
Startups and small businesses want to build their websites to establish an online presence but often face the challenge of choosing the right tools. Two popular options are Figma and Webflow – but what are the key differences, and why should startups consider using Figma to design and then export screens into Webflow to develop the final website?
Save time with figma’s design capabilities
The biggest appeal of using Figma is it speeds up the design process compared to designing directly in Webflow. Figma provides robust vector design capabilities, a powerful component library system, intuitive pen and vector tools, and easy drag-and-drop functionality for rapid prototyping.
Start-up founders and small teams with limited design experience quickly create website mockups, product prototypes, marketing assets, and more in Figma. The flexibility to quickly iterate, experiment, and collaborate on designs saves time compared to coding everything directly into Webflow from scratch.
Enhance creativity with total design freedom
- Figma provides total freedom for designers to think creatively and translate ideas into digital designs. The vector-based tools allow you to design anything from simple marketing pages to complex, multi-page websites and web apps.
- There are no constraints around what be designed in figma to webflow. This makes it much faster and easier to get creative ideas and design concepts out of your head, through rapid ideation and prototyping.
- With Webflow, the design capabilities are more limited, so certain creative concepts are harder or impossible to execute unless you have advanced coding skills. Figma empowers any startup founder or marketer to bring any visual design ideas to life.
Maintain consistency from design to development
When designing in Figma and then exporting to Webflow for development, it ensures complete consistency between the visual design and the final implemented website. Everything from fonts and colors to layouts, dimensions, and components stays pixel-perfect and intact in the handoff between tools. Maintaining this consistency from design to development ensures you end up with a website identical to what was mocked up and prototyped in Figma. This consistency is harder to manage when mocking up designs separately from the development environment. With Figma to Webflow, what you design is what you get on the live website.
Faster development in webflow with figma exports
Even for experienced developers, starting website development in Webflow from complete scratch takes significantly longer compared to starting from a Figma design export. With designs in Figma, you select any frames/artboards and export CSS code for elements like text styles, colors, and components. This generated code then be imported directly into Webflow as Styles and Components to form the framework of your site theme and accelerate development.
Rather than needing to recreate all fonts, colors, layouts, and components manually in Webflow’s UI, most of the foundational code is auto-generated, saving tons of development time. Figma makes it easy for multiple stakeholders, content creators, and designers to collaborate visually on the website design mockups in one central file. You see and inspect teammates’ work, leave comments on specific elements, brainstorm new ideas together in the file, and interact together within the design concepts.