffic and conversions.

Thanks to Google’s increasing attention to authoritative content, content marketing has become the cornerstone of many marketing campaigns. As of 2022, Google’s search results algorithm favors websites offering knowledgeable editorial content, and companies that have successfully pivoted their strategies to content marketing have seen massive gains.

Content marketing statistics

According to a 2022 study from the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing has grown to become the most effective marketing strategy for generating leads. This points to the impact website content can make — it’s rapidly eclipsed other marketing methods like advertisements in web, TV, and print.

Explore the following comprehensive statistics to learn how content marketing helps businesses achieve top performance.

Active blogs generate more leads

Unsurprisingly, an active blog is more successful than an inactive one, but you might be surprised to learn just how stark the difference is. Explore these statistics to learn how regular blogging impacts your reach.

• Businesses that post at least 16 articles monthly generate leads 4.5 times faster. Businesses with blogs also get 55% more organic search traffic.
• 96% of surveyed businesses use blogs in their content marketing strategy.
• 51% of companies that use content marketing publish content every day.

Content marketing leads to sales

Leads generated by your content can translate directly to purchases if you provide customers with a satisfying experience. The key to converting visitors is effectively guiding them from your articles directly to making a purchase.

• 83% of business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers said content marketing is their top source of leads.
• 44% of consumers reference at least four blog articles before making large purchases.
• 58% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers successfully leveraged content marketing in 2023 to increase sales.
• 50% of marketers say content marketing builds brand loyalty with existing customers.

Social media drives traffic to your content

A robust social media presence is increasingly important as more consumers look to social media platforms for blogs, podcasts, and video content.

Top search results get more engagement

Web traffic is an excellent way to measure engagement, but you need to climb the search engine results pages (SERPs) to get the most from it. Businesses that consistently hit the top slot in SERPs enjoy an incredible surge in web traffic.

• The #1 result for a Google search enjoys a 27.6% click-through rate (CTR), 50% more than the #2 slot.
• 93% of internet users begin their session on a search engine.

Google accounts for nearly 80% of all internet searches worldwide.

Stats for different marketing content types

Video marketing, infographics, and audio content are all rising in popularity as social apps gain larger shares of audience attention. Here are the primary content types marketers use and some valuable statistics about each.

Written articles

Online articles are a widely successful marketing content form, though videos are rapidly overtaking them. Still, an active blog is an essential aspect of content marketing.

Visual

Videos and original images have skyrocketed in popularity thanks to the rise of TikTok and Instagram Reels. As a result, many marketing teams partner with influencers on these platforms to market their products.

Audio

Emails and social posts promoting audio clips and podcasts don’t generate the most web traffic, but audio content still makes an impact. Including audio content is a great way to add a sizable boost to your marketing efforts.

B2B content marketing statistics

When it comes to B2B purchases, business leaders research vendors and partners extensively before deciding to partner with them. When B2B organizations offer robust content, they have more opportunities to win over companies. Here’s how content marketing specifically impacts B2B relations.

B2B uses a wider range of marketing tactics

B2B marketing uses a broader array of marketing tactics than B2C. Generally, this is because courting enterprise customers is more involved than engaging consumers.

• 58% of marketers report that virtual events, webinars, and online courses have been the most effective tactics.
• Four of the top five marketing tactics for B2B marketers are uniquely suited to B2B marketing. Virtual events are #1, but research reports, whitepapers, case studies, and long-form articles are also in the top five.
• 90% of B2B marketers use their organization’s website to distribute their content, and more than 50% also use blogs, email newsletters, and email. And 52% use media/public relations and speaking or presenting at events to distribute content.

B2B content marketing prioritizes information over promotion

When attempting to draw businesses to your brand, your content must deliver value that appeals specifically to other businesses — not consumers. That’s because companies tend to have specific informational needs, such as how to use enterprise features or scale strategies, and they prioritize content with that information over promotional messaging.

Optimize your content with Webflow

These statistics confirm that combining multiple content types makes for the best content marketing strategies. It also helps to have a top-notch web design and access to the best features. Webflow offers incredible features to support your marketing strategy, like search engine optimization (SEO) enhancements, app integrations, and redirect management. Plan, create, and publish content that ensures you reach the top of SERPs.

Explore Webflow University’s informative docs, courses, and interactive lessons for better content marketing tactics that ensure your business’s success.

