Has anyone found an alternative option to creating a button on an ecommerce product so customers can add items to their wish list/favorites page.
I know already about Jetboost, So please do not bother mentioning that option. Paying $468 every year just for the ability to have a simple little feature is a no-go for me. I’m not going to convince many clients to go that route either.
I believe Memberstack has a feature for this but as the site I am developing is for selling physical merchandise I don’t believe Memberstack is really necessary either.
Since Webflow has a native Cart feature which can store the items that customers have selected for purchase. How much more difficult would it be to create something similar where instead of customers adding products to a personal cart, they add items to a personal favorites collection.
I have very little knowledge of coding but I am looking into having AI help code an option. Just wondering if anyone has already tried coding their own custom feature like this. Has it worked? What are some of the challenges?
A way to uniquely identify who is accessing the site ( Memberstack, Wized, Webflow User Accounts + custom code… )
A place to efficiently store and retrieve user-product favorites
And if you are trying to indicated popularity to the public ( 58 people like this product ), then you need;
A way to centrally store and retrieve that count with your products
Webflow provides #1
Memberstack adds #2 and #3.
Jetboost adds #4
If you really don’t care about building this right, so that e.g. my favorites on my phone match my favorites on my PC/Chrome, then you could short-circuit all of this and build your solution entirely using Javascript and localStorage.
But it wouldn’t be private, and it would be tied to that machine.
This is my first E-commerce Site with Webflow and I am thinking that maybe the Webflow’s selling point of being able to start every website completely from scratch is a little over rated. Maybe I should have gone with Wix where they have this feature built in. (Sorry Side thought)
Do you mind clarifying this point…
…So are you saying that you need all four of these to identify who is accessing the store or could I get away with just Webflow User Accounts and Custom code?
Also for #3, How does Webflow store Items the customer has in their cart? And are they accessible from multiple devices already? Or will I need this entire extra setup for having a Cart as well?.. If that is the case I am ditching Webflow.
I don’t believe I will need #4. I just basically want a page for the customer to go and see what items they “hearted” and compare them to each other.
No, those are tools that can help you achieve that component of the setup you’re asking for, i.e. the user identification.
I don’t use Webflow’s ecom, and I haven’t tried extending it much. But most modern carts I’ve seen issue a unique tracking token as a cookie, and then store the cart data server-side for analysis, abandoned cart reduction, etc. It’s a simple pattern, I’d expect Webflow takes the same approach. Simpler carts just store the data temporarily in webStorage.
No, you’d need a user account login for that, tied to the ECom system. Webflow doesn’t support that currently. Your users would also have to use it of course, by logging into each of their multiple devices.
Most users who need to features you’re asking for either do a Shopify integration into Webflow, or use a 3rd party ECom solution like ECwid or Foxy. Search the forum for more if you want.
Thanks for helping a newbie with this. I appreciate your responses. I apologize if I sound frustrated. I was under perhaps the wrong impression about Weblow’s capabilities. Maybe I should have done a little more research. I feel like someone who purchased a car expecting to be able to drive it but then discovering that I need to order the engine and tires separately and install them myself. Speaking in terms of website building again it means that I would have to tell the client there are more costs involved then previously thought. Not so fun.
However…
Something is not adding up for me because Webflow’s Documentation on all these features says nothing about setting up third party services. According to this page User Accounts Overview they now have native support for User Accounts and Gated content. Here people see what subscriptions they have and from my possibly incorrect understanding the personal data in their account is just a kind of CMS collection, so in other words a personal collection for each customer/user. In the ecommerce hosting plans, you can have up to 20,000 paid users. In the site I am building there is space for creating login pages, account pages, etc. It makes no sense to me to have all of these features and have a Native ‘Add to Cart’ button in Webflow but not be able to have a add to favorites button ability. I think it would just be another collection like the cart. A user clicks ‘Add to Cart’ and the Item is added to the Cart Collection they can see on their User Page, And then there would be a Add to Favorites Button on a product that would instead add the product to the favorites collection on their user page.
If someone can create a user account on a Webflow site, can see what subscriptions and all their account info in there account page, It makes no sense to say that they can’t see what is in their cart on multiple devices or add to a custom list of favorite products as well.
I have been looking through all the documentation on user accounts published by Webflow and there is no mention of third party services other than Stripe of course. And they imply that users can create accounts and add information and that Webflow handles all this natively.
My goal here is that a customer can come to the website. Look through the products > Click a heart icon on a product > be prompted to create an account > Signs up for an account > now this adds the product to a personal CMS collection list shown on their User Page, and it would be the exact same thing for if they just added it to their cart. Which is also added to a Personal CMS collection on their User Page. And it would all be stored by Webflow in the same place they store their Username, Password, Address ect.
To me looking through the documentation it seems like Webflow is hinting at it being possible to do all within Webflow but when I do Google searches for ‘HOW’ there is only 3rd party software mentioned. Perhaps it’s just an unexplored field since all these 3rd Party plugins have made a name for themselves helping people and still dominate the field and Webflow just recently has created the possibility of doing it all locally.
In other words selling cars with engines preinstalled.
Okay, unfortunately I discovered that the Cart CMS list is not accessible to the developer it seems. It only exists within Webflow’s ‘Mini Cart’. And Creating Custom fields in Webflow User Accounts is limited to very basic fields, No CMS collections. So creating like a separate Cart page Or including a User’s Personalized CMS Collection is not possible only within Weblow. Big Bummer. I guess I will not recommend Webflow Ecommerce to future clients unless they make this whole thing more flexible. Might just see if my current client really wants the Wishlist feature.
Webflow taught me that lesson hard also, there’s a big gap between what it can do, and what you think it should be able to do.
