Webflow: Secret great use of templates other than just buying them

So want to design your own website at the fully customized way at your own will. And you are having a weak heart dealing with codes and the notepad. Then you found the great Webflow. The top class drag-and-drop visual website builder that is capable of building and realizing the craziest web design idea in your head.

Instead of picking up the web trio aka HTML, CSS and JS, you chose to spend the effort in Webflow University to master the visual Designer tool. The tutorials and videos are so well built that even the learning process is fun and enjoyable. So far so good.

Until you actually get your hands dirty in the real work.

I ended up spending whole day implementing a popup effect via the animation which I thought should be easy. Next animation should be quicker as I spent a lot of time to grasp the idea of smoothing the effect and familiarize myself with the tool.

I found a huge tip in the learning process though. Besides the wonderful Webflow video courses, make use of the template as a live example.

Go to the template page, pick the most expensive template you could find because they usually have the best layout and animation(that's why they are expensive).

I take the $79 Atem business website template as an example. The best thing about template preview is, you can preview it as if a real site in a new tab or preview it in Designer. The latter is what we are trying to utilize.

Here you are, the well-built template is opened in the Designer tool which you can inspect every element in it. How the section is defined, what class has been used, how the interaction for a button is designed, what font and colour for the typography. Basically, everything.

I used one whole day mimicking the animation process of a popup modal from a template on my own project. In another word, I could go beyond one day if it were not for the help of a template.

Those templates were not only for sale, but they are also the best Webflow teachers the user could ever find.