The colors, images, and words you use when designing a website get plenty of attention, but you must also consider less obvious factors. When it comes to reaching the broadest audience possible, you also need accessibility reviews, stability checks, and cross-browser compatibility tests. Otherwise, you risk your website functioning and appearing differently on different browsers — and that can confuse and frustrate your site visitors.

Checking compatibility across browsers enables you to deliver a consistent audience experience, regardless of how users access your site. Cross-browser compatibility issues crop up whenever developers neglect to test websites in different browsers — so you need to run thorough evaluations before hitting that deploy button.

Many factors contribute to cross-browser compatibility issues, especially between browsers with distinct engines. But following standard guidelines will reduce the number of errors you encounter, and selecting the right testing tool will lead to more compatible builds.

5 types of cross-browser compatibility issues

Chrome, Edge, and Safari are the three most popular web browsers, with Firefox trailing at a distant fourth. Chrome and Edge rely on the Chromium rendering engine, but Safari uses WebKit, a proprietary engine from Apple.

These engines are unique, so they create different results. And even browsers that use the same engine, like Chrome and Edge, aren’t entirely consistent because their Chromium builds are different. These slight inconsistencies can result in completely different viewing experiences.

Here are a few differences between web browsers that cause inconsistent experiences.

1. Default fonts

Different browsers default to different fonts, meaning the spacing on a page can vary wildly between browsers. Chrome and Edge, for example, use Arial as their default font, with Chrome substituting Helvetica on macOS. And Apple uses Times New Roman for everything on Safari.

All three browsers use their own values for kerning (the space between letters) and tracking (relative spacing in a text block). These slight differences can cause a paragraph, button, or banner on Safari to appear much larger or smaller than on Chrome or Edge. As you can imagine, page elements in tight spaces can quickly break down and become unreadable.

2. Varying support

All three popular browsers vary in which features they support. Safari, for example, supports fewer CSS styles than its competitors. It doesn’t support text-justify, font-size-adjust, or the color() function, to name a few. If your site uses any of these CSS elements, Safari won’t parse them, resulting in errors.

Browsers also vary in their support for JavaScript. As JavaScript updates, each browser must update to support new features and functionalities. Some browsers might catch up faster than others. This creates a situation where one browser might support a new JavaScript feature while another doesn’t, leading to inconsistencies for the user.

Each browser also supports different extensions. Chrome is famous for its vast library of plugins, which means its users have custom features that other browsers might not support, like Dark Reader and Google Translate. These features alter how your site appears on Chrome, and you should consider them during testing.

3. Speed

If your pages include multimedia or interactable elements, test their rendering speed in each browser. All three top browsers have comparable averages, with Chrome barely pulling ahead at the cost of increased memory usage. But these rankings fluctuate over time, so check for this in your evaluations.

4. Browser versions

Some users update their browsers regularly, while others do so sporadically. As a result, those with the same browser can have entirely different experiences with your content. This is especially true when browsers receive major updates that significantly alter their functionality, like when Apple added a profiles feature in the release of Safari 17.

5. Browser bugs

Browsers are updated frequently, sometimes 8 to 10 times a year. It isn’t surprising, then, that the occasional bug finds its way into the mix. These bugs usually come in the form of a CSS class that isn’t parsing correctly or a JavaScript feature that’s temporarily broken. They’re usually fixed one or two versions later, but in the meantime, impacted users will have a slightly different experience.

Cross-browser and compatibility testing

Cross-browser tests check how your site appears on different browsers, while compatibility tests check your site on other operating systems and devices. It takes a mix of both to ensure a consistent viewing experience for your users.

You can perform cross-browser and compatibility tests manually or automatically. Automatic testing renders and explores content without human interaction, while manual testing requires a person to load and navigate the content on many browsers and devices. Most testing tools, like Browserling and Ranorex, offer both testing options.

Regardless of your method, here are the criteria to test for.

Function

Your primary concern during testing is whether the features on your site all perform adequately in every situation. Check the following when testing your site’s functionality:

• Interactable elements like buttons and forms respond quickly.
• Navigation works consistently so menu items appear in the correct order and size.
• Embedded content such as documents and livestreams situate correctly.

