Extremely Disappointed in WebFlow Forums!

Community resources Product feedback
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I am extremely disappointed with WebFlow forums, I’ve noticed the majority of the questions over here go Un-answered, just take a look at the home page, almost all of the questions have 0 replies other than the top few. I come from a coding background and I understand Classes, Objects and Inheritance pretty well since I’ve learnt it as part of my curriculum at university. So naturally this is slightly easier for me to get a Hang off. I still need a lot of help though and there isn’t many people who’re here to do that and I can’t imagine how it’ll be for a lot of folks over here who don’t have a coding background who’ll have more doubts and they’ll have no one to answer them.

Anyone who’s new on Webflow and is trying to use the forum to get their doubts cleared will be dissuaded once they reach a road block and they see there isn’t anyone to help them. This will be costing Webflow a lot of Long term users and I don’t think they’re realising it.

I don’t understand why wouldn’t Webflow invest in hiring at least 5 full time employees at the forums who’ll make sure every single doubt is cleared. It’ll be good for their business.

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What is worse is that the forums aren’t actually integrated with Webflow University - what I mean is that it would be good to have content updated at Webflow University with every question posted here. (E.g. a section called “specific case stuides” at the end of each tutorial.)

My rationale is this: if someone is asking how to do something on this forum, s/he has either:
a) not checked it at Webflow University, or
b) looked for it there but could not find it, or
c) it is not there.

In all cases, if there’s a full-time employee responding to every single help question, Webflow University would be kept informative and easy to use all the time.

This implies that the same employee should be the one managing Webflow University.

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You have a very good point and integratin every section of Webflow University with the forum would have been an excellent way to go about it.

If they’re actually serious about their business and they want it to scale, they’ll need to hire multiple full time employees who’ll ensure all the questions are covered.

who knows ? with shoddy support like this dare I say it it’ll follow the same footsteps of Adobe Muse.

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I agree. If a stub topic and link for each webflow university tutorial was posted here you would have those already answered and FAQ topics available in forum search which would be huge. It would be an easy effort moving forward.

Historically Webflow has had a great team of full time staff working on tech support on the forums. They also rely on a group of community volunteers and moderators who give their time. It can get overwhelming though. Eliminating the bulk of common FAQ and making the tutorial content available as you have suggested would go a long way.

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Hello Bond, @JamesBond007 , I’ve been expecting you.

I’m sorry to hear you’re disappointed in the forums. Thankfully there are more questions answered than left unanswered. As the community has grown, there are a lot more people seeking answers to their questions, but not everyone passes that on and returns the favour.

The forum has been generally quiet in the recent weeks as peoples focus has shifted a little more.

The search query is very useful on the forum, as is the Webflow University. For bugs, then we recommend support@webflow.com, although our terms state that we don’t offer design or custom code help via this route.

I don’t understand why wouldn’t Webflow invest in hiring at least 5 full time employees at the forums who’ll make sure every single doubt is cleared. It’ll be good for their business.

Yes, this would be a nice addition, but we’re still a relatively small team 160 in total, adding 5 full time forum staff might not be viable right now, but certainly could be in the future. The idea has always been that this is a community board for discussion with other users rather than a support line. Of course, our team do jump in and help when they can in their own time, as do I.

who knows ? with shoddy support like this dare I say it it’ll follow the same footsteps of Adobe Muse.

The Webflow forum is not a dedicated support helpline. It’s a community.

Respectfully (in my own words), reading your title is disheartening for those who do help out, and makes it a more likely reason why they stop offering help in the first place.

We have a group of amazing forum moderators who have answered thousands of questions since the forums began, (I started out doing that before joining and learned a lot by figuring out design issues for others) and there are perks for those who wish to give back to the community.

We have expanded the Webflow community team this year, so we’re looking at ways to better our community forum from what it is now.

Thanks for your feedback.

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@magicmark Basically there should be two approaches to helping users come to grips with a product - you either invest heavily in a low learning curve or you admit that the product is inherently complex (e.g. Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc) and provide paid ways (paid courses, paid real-time help, etc) for users to learn using the product.

Both approaches share one benefit - users can get guaranteed, immediate help.

The first approach would incur costs on Webflow for keeping a full-time employee answer questions the same day and then update tutorials at Webflow University. Of course, once tutorials are updated, answering repeated questions would be easy and fast, as you’d only need to send a link. Therefore, in the long-term, the cost would not be as high as it seems and in all cases it would get compensated to some degree by the higher satisfaction rate of new users.

The second approach of making the help section of the forum paid, may frighten some new users but you would benefit by keeping those who are serious and you would also be building an additional income stream.

Which is the right approach for Webflow is a matter of internal decision. I just suggest that it should be one of the two and nothing in between.

Sure, there are great members of this community who contribute a lot with their help and we should be thankful to them, but that alone, cannot guarantee immediate and consistent help.

After all, Webflow is meant to be a professional tool. For professionals, guaranteed and immediate ways to get things done is a good value proposition, while “free but uncertain”, seems wrong market positioning.

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I’m sorry @magicmark I’ll have to strongly disagree with you there when you say

A quick glance at your forum home page especially if you scroll down a lot you’ll see a lot of questions are left un resolved and more importantly if you navigate to the site through Google you’ll end up at the very question you’re seeking with a blank space right after the question is posted.

@uzzer hit the nail on the head with his response, he bifurcated the solution into two possible paths with the end result being the same, the right user is ensured he gets the solution he needs. Which isn’t the case right now, With the current model which is somewhere in between what happens is many potential paying users will eventually find themselves at a road block, it’s bad for business even a 12 year old could point that out.