However I think that’s the general state of SaaS products in general; I make it a practice to treat every product as an unknown until I directly prototype the specific setup I’m trying to create. Until then it’s a “research project” where I’m evaluating some system as a possible solution.
In Webflow’s case, the core designer is its crown jewel. The CMS is solid but has some difficult limits. Localization is also solid but also has limits and is still maturing. Other subsystems - ECom, User Accounts, Logic, are very minimal implementations, just enough for a very narrow set of use cases. Use them only when your client’s needs align with what they can do.
Webflow is doing a lot to improve that situations though, by investing in integration points so that you can use 3rd party solutions more directly and more easily, when you need more extensive features.
Everything I’ve seen in WF docs is technically correct, but it isn’t always built the way you imagine it should be. User data for example, has nothing to do with the CMS and no way to directly integrate it.
Among other things, that kneecaps basic design patterns that you’d imagine you should be able build, like a public “directory of members,” where you can show e.g. photo and name of each user, and they can manage it themselves.
Favorites is the same, but there the problem is more the lack of user-to-CMS integration, and the lack of script access to user data. If you had either of those, you could build a user-facing favorites feature. A likes feature is a bit different, i.e. it adds the public-facing “382 people like this” and that would require another layer of integration, from the CMS to user data.
This is why Memberstack exists, and Wized + Xano, and a few others. I often stay native, plus custom code and automations to add the missing features but it takes a good deal of technical knowledge to do build a reliable, secure solution that way.
The feature design and flow would require quite a bit of infrastructure and integration points that doesn’t exist in native Webflow. You can either build it yourself the way I do, or use 3rd party services to help close that gap.
To your car analogy, Webflow is a top notch sportscar with a gorgeous engine… but the storage is small and oddly configured, and the factory-installed radio / AC / wipers are very basic. Best approach is to learn what they can do, and at what point you need to upgrade them.
Thanks Michael for your help and knowledge of this.
It doesn’t look like what I want to do is going to work just in Webflow.
I would agree with your alteration of my car analogy. I do like Webflow a lot but currently in the thick of the problem if feels like this missing feature is like the engine missing. But yes in reality it’s not that big of a feature and more like the car radio.
So knowing my desired outcome can you recommend a course of action.
I know only a little about coding, though I might be able to work through things with AI help.
Is it actually possible to have enough custom code to make the Webflow User Accounts work in the way I am intending?..
I am trying to understand a little of how Wized and Memberstack work based off your previous message and what I find on the web.
Looking at the pricing of these tools and seeing their example use cases they still don’t sound exactly like what I am looking for. Perhaps Wized is more in line with what I need than Memberstack because I am not charging people to create accounts or charging monthly subscriptions. But does Wized have the complete functionality I need?
I was really hoping that Finsweet Attributes had something like what I need, While I believe they are working on it I don’t think it’s rolled out yet for the public.
I think my options are
See if the client really wants the feature.
Mash something up with Memberstacks and/or Wized. Though I don’t know how much it will cost or how much my client is willing to pay for this kind of feature to be maintained with these tools. Also I don’t really know how to use them for this yet.
Jetboost sounds like the common go-to and the easiest but $40 a month for this minor of a feature sounds pretty steep. Maybe my client will pay it though. Will it suffice on it’s own or will I need another tool in addition? (just want to give my client an accurate quote)
Move everything over to another platform completely. Really Not wanting to do this.
Hi @Gababor.
Josh with Foxy here. You might consider using our Webflow integration for your ecommerce needs: https://foxy.io/webflow
We have an embeddable customer portal: https://support.foxy.io/en_US/webflow/create-a-customer-portal-in-webflow and we just finished up our new favoriting functionality (still in beta and requires Make). Favoriting is connected to the customer’s account, so the experience is synced no matter the device.
Happy to walk you through things to see if it’s a good fit for your needs. Feel free to email us: hello@foxy.io
Yep always start with the client, tell them what you’ve found, let them know what you’re facing. Explain that many of the features discussed would require development time and added monthly fees for 3rd party services. Sort that part out first. The client might scale back on features, or at least defer the more challenging ones like favorites until a future version.
This wouldn’t be your only cost either; you still need a way to store that data with the user, which would usually mean JetBoost + Memberstack. Replacing those car components with high quality ones is expensive.
Wized + Xano is another route, likely more expensive but also more capable.
As Josh mentioned, Foxy could also work, and if they have a favorites feature now, could be worth a chat to Josh on that. I believe the user accounts are separate though, so that could be good or bad depending on what else you’re planning to tie to your specific users.
Since your core product seems to be ecom + members + likes, I’d actually look towards Shopify. Note, it’s the same reality- base product, plus possible plugin monthly fees, to do your the builds you want. I’d proto a very basic shop in shopify and see how you can do your favorites feature. If the end result functions the way you want then one approach might be to design your site style in Webflow and then use Smootify ( a new thing ) to create your Shopify template from your Webflow site.
After reading this valuable long discussion this is response I can agree %. There are reasons why many studios including big one that have human sources to make it work do not use WF for e-commerce.
Great, great analogy. I’ll be using this one in the future :)
As for this thread, Webflow eCom just isn’t very developed as a feature, so there is stuff like this missing. For a mature ecom solution, I’d use Shopify or Foxy + Webflow - both have their own sticking points (as does every tool), but are amazing products which have been well-developed for a wide variety of use cases.
Just keep in mind with both of those solutions, you may hit a point where you NEED custom code to do what you’re after. But at the very least, they have the infrastructure to make it happen. I turn to my good friend Claude when I need some code like that :)
%. There are reasons why many studios including big one that have human sources to make it work do not use WF for e-commerce.