Performance

Speed and reliability are crucial factors audiences consider when determining how much they trust your site. Your content and features must load quickly and run smoothly or the user will go elsewhere. In website performance testing, check these factors:

• Page load time is swift in every circumstance, especially among your most complex pages.
• Support for common plugins like screen readers and spellcheckers is consistent across browsers.

Appearance

A tiny browser error can ruin your site’s layout, wrecking the design you spent time and effort crafting. Thankfully, these issues, like incompatible CSS styles and minor errors in formatting, are usually simple to diagnose and solve. Check for the following factors on every page:

• Page elements appear in the correct size, shape, and order.
• Typography is spaced correctly, and the fonts and formatting are consistent.
• Animations play smoothly and don’t hitch or stutter.
• Graphics are where they belong, and the padding around them is even.

Accessibility

Accessibility checks ensure your site is readable and available to your entire audience. Slight variations in colors and fonts can make your site unusable to some viewers. As a result, you’ll alienate these potential users before they can read your content. Check that your site meets the following standards:

• Colors have proper contrast levels to the words placed over them.
• Fonts are all ADA compliant.
• Accessibility tools like screen readers, translators, and magnifiers load automatically when enabled.
• Text size can be increased without ruining the page’s layout.‍
• Devices with different screen sizes still have a similar experience.

How to ensure cross-browser compatibility during the development process

Testing is an excellent method for ensuring compatibility, but you can take measures during development to make your site compatible from the start. You want to avoid a situation where you’ve created your entire site and are ready to deploy it, but testing reveals a slew of issues you must return to address. Here are a few best practices to follow throughout web design to ensure compatibility upfront.

Keep it simple

Refrain from adding more complexity than is necessary for your site, and use the simplest methods to deliver the intended experience whenever possible. Avoid nesting too many elements inside one another, writing complex CSS styles, and incorporating custom JavaScript. These actions might cause compatibility issues when you get to testing because as browsers change appearance and feature support, these complexities will likely break down and require revision.

Validate

Regularly use a validation tool like the HTML Validator from CommonTools.org as you develop. Most code editors like Visual Studio Code and Notepad++ offer plugins for validator tools you can use along the way. This will help you find issues early and often. The sooner you detect a problem, the less likely you are to repeat it.

Use the best WYSIWYGs

What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editors enable web developers to design content without writing HTML or CSS, which speeds up the development process and reduces the overall workload. But some WYSIWYG editors can introduce errors that adversely impact compatibility.

If you opt for a WYSIWYG editor, select one that supports multiple browsers. Webflow, for example, supports all the industry standard features of modern browsers like Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox.

Cross-browser testing tools

Thankfully, many tools on the market aim to make testing quick and easy. These solutions are all very similar, with most supporting the same features, but be sure to look for the following capabilities when selecting a browser compatibility testing tool:

• Live interactive sessions that allow you to scroll through pages and navigate the site on different browsers in real time.
• Real devices performing the test, with the session streamed to you live.
• Local sessions enabling you to test in-development sites.
• Accessibility testing that checks your site against accessibility guidelines.
• Support for all the leading browsers.

Here are a few of the most popular testing tools that support these features.

BrowserStack

BrowserStack gears its software toward quality assurance (QA) testers who run manual checks. It lets you take control of test browser windows to explore their content and debug them in real time. It can assess your site on various browsers and devices and features a helpful accessibility-checking tool.

Browserling

Browserling is a simplified but powerful tool for manual cross-browser compatibility testing. It includes many of the basic features you need, such as local sessions, testing on real devices, and support for all the leading browsers. And Browserling can install a browser extension that improves its simplicity. But it’s the only entry on this list that doesn’t offer accessibility testing. You’ll need to use a separate tool for that, like AccessibilityChecker.org.

Testsigma

Testsigma is a comprehensive tool for automated, continuous testing on all major browsers and devices. It supports all the basic features like interactive sessions and real device testing and has extensive documentation on how to optimize it. Testsigma also implements artificial intelligence (AI) features that check for potential issues with your tests to suggest fixes.

Ranorex

Ranorex offers a robust suite of tools for automated testing. Ranorex Studio is their tool for cross-browser checks and boasts an extensive selection of scenarios. It can test on any browser and device and includes all the other essential features you need. And you can add new, entirely customized testing parameters that cover anything from custom browsers to Linux support. Ranorex Studio is a complex tool with a steep learning curve, but the developers created a series of webinars to help people learn how to use it.

