Webflow moved on. Did we?

0:00Janne Parri: For the past two years I have done almost nothing but Webflow development. And now that we clearly see that Webflow is doubling down on marketers and marketing features, I kind of feel the pressure to do some decisions on my career. And I believe you might feel the same thing. Hi guys, my name is Janne Parri, and you're listening to Webflow on Friends podcast. But today I do not have a friend here with me because of well reschedules and that sort of things. Life happens, but this is a great opportunity for me to voice my thoughts, react to some discourse that is happening on the internet,

0:38Janne Parri: And do this kind of one-sided therapy session. This is obviously for me, but I'm hopeful that you can get something out of it too. My goal is to provide some relief, some peace of mind, at least a little bit for myself and for you. In these uncertain times. I'm gonna visit Ran Segall's video about development shrinking command plus AI's commentary on that, the Timothy Ricks announcement, and in general where is Webflow heading and what will the source by Webflow actually give us and so on.

1:13Janne Parri: This will be a bit shorter video than my regular videos, but there are still timestamps in the description, so check those out if you wanna jump further along. But let's start with Rand's video. So Flux Academy posted video titled web Design is changing big time. And in there, Ran basically argued that development part of the whole website lifecycle is shrinking. So if you picture like design, developments, and whatever comes after publishing the site, like marketing, maintenance,

1:48Janne Parri: Design and marketing are kind of like pushing into development and the development part is shrinking. And the whole idea is that if you are like me, you're doing almost exclusively Webflow development, it might be time to do some other parts because the Webflow leads, will not maybe be enough to sustain your career. And I like that phrasing. I have seen kind of similar things. Even the clients that are not that tech savvy are kind of like wishing that whoever does their site they do it with AI in mind so that it will be easy to edit with AI and maybe at some point they would be able to edit it too with AI.

2:32Janne Parri: And old Webflow or Webflow Classic as we might end up calling that might not be the best when it comes to editing sites with AI. But this goes further than just Webflow. In development in general, the question is that has development or has at least the front end development been solved by AI? AI is obviously good at doing HTML, CSS, I guess JavaScript because those are quite understandable languages.

3:02Janne Parri: There's clear feedback loop like what works and what doesn't. There are clear rules and so on. And especially if you have some sort of migration or a comparison, a design or an old site, the AI can look at that and see if it has done the correct work. And this is the whole conversation. Webflow itself kind of said that the zero to one, the first build part of the process is kind of easy, and everybody has seen all the amazing stuff and sites that AI can do. But

3:37Janne Parri: But at the same time everybody knows that there still needs to be some person like prompting the AI and fine tuning the details. In his job announcement video, Timothy Ricks said the same thing, like AI is here to stay, and AI development or AI-enabled development is here to stay. But there still is a place for a technical person who makes sure that the actual site gets to a good enough level, the details are there, and the publishing and whatever comes after that goes smoothly.

4:11Janne Parri: He mentioned the good fast cheap toggle and in his opinion it is still the case that you can pick just two of those. And I'm agreeing with Tim, I'm agreeing with Ran, and actually I believe Kabarza on Command Plus AI show says something similar, or his opinion was more in lines that developments is branching to design roles and to marketing roles. It might not be shrinking, but it is kind of mixing with all those other roles.

4:44Janne Parri: And with my limited experience with AIs and development, I'm not disagreeing with any one of them. I guess the whole conversation circles around the awesome stuff that we can do with AI and all the minor details it doesn't handle yet or we have to prompt one by one. So that can be quite annoying. And especially for someone who is coming from a platform like Webflow, some edits are just so easy to make with a visual editor with a little slider or number value.

5:20Janne Parri: And many platforms are trying to build both of those things like good prompting and some sort of visual builder. But people try to sell you an image where you can just one prompt a site. And in theory you can do that, but if you're anything like me, there's probably some details that you need to take care either by prompting or with some sort of a visual editor, depending on the platform you might have that or not. Okay, can you still be a Webflow only developer?

5:52Janne Parri: I would say that in my opinion, with a little disclaimer that I'm not an authority on technical stuff or career advice, but in my opinion, that's a risky move. If you like development, I believe there is still place for the technical person, just like Timothy said, but you might want to go deeper, you might want to go deeper on all the things that AI is not good at yet. Like you wanna be building apps, maybe with AI, and making sure that they are secure, making sure that they get launch on the app stores. Just imagine trying to submit a wipe coded app on Apple App Store. Yeah. It probably still needs someone to take care of

6:38Janne Parri: All the little details. And obviously there's huge amounts of stuff that you can specialize and learn more about just in the development here, but just Webflow developments. I'm not sure if the leads will be there, if clients want to do something more open, like astro builds, more on those a little later. But I believe Ran and other folks kind of skipped that possibility that you go even deeper with the development. The options that Ran talked about and Kabarza and Samuel commented on were doing more design or doing more maintenance and marketing kind of stuff.

