Improve the onboarding experience for clients

Webflow is a platform with 2 main users:
Clients and designers.
Setting it apart from services like Wix and Squarespace - Webflow is too complex for most of the end-users that will pay for the hosting and usage of the site.
Meaning the clients.

However: Most of webflows interfaces totally ignores this fact and exists only for designers even though 99% of the designers in webflow will just forward the bill to the client if they are not hired in the company using the site.

In the days of client billing the clients only needed to see two interfaces:
- The link to fill in payment-details for client-billing
- The editor

Both were simple and designed with clients in mind.

After client-billing are phasing out and workspaces are phasing in - the client-experience is now not nearly as simple - and to me it seems they are forgotten in terms of design and user-experience.
This is very dangerous - because it might negatively impact the end-clients experience of the platform. This might lead them away from webflow and onto other alternatives.

Let me explain how:

In the new workspace-era; the ideal flow for clients are like this:
Step 1 - Freelancer/agency designs site in own workspace
Step 2 - Client creates a workspace and adds billing details
Step 3 - Site is transferred to clients and freelancer/Agency gets access (for free once the feature is ready)

This is ideal because most customers demand ownership of their site and account, but from the point of creating it - they will not use it other than as editors.

The problem here arises in step 2:
Please try to log out of your acccount and follow the process as "new user" in webflow. This process will end in the creation of a new workspace, but is entirely designed for advanced users without non-techy clients in mind.
The questions in the onboarding-guide are implying that the user are going to build a site on their own and the onboarding ends directly in the designer - which I know for sure will confuse my clients.

My wish is for webflow to improve the on-boarding-experience for clients.
You have the bright minds to do so, but here are some suggestions:

Give me as designer a url I can send the client while telling them to create a workspace. The user-experience from this link is entirely designed and thought out for non-techy-users who does not care about the designer and only needs to do the following:
Add information
Add payment details
Give freelancer/Agency access

In addition: the list of sites in the dashboard will always take you to the designer if you don't click the small dots in the corner and go directly to site settings.
This is a behaviour that is ok for designers, but not ok for clients as they will get lost in the designer when what they want is to get an overview over their site.
I suggest to change the default-action when clicking a site to open settings, and add the "designer"-option in the 3-dot-button instead.

I hope this will be something that can be prioritized and carried out in a fast and simple manner.

Thank you!

  • Karl Håkon Sæther
  • Oct 14 2022