Foster increased compatibility with Webflow

Cross-browser compatibility ensures you present a cohesive, consistent brand to your audience. The key is starting with a solid website foundation. Webflow lays that foundation for you so you can focus on building a visually stunning site that excites your users.

Webflow constantly updates the platform to support the newest features and keep up with the shifting landscape of popular browsers. When you’re ready to deploy your Webflow site, you can rest assured that it’ll render consistently for all your users — no matter their browser.

That’s why it caught our attention when consultancy Gartner recently wrote about the scourge of what they’ve dubbed “collaboration drag.” Below, read more about what collaboration drag is, how it hurts your business, and how marketers can address the problem with smarter processes and technology. 

What is collaboration drag?

Collaboration drag is in some ways a new term for an age-old problem facing marketing organizations. Simply put: the more complex a go-to-market motion is — with more people and processes required to complete it — the greater the risk of dysfunctional collaboration becomes. This can often rear its head with projects involving a company’s website and other initiatives that tend to involve stakeholders and contributors from across the organization.

A collaboration drag problem can be tricky to identify within an organization because it usually doesn’t represent a single, fatal bottleneck. Rather, it’s the cumulative effect of multiple handoffs, slow execution, cumbersome review and approval processes, as well as poor project visibility, accountability, and documentation. Taken together, these sap resources and stretch out project timelines.

If this phenomenon sounds familiar, you’re not alone: Gartner’s survey of CMOs revealed 79% of marketing leaders have reported that collaboration drag has limited at least one digital initiative within their organization today.

How does collaboration drag impact today’s marketing teams?

From budgets and timelines to operating rhythms and overall organizational success, collaboration drag can throw a real wrench into how marketing teams — and a company at large — execute high-impact work and deliver on business needs. Below, let’s explore a few of the challenges it presents for today’s companies. 

Financial consequences

For starters, collaboration drag has a direct and costly financial impact. When collaboration on a key initiative like a web project is consistently set back by processes, people, and budget, an organization simply accomplishes less. The previously cited Gartner study quantifies this impact: organizations with high collaboration drag are 37% less likely to exceed their revenue and profitability objectives.

Compromised timelines

Collaboration drag contributes to delayed execution. Every time teams are misaligned, timelines suffer. At best, this means projects are completed at a slower rate, but more likely it means that project budgets are affected, too. In our recent State of the Website report, we found that nearly half of marketing leaders are unable to complete website projects on time and within budget. 

Team flexibility and adaptability

Collaboration drag harms teams’ flexibility, too. The more cumbersome it is to collaborate across teams, the harder it is to quickly adapt and innovate to changing conditions or evolving requirements. For example, a company’s website represents not just its identity but also a crucial source of truth for information about its mission and offerings. As a result, maintaining a powerful, performant, and up-to-date website requires agility. When collaboration drag impacts a team’s ability to execute website projects, the trickle-down effect of lacking agility can become quite costly.

Influence, resourcing, and morale

All-in-all, the effects of collaboration drag — missed deadlines, exceeded budgets, inflexible execution — can take a significant toll on a marketing organization. This is because the marketing department’s perceived value within a company depends on its effectiveness, particularly with high-visibility and critical initiatives such as the website. When collaboration drag causes a project to stumble, it jeopardizes marketing leaders’ ability to secure resources and influence strategic decisions.

Finally, collaboration drag can wreak havoc on organizational morale. Beyond the measurable business costs, there’s also the reality of how missed targets, poor execution, and diminished influence impact team culture. Low morale represents another strategic risk to the organization, as it affects recruiting and retention in a competitive hiring environment, and this issue is just as important to curb as the aforementioned challenges.

How to combat collaboration drag

With the status quo today, it’s clear how detrimental issues with teamwork and collaboration have already become across companies of all sizes and industries — demanding a sense of urgency to solve this massive problem.

If this problem resonates with you and your organization, there are steps you can take today to start trending in the right direction. They start with smarter processes and better technology.

Develop smarter processes

The good news is that collaboration drag usually isn’t the result of a massive technology failure. Instead, the opportunity to improve rests upon teams’ adoption of new ways of working together. As Gartner puts it, what’s required is “a new form of collaboration that cascades productively across teams.” The following framework can help you chart a path toward future-proof processes that will lead you on a path toward success.

