I am new here, trying to understand if Bubble can help me build the project I have in mind.
I am mechanical product engineer that design, develop and manufacture wooden trees for decorative purposes. My business is committed to a 100% online sales strategy thanks to an e-commerce site I built on Webflow. You can check it there: www.mooqtrees.com
I am pretty happy with the site I built in terms of the UI but I am quite disappointed with the lack of ecommerce features as well as the limitations in terms of sales scenarios. That is why I am looking at Bubble as a potential replacement platform.
Below is the project I have in mind:
e-commerce site with the same UI as the current site
customer accounts with basic features (order history, order tracking, reviews, etc.)
admin section for sales management (discounts, inventory, product management, etc.)
admin section for orders management (fulfillment, refund, tracking, etc.)
sales representatives section to place orders for their customers (third party sales)
POS-like section for in-person sales (fairs, pop-up stores, etc.)
I already have an Airtable base with all the sales related data pushed from Webflow and several integrations using Integromat. I also use Weglot (translation), Tidio (chat) and Stripe (payment).
I would like to know if my project is feasible with Bubble and what will be the benefits and drawbacks to switch from Webflow to Bubble (design, aesthetics, costs, etc.)
I’m not experienced with the E-commerce aspect, but can chip in on the design. I recently helped my wife convert her Webflow app into a Bubble app (an almost exact clone). The major design difference is that Webflow uses Flexbox, while Bubble uses a different responsive system. My wife liked Bubble’s editor, but you may experience a learning curve.
She is now working on adding e-commerce to her site. I’m tagging along to see what people have to say about that.
There is nothing wrong with the site itself.
It’s just there are important missing features on the ecommerce side + there are limitations on the way orders can be placed.
All the features I need are not that basic.
For instance having the ability to get orders from sales reps on behalf of customers is something not standard.
Another aspect is the limitations in term of design and site overall maintenance. I am not a developer and I don’t want to hire one to build and maintain my site.
The idea is to develop myself the solution I need and then be able to tweak it as I need to.
Bubble can meet your needs without hesitation. Learning Bubble takes a few days and even weeks, but you will have perfect control over your environment. Welcome to Bubble.
ps: The integration of Integromat and AirTable is relatively easy.
Merci @banbimmo !
(I’ll continue in english to ensure everyone can understand)
Well the good news is it looks like Bubble can definitely help me build what I need
I am not afraid to learn how to use Bubble since I already did the same process with Webflow (known to have a steep learning curve). I built my site from scratch so I assume I would be able to understand the logic.
I did have scrolling interactions on my site but I am not sure to keep them since it’s a bit too complicated. I assume Bubble offers hover effects as well as scroll in view or even other basic interactions effects right ?
It would be an API connection to Airtable. I haven’t worked with that plugin, but they can be a little slow. You might want to pull your Airtable DB into bubble and test them side-by-side.
Personally I would advice against using bubble for an ecom-project. One reason would be added time for responsiveness, and not at all as SEO-friendly as webflow for example.
I think, as someone already pointed out, use Shopify and when/if you reach 7 figures + revenue you can think about custom ecom solution. And at that point it makes sense to just hire a strong devshop and focus on your product instead!
I think it is too easy for us who love to create to grt stuck in creation mode. We are very much inclined to wanting to build out more and more (and bubble is perfect for that). But to save time and just keep it optimise I would def say: shopify + custom work (maybe).
Cheers!
PS. Love the trees! Do you have international shipping?
I have spend my whole evening (and night) watching Bubble video and tutorials to help me understand what are the possibilities. Thanks to that and your feedbacks, I can definitely understand that any workflow can be archived with Bubble, which is great.
On the other hand, I agree that Webflow is very good at SEO and offers unmatched possibilities in terms of design and customization.
I think I will stay in Webflow for now to help me focus on my products and avoid a 3rd switch in 3 years (was on Squarespace before). I will wait until they release their user accounts features that coudl help me solve 90% of my issues. That said, I may try to develop and app using Bubble to manage my sales with the integration of Airtable. Building something like Stacker.io from scratch.
Lets hope either Webflow of Bubble will eventually be great at what the other do to win it all !
I have good suggestion for you. Why not build a private portal for sales reps on Bubble where they can add orders on behalf of clients? You can then send that data to your Webflow shop.
A more minimal way would be to connect a simple Google forms to Airtable, and have that connect to Webflow
@nocodeventure
Truth is, the API doesn’t allow to create orders (or drafts) from another place but the website. That was one of the limitations I was referring to. You can pull orders from Webflow, handle them outside and then push back order status and data to Webflow. But you can’t create orders on behalf of customers.
That is why many Webflow users are anxiously awaiting the “user account” feature. It is not the fact we could create user accounts that is great (because Memberstack enable this already) but the associated features such as cart recovery, draft orders, orders tracking, order history, etc.
If, for instance, we can have draft orders, I may be able to solve this “third party ordering process” by creating accounts for customers (with dummy password), pre-build the cart and then send an email notification to prompt them to finalize their order.