7:17Janne Parri: And again, I'm agreeing those are two quite natural progressions or directions for Webflow folks. There's a high chance that you might have done kind of both of those. I have for certain. I have a little bit of experience on both sides, like web design and advertising. And I am actually trying to decide between those. More on my situation at the end of the episode. But yeah. If you want to be blank, I think those are good options where you should decide. Are you pulled towards marketing or are you pulled towards designing? And just know that designers are doing more technical stuff, developers are doing more design stuff. I believe Figma did a survey about that stuff, and people are branching to other disciplines because of AI.

8:06Janne Parri: That will just be the case going forward. But I believe there's good value to be given to your clients on either end. So you kind of wanna think that do you wanna be the guy who optimizes the site, reads the analytics, does the experiments, maybe does some paid campaigns or something like that. Or do you wanna be the guy who designs the brand, the design system, maybe logos, web design. Maybe even like app design.

8:38Janne Parri: And which of those pulls you more? But about Webflow itself. It has been clear and it's even more clear after the Webflow Conf that they are moving towards the marketers. Linda Tong said this out loud again in a podcast interview that is linked in the description. She basically said that Webflow wants to be a marketing partner for companies rather than just a website platform. And at this point that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

9:08Janne Parri: I know myself included, I am nostalgic about the Webflow community golden days. When Finsweet was doing the live streams and Nelson was doing the tutorials and so on. And I gotta be honest, I was a bit disappointed about the main keynote in the Webflow Conf because there was not those builder features in that. So I went in expecting some of those, but those were moved to the builder keynote.

9:39Janne Parri: So that division itself kind of tells us about the priorities within the company. Obviously, one can think that builders are still appreciated and they got their own keynote. But in the past, the main keynote was kind of the builder keynote, all the features stuff were for the builders, but now it's clearly for the marketers. So I will promise to myself and maybe you should promise too that let's not get surprised if this trend continues.

10:11Janne Parri: But there is one opportunity in this whole Webflow pivot towards marketers. And that is obviously if you happen to be interested in marketing or you have experience with that and you like the analytics and all the features that Webflow is coming out with. Marketing itself has been going through a lot with AI, obviously, and the marketers, advertisers, they need to do a bunch of stuff. I remember reading job postings for marketer roles a few years ago and even then the requirements were like out of this world, like there were so many items and stuff that marketers need to know.

10:51Janne Parri: And I believe AI does the same thing with that field than ours, like it can like help, but it also puts on the pressure to do more. So marketers might need a person who handles the bit more technical side and syncs all the resources through teammates, through AI agents, and all the rest. And that is what I believe Webflow is banking on with source by Webflow. Source is interesting because obviously it's not out yet, but it kind of revealed the cards or the decisions that Webflow is making. So I have had some time to ponder about this. I had talked with several people about this. If you wanna

11:34Janne Parri: Dive deeper into source speculation. There's obviously past episodes on this show, but there's one I would recommend the No Code Supplied Co. And Matthew Munger's podcast episode 11, I believe, source of it all. Again linked in the description. Matthew works at Webflow. He has been trying out source or whatever they have ready for the source. And yeah, that episode kind of gave me confidence on source, and I believe it's actually going to be pretty good. Okay. But I was about to say that the source revealed the cards. So I was expecting that Webflow would come out with some sort of Webflow 2.0.

12:16Janne Parri: Version of the old Webflow. Let's say it's classic Webflow because it's not kind of old because the yeah, you know. I guess I was expecting some sort of closed platform where agents would be more native and more powerful than in the Webflow classic. But instead we got source, which according to the demo and the site can import your existing Webflow projects or external code base. So what this tells us that Webflow It's probably not gonna do another website platform. They are just opening the doors for you to use whatever platform you want. Well not whatever platform, whatever code base you use.

12:58Janne Parri: Maybe there could be like actual other platforms, but at least those codebases. And it looks like they are betting on that. So if you're thinking of trying out Astro or some sort of static build, that is totally a viable option because Webflow didn't come out with a competitor for that. They just announced that they are working on a platform that can edit Astro sites and other static sites. So before source actually comes out, it would be definitely beneficial of trying those things out. You can do those with LLMs. I am actually trying out that sort of workflow right now, more on that later.

13:37Janne Parri: But that will not be wasted opportunity or time because you can use those skills with source. So I believe this moment is actually a good place to do some decisions. You do not need to wait for the source to come out. Because it's a totally new product. And by the way, I think that it's a great idea. I believe marketers are actually wanting that and all the like marketing teams could use something like that. I know that it's quite vague right now.