1. Identify your current bottlenecks

Improving collaboration begins with a clear-eyed accounting of the bottlenecks that exist within workflows and processes, so begin by documenting each workflow, surveying colleagues, and gathering feedback. Knowledge about what’s broken is typically abundant within an organization once leaders know to seek out tough observations.

2. Document clear roles, goals, and success indicators

Introduce intentional change by explicitly articulating roles, goals, and KPIs. Remembering that what is measured can be managed, it’s important to develop new processes and objectives that can be quantified.

Examples of high-level goals marketing teams may want to define and tackle include: 

• Generating site traffic growth
• Improving the rate at which site visitors convert into customers
• Scaling event programming with agility 

In tracking each one, remember to designate a source of accountability. Doing so will ensure everyone on a team will understand what’s working and what’s not, as well as measure and track progress toward improvement.

3. Enable greater autonomy

A major ingredient in successful process change is autonomy. It’s important to distinguish between important guardrails, which help everyone on a team clearly understand their responsibilities, and extraneous gatekeeping that just slows progress. Where it’s possible, look for opportunities to increase every collaborator’s ability to make meaningful, independent decisions, which improves morale and speeds accomplishment.

In particular, encourage experimentation. It’s entirely possible that an organization doesn’t discover the magic solution to every problem in its first iteration, so design processes that allow for trying new ways of working together and new opportunities to advance the team’s goals.

4. Take time to acknowledge the incremental wins

Don’t forget to celebrate your successes — no matter how large or small. Be intentional in designing accountability and feedback mechanisms that account for when an experiment does lead to improvement, a collaborator’s creativity shines, or a team meets its benchmarks. Developing improved processes isn’t easy work, so leaders should take the needed victory lap when their efforts bear fruit.

Invest in powerful tools that inherently enable collaboration

It’s rare to have a marketing initiative that doesn’t involve the company’s website. As a result, web-related work is often a victim of collaboration drag. With outdated ways of building for the web, it’s common for engineering and design teams to be a bottleneck for web projects, leaving marketing teams stuck waiting on them for any — or sometimes every — change. Fortunately, the right tools can remedy this pain and enable effective collaboration that can help your team execute at a faster rate than ever before.

Teams that build in Webflow are able to quickly ship state-of-the-art responsive web experiences without having to write any code. This empowers marketers to own more of the website and gives developers the time and freedom to work on higher-impact initiatives. 

Guardrails that give teams peace of mind

When reimagining the way today’s teams build for the web, IT teams and even marketing leaders often worry about “the website breaking,” With Webflow, however, teams can work better together, ship faster, and protect against unauthorized changes using purpose-built roles. Content editors can safely contribute content without changing page designs, and every member of an organization can be invited to leave feedback directly in the design tool using a free commenter-only role.

Additionally, to develop and publish web content more quickly, multiple designers can use page branching to work on different pages on the same site at the same time. Branch staging makes it possible to test new designs much faster, review custom code fully rendered, and catch issues earlier in the process — meaning faster execution, more experimentation, and greater flexibility.

Effective collaboration doesn’t require sacrificing security, either. Every step of the process, Webflow’s secure workflows, advanced roles and permissions, and activity logging bring direct visibility and clear accountability so that marketing teams can ship sites quickly and safely.

Yield tangible results with the right technology

With enhanced collaboration on website initiatives, marketing organizations can better achieve their goals. For starters, removing collaboration drag helps teams move quickly, so they can adapt to changing market conditions, launch at scale, and edge out the competition. This was a reality for the team at Oyster, who were able to increase their speed to market by 6x, the GrubHub marketing team that launched a new campaign for over 1.3 million visitors in just 7 weeks, and the Fivetran team, who launched 130 new web pages in under a year.

Perhaps best of all, improved collaboration can dramatically boost your bottom line. NCR saw a 10x savings in agency fees after switching to Webflow, Refokus generated more than $1M in revenue from new projects, and Fivetran saw a 26% improved conversion rate. 

Addressing collaboration drag yields positive, measurable outcomes, improving marketing teams’ performance, impact on revenue, and their overall influence.

Smarter execution is good for business

As we’ve seen, combatting collaboration drag is crucial—but it doesn’t have to be hard. With luck, the steps detailed above can represent a template for success, helping your team develop new ways to work together that collect and use feedback, facilitate experimentation, and reward success. We believe a major ingredient in this transformation is adopting modern tooling to build, ship, and manage websites without reliance on developers. Along with the right processes, modern web tools can unlock marketing teams’ full potential to meet customer needs and drive company success.