160 is a small number I get you and don’t get me wrong Webflow being such an amazing product which promises to break the status quo. I’m sure the team will be at their wits end thinking what corners to cut which is the case for any new technology which dares to do something different.

Talk about passing the Buck, respectfully. My comments wasn’t directed at any of the good folks like @webdev who answers others on their own time, I’ve explicitly written on hiring new staff
who would be hired with the soul purpose of answering others. It would appear as if my comment is intentionally misinterpreted for a lack of a better answer or a reason to shriek ones responsibility.

I’m glad the team has expanded, hoping for the best I hope the platform really does reach the sky and it’ll be unparalleled. Muse is a scar that still shows its marks,

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My experience has been vastly different, so I would have to politely disagree. I have found the forums in general to be extremely helpful when you ask specific questions with project details. Of all the forums I belong to for different tools, this one is by far the most helpful.

If anyone is reading this and stuck on an issue you haven’t gotten answered, feel free to tag me on your post, and I will gladly answer your questions to the best of my ability with the time I have available!

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I think it can be a bit hit and miss for feedback and resolutions. Often I found I just need to keep digging through the forums to find the solution. And many contributors show up and follow through with sharing their experience and knowledge.

Although THE RELIABILITY I have almost lost faith in! I am going crazy having to re-create hours of work, due to bugs - mainly Tab menu’s not responding to input and assignment. And this afternoon the whole interface (potentially due to updates) has been brought to a standstill as I ask it to preview.

If the same experience happened with the Adobe Suite, designers would be enraged with kind words of errrh… desperation.

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Hi @MGAVIOLI66,

Is this something you’ve reached out directly to us about? If you’re having these kinds of issues with the designer please send us some info at support@webflow.com so we can look into it for you.

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@magicmark I have just sent an email to support.

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@magicmark These bugs are nothing new, they pop up all the time on the forum. I made a post just the other day. Webflow has never addressed the underlying problems and continues to bury its head in the sand regarding this.

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The home page shows the latest questions, so I would expect that many of them don’t yet have answers… Questions won’t always have an answer immediately.

IMO these forums are really good. I’ve usually found solutions that I need. But I do agree with you that more of a Webflow staff presence would be good to answer the questions that the community can’t be bothered with. I think some of the issues you raise stem from:

  1. Newcomers not using the search function. More often that not the same questions are getting asked.

  2. People who don’t understand the basics of web design expecting others to solve their issues for them with minimal learning effort on their own part. Webflow is not that far removed from the underlying basics of web development. It’s really just a visual layer on top. This makes it an inherently complex tool to learn. It takes time on the tools and self learning.

  3. Questions formatted in an incoherent manner. As a relatively seasoned Webflow user, when I come to these forums to answer questions, I look at some of the questions on the home page I can barely make sense of them. If the poster has provided no context, no read only links, and hasn’t formed their question in a way that I can understand, then I will move onto the next question that is formatted better. I’m not a paid Webflow employee, so I will cherry pick.

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I thought your name was familiar, I watched your YouTube on the firebase integration!
Sometimes I’m in a state of have I done something wrong? But it’s really beyond that, it’s not able to perform the functions that they advertise.

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Text won’t span the full width of page

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It is always fun to see people who haven’t run companies tell others how to run a company.
Every company has it’s own restrictions and limitations. May it be the budget, the staff or some contracts or something else, it doesn’t matter. If one company does something one way it doesn’t mean that another one has to do it like that, just because you liked it batter that way. If you did, then there is no reason to be here. If you like it better here and are just annoyed by some stuff, well then there exists a better way to express your views on improvement.

Based on how much content Webflow has put out to help new people and based on the help from the support I know and it’s obvious they want what’s best for the community and are doing it by their best abilities. Or do you believe they don’t want to make improvements and help their community as much as they can?

*This is not directed to any positive or objective and wide perspective comments :slight_smile:

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Based on how much content Webflow has put out to help new people and based on the help from the support I know and it’s obvious they want what’s best for the community and are doing it by their best abilities.

Webflow do not even care to clean up the spam flooding the Wishlist.

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Ok, to put it simply, like Tony Robbins said.
“If you are going to blame people for bad sh!t, don’t forget to blame them for all the good too.”

Good luck with writing that list

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This is a community forum - if “the majority of questions here go unanswered”, it’s likely that is because said questions have been asked countless times before, and the person asking the question simply can’t be bothered to utilise the search function / spend time on the Webflow University courses.

Very very few people on these forums are paid for their time spent answering questions (besides the handful of Webflow staff) - why should people sit, unpaid, answering the same question over and over again (normally “why isn’t my website responsive on mobile” or similar…)?

The main issue, imo, is human ignorance. There’s a big ol’ search bar in the top right, yet people prefer to ask the same question over and over again and then wonder why it has gone unanswered.

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I agree to an extent. However as a webflow user myself, I can say that the reason there are quite a few repeated threads and questions is because:

  • No one has answered the original question or it was started many years ago and the thread just died without a solution
  • There’s not enough people representing from webflow to help its customers find the answers to their challenges.
  • Questions are related to basic functions that are expected from the webflow platform (as other platforms do this out of the box) but does not include and has not yet been added and no idea when they will become availalble
  • Not enough people with expert knowledge about webflow to help the others

I try to help out when I can because I believe in the community but everyone has their limits.