Webflow Enterprise helps marketing leaders make the most out of marketing technology investments, quickly execute on campaigns and experiments as a marketing team collaboratively, and drive growth and generate leads for the business in an efficient way. To learn more, get in touch with our team today. simple as getting in touch.

Project managers know the value of combining multi-disciplinary groups into one cohesive unit. By aligning everyone with the same goals and timelines, collaboration, communication, and transparency improves exponentially.

The process of bringing together multi-disciplinary teams is called project integration management. The integration process works best when run by a competent leader, who has a clearly defined plan and the skills to execute it. When handled well, this approach to unifying teams can lead to successful outcomes for your projects, campaigns, and business overall. 

What’s project integration management?

Project integration management involves knitting together different teams as they work on separate-but-related tasks for a given initiative. Software projects, for instance, often involve integrating developers, designers, and managers. Each group’s methodologies must factor into an integrated project management plan that everyone shares.

Weaving various processes into one overarching system takes some give and take from the whole team, and a precise infrastructure run by expert project managers.

The benefits of project integration management

When everyone uses the same management processes and methodology, the benefits are plentiful: seamless communication, better alignment, and simplified collaboration. But the benefits go even further.

Here are some positive effects of properly integrated project management:

• Transparency: When all teams follow the same reporting structure and commit to shared timelines, processes are more transparent, leading to better communication and increased accountability.
• Efficiency: Aligning the team’s shared operating procedures (SOP) and task management strategies ensures all groups work in a similar cadence, which significantly improves cohesion and collaboration.
• Clarity: Integrating groups involves gathering everyone at regular meetings where team members get more face-to-face opportunities to interact. These meetings provide a forum for everyone to talk and ask questions that lead to a better understanding of each other’s roles and tasks.

Start project integration management in 7 steps

Successful integration requires a coherent, comprehensive plan that accounts for all the variables and prepares workers to face nearly every challenge. When numerous people collaborate in a close-knit team, having a clearly defined process for navigating issues is key. So, make sure your interdisciplinary group has an insightful, creative project manager, who knows how to detect cross-team friction and miscommunications before issues disrupt the workflow. 

If you’re managing a cross-functional team integration, follow these seven steps, which outline an effective approach, along with an example to illustrate every step along the way.

1. Create a project brief

A project brief outlines the expected project scope, goals, and requirements. Typically, the lead manager writes this document, and it’s as much for other stakeholders as it is for the team. The document serves as a pitch for getting buy-in from executives or stakeholders who must sign off on budget, timeline, and resource allocation.

For example, if you’re integrating design, marketing, and development teams, the project brief should outline key details like the reporting structure, responsibilities, and resource requirements for the newly minted team.

2. Design an integrated project implementation plan

After the brief is approved, it’s time to flesh it out into a fully realized implementation plan. This plan outlines all necessary tasks and sets the team’s budget, workload, and timeline expectations. 

Ideally, you won’t need to adjust this plan during project execution. But if you do need to adapt your procedures or scope, promptly request necessary approval. This ensures that involved parties aren’t surprised by changes, like when the timeline or budget have shifted.

For our example team, the project implementation plan would establish workflows for how the designers hand off designs to developers and how developers, in turn, hand their prototypes to marketing. It also establishes deadlines for each step in the process to keep everyone on track, along with contingency plans for when something goes wrong. 

3. Track progress

Once you have a project plan, it’s time to execute it. Create tasks and assign them to relevant team members based on your management outline. Closely follow the plan and track progress toward goals. If you detect problems, such as unattainable timelines or misunderstandings between team members, address them immediately to keep everything on track.

For example, if the developers decide a vital feature isn’t doable in the time allotted, as the manager you might decide to remove that feature from the launch plan. The next time the team meets, you could direct designers to change their designs and marketers to scrub any mention of the feature from their advertising.

4. Facilitate knowledge sharing

Your management plan should establish regular meetings for all groups and members to confer. It’s your job to oversee these sessions and ensure everyone shares necessary knowledge. For efficient collaboration, you’ll want all parties aware of each other’s progress, challenges, and expectations.

If our example team used agile methodology, every sprint would end with a sprint meeting in which the team assesses their progress. Everyone is invited to speak candidly about the successes and failures they encountered so the whole team can benefit from their experience. In this way, the designers can learn what challenges the developers are up against and vice versa.

5. Monitor work

Between the larger team meetings, set up 1:1 sessions with each team member for more personal check-ins. Foster an inviting, encouraging environment where your team feels comfortable sharing concerns, successes, and expectations. This is all vital information that helps you manage projects, predict outcomes, and support direct managers as they guide team members toward success.

6. Navigate change

Throughout a project, team members may request changes to the plan. You’ll determine whether those requests are necessary or not. This is where creativity is paramount to the management process. Find clever ways to adapt to keep the project schedule on track.

For example, if a designer mentions they don’t have enough bandwidth to finish a task, the manager can explore ways to solve that problem without throwing off timelines. They could pare down that individual’s requirements or reallocate someone else’s efforts for extra support.

7. Wrap it up

When the project is complete, review your management plan to verify you’ve met all expectations. Some groups conduct post-mortem meetings to review the project charter and explore learnings for future initiatives.

Lastly, take your completed project management plan to relevant stakeholders and report on your team’s success. Discuss the challenges and lessons learned to reflect on the team’s efforts and growth. Also, acknowledge individuals who performed their roles admirably so that hard-working team members gain some visibility with upper management.

When our example team finishes their first project, the manager would report their results to upper management, highlighting how the newly-integrated team collaborated and spotlight the efforts of the designers, developers, and marketers involved.

Popular project integration management tools

The project integration management process involves many moving parts that must work together smoothly. Collaboration and project management tools can help your teams integrate. Here are some industry-standard tools to consider.

Gantt charts

A Gantt chart is a work breakdown structure tool that visualizes how different tasks in a project plan interconnect. It uses color coding, customizable shapes, and categorization to indicate task dependencies and prerequisites, like feature support or necessary infrastructure.

Kanban boards

A Kanban board is another work breakdown structure tool that depicts the overall workload involved in a project plan. It tracks which tasks are complete, underway, or pending. Most management software, like Zoho and Monday.com, feature Kanban boards or support integrations with tools that do. 

Project dashboards

A dashboard, such as those in project management software like ClickUp and Jira, is a shared location where the project manager can perform many functions quickly, such as reassigning tasks, updating meetings, and reviewing progress. It’s a central hub for overseeing the entire project.

Streamline the integration process with Webflow

When aligning multi-disciplinary teams to achieve goals is a top priority, integrated project management can be a valuable approach. The platform you use should reflect and enable this rich collaboration. 

For web design teams, Webflow is a powerful visual-first web development platform designed for growth. The Designer supports real-time coordination and popular integrations, so team members can communicate and work together seamlessly — across the room or across the globe.

Visuals are an integral component of the web design process. You must consider how colors, fonts, and multimedia work together to form an attractive and on-brand appearance. And your site must also offer an enjoyable user experience so visitors want to stick around and explore.

Learn how to balance visuals and usability to make your website attractive, memorable, and effective in achieving its goals.

Why is visual design important?

Your web development process should include creating a solid visual design to elevate your site’s aesthetics, user experience, and overall performance. Here are a few critical reasons to prioritize your site’s appearance:

• First impressions. Your visual design is often the first thing a visitor notices when interacting with your brand. An appealing, professional, and engaging website layout creates a positive impression and encourages people to explore your content. On the other hand, a poorly designed website can drive visitors away, potentially reducing conversion opportunities.
• Brand identity. A unique color palette, consistent typography, and custom imagery establish a recognizable brand identity and make your site memorable. By maintaining this visual aesthetic across multiple channels, you differentiate yourself from competitors and reinforce your messaging, which fosters trust and loyalty with your target audience.
• User experience. Effective visual design goes beyond aesthetics and extends to usability. Thoughtful elements like user-friendly navigation, clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons, and well-organized content improve people’s interactions with your site. When visitors find a website straightforward to navigate, they’re more likely to engage with and return to it.
• Engagement. Engaging imagery, like high-quality illustrations, informative videos, and interactive animations, captivates audiences and keeps them on your site longer. Increased engagement reduces bounce rates and encourages people to return for similarly immersive experiences.‍
• Conversion rates. Compelling aesthetics can guide website visitors toward taking action, like signing up for a newsletter, buying a product, or contacting your business. Strategically placed elements like buttons and forms help people take the next step, boosting your site’s bottom line.

9 steps for creating visually appealing web designs

Here’s a breakdown of nine critical steps for a successful web design process.

1. Identify your goals and project scope

Clear goals help shape your design language, whether you’re looking to generate leads, sell products and services, or showcase your portfolio. For example, a portfolio will highlight case study images and contact details, while a product site should have attractive typography describing benefits and unique value propositions.

Set a project scope that outlines your website’s resources, costs, and detailed timeline to keep the design process on track. Knowing how much you’ll spend influences decisions like hiring designers and buying prototyping tools.

2. Understand your audience

For a successful targeting strategy, learn what kind of branding will resonate with your ideal users. Consider demographic factors like age, interests, and online behavior. For example, a website aimed at young adults might use vibrant colors with dynamic animations, while a site for a professional enterprise audience might prioritize a cleaner, more sophisticated look.

3. Analyze your competitors’ websites

Evaluating competitor websites helps you understand what works and what doesn’t in your field. Look at their design elements, how they structure content, and the user experience they offer. A SWOT analysis in which you look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of competitors’ sites can support a data-led approach to designing your site’s visuals by helping identify opportunities to differentiate your site and offer something unique.

4. Create a mood board and style tiles

Now, it’s time to create your site’s visual aesthetic.

A mood board is a visual tool that includes components like images and text to represent your brand’s essence. This board conveys concepts that may be challenging to put into words, like feelings or pictures that evoke emotions. List these concepts and select imagery that reflects them based on your brand’s goals, vision, and voice. Then, assemble your visual inspiration in one place, like a wireframe, and identify overarching themes. This helps you find direction for the rest of your design.

Then, refer to your mood board to generate style tiles, which translate overarching concepts into concrete components like logos and color palettes. Find the words and themes that reflect your brand, like “elegant,” “trusted,” or “quirky.” These identifiers evoke different visual styles that you can manifest through color, negative space, and typography. Try testing multiple iterations to explore ideas and find the perfect style tile for your organization.

5. Build an element collage

Element collages organize and display style tiles and site components to reflect their function in real-world usage. For example, you can use collages to show buttons with hover states, creative content reveals, and interactive animations. If you present design components and functionality separately, it’s challenging to consider how all the pieces come together. Instead, use collages to stitch style tiles together and assemble your essential elements from there.

6. Create a style guide

A style guide is a living document that outlines your brand’s design guidelines. It includes typography rules, color combinations, and visual standards to ensure consistency across your site and other channels. Unlike static documents, a living style guide typically exists on a password-protected page of a live site to allow for real-time updates. This shared resource centralizes all design elements from your style tiles and collages, ensuring your site maintains its cohesive aesthetic.

7. Start designing your site

With your site’s look, feel, and visual elements approved, begin laying out the pages and integrating content. In this stage, you’ll arrange images and text, create menus and navigational components, and ensure content and design work together for a user-friendly experience.

Flexibility is critical — you might have to adjust your ideas in real time. For example, a bright color scheme might need toning down to work harmoniously with surrounding elements.

8. Test your site

Before launch, thoroughly test your website to make sure all components, like images, forms, and animations, look good and function correctly. Check for broken links and test the site’s speed and responsiveness across different devices. You can use data visualization tools like Google Analytics to measure loading times and other site-related metrics.

9. Launch your website (and then regularly update it)

After testing, set up a web hosting environment with built-in security. Ensure all necessary backups are in place and follow a task checklist with items like configuring search engine optimization (SEO) settings and integrating analytics tools. You can also prepare marketing materials to announce and promote your new website.

Once you’ve launched, track visitor behavior and organic traffic. Engage with early users to gather feedback and identify problems so you can make continuous improvements. Regular updates ensure your website remains effective and user-friendly in the long run.

Let Webflow support your visual design process

From ideation to execution to post-launch monitoring, every step in the design lifecycle contributes to your website’s success. A visually appealing site creates a favorable first impression and continuously reinforces your brand’s identity in consumers’ minds.

With Webflow, you can leverage a visual-first design environment to build sites that suit your style and needs. And Webflow’s content management system (CMS) lets you conveniently update your site to ensure a strong and lasting online presence. Get started with Webflow today.