14:08Janne Parri: But I also know the whole field, the developers, marketers, designers have all sorts of assets lying around, all sorts of folders, and if there was one app or one platform that could synchronize all those and bring in the AI agents, that would actually be valuable. So I'm definitely hoping that Webflow can pull this off and come out with source sooner than later. Will there be a use case for the Webflow Classic? Well, there will be a bunch of old clients that will continue using that. There might be also new clients that want to use that.

14:46Janne Parri: My take is that TechSavvy clients wanna try something new that works well with the agents that they already have. Smaller clients might wanna opt into cheaper options. But there will certainly be clients who want that kind of manual control. But is that work enough to sustain your career? I don't know. I've seen a lot of posts from people who say that their leads are disappearing. They do not get any messages about Webflow sites. So it might be a wise choice to maybe brand yourself.

15:23Janne Parri: That's a website guy, not a Webflow guy, says the Webflow wingman. So yeah, it might be time to edit that LinkedIn tagline and your age one if it's big on Webflow. That doesn't mean that you will never do Webflow sites. I believe there will always be need for websites and the tools are just changing and just like before you need to pick a right tool. So it might be Webflow, it might be static build, I don't know, it might be Squarespace. And probably all of those will have some AI features. Are those the best features? Depending on the client, you might not need the best features. So yeah.

16:05Janne Parri: Okay, I might be rambling, but there's at least two things I wanna visit before we close this episode. First one is community and the second one is what am I gonna do? But before those, if you wanna dive deeper to the static builds, Finsweet is back with podcast style content. Joe Krug and Alex Iglesias are doing a podcast series. Well, there's probably other topics, but they are diving deep to Astro stuff. There's a couple or at least two episodes out, and the latest one was very helpful for me, for a webflower person who doesn't really know Astro. They went through a lot of like these technical questions that a webflower might have

16:49Janne Parri: When they wanna try out Astro. So check it out. Again, links in the description. So community, what happens to Webflow community? As I said, I still have like nostalgia for the Webflow golden days, and I guess it's honest to say that Webflow community has been winding down, maybe because the builders who have produced the content and who have kind of been the core of the community, they are now doing other stuff, the hype is not there. And yeah, honestly they might be using other platforms.

17:22Janne Parri: So worst case scenario is that this trend will continue and at some point there will not be a Webflow community. Not sure if that's the most probable thing, but that might happen. Two other scenarios would be a big sort of pivot. So imagine as Webflow is doing marketing stuff, imagine that the marketers come to the community and it becomes this marketing community or community for people who use the Webflow marketing features.

17:52Janne Parri: And if those features are actually great and people get good results with them. The whole community actually could become lively and we could have like new golden days just with other folks. Imagine that. The other scenario is that this community will morph into something more broad, like a builder or website community. Obviously it's easy to latch on some platform, a company or technology. So everybody understands what when I talk about

18:23Janne Parri: Webflow community but could we give it another name like website builder community astro community well astro is kind of technology the same thing that might not be a thing in the future I don't know. But yeah. But the only thing that is certain is change. I'm not sure if Webflow themselves are thinking of the community that much. Like Webflow in Webflow Conf, they obviously thanked the community and so on. There's the new community platform, there's staff there.

18:55Janne Parri: But if they are going towards the marketers, why wouldn't they kind of try to pivot the whole community towards that? Instead of the builders who are constantly nagging about technical stuff and reminiscence of the golden days. It would be an interesting thing to be a fly on the wall they make decisions on the community. There's actually one extra thing before my situation and the decisions I'm about to make. And that is the question of what is worth building. So in the Webflow Conf, Linda said that's like the big question.

19:31Janne Parri: So if we can build almost anything what are we going to build? And I believe the same question has been present. But the nature of the question has changed. Like before AI, if we strictly talk about digital products, it was hard to build. And because of that, it was a huge investment to build something. And investors, developers, and whoever was thinking that, okay, is this worth building? Is this worth investing a lot of money into?

20:01Janne Parri: And obviously the money is big part of the answer. Nowadays, let's say that it is actually easier to build stuff. And that again relates to the money part. If I'm a big company and I spot a cool opportunity to build something, but I realize that okay one person or two person team with help of agents can build the same thing and provide the same value. So why should I build that if it can be replicated fairly easily? And there has been talk about the SaaS apocalypse referring to the possibilities that people and companies are just building their own tools, not paying someone else to do that for them.

20:40Janne Parri: And I guess that is a thing to certain extent. But the one thing that AI cannot replace is obviously human connection. And I mean like all the network effects and those sort of things like you can try to do another social media, but the network effects make it super hard for to get it from zero to one. But maybe this could mean a gold rush for local communities and local platforms of very niche things, like imagine a little town with all sorts of mobile apps and communities around very specific topics.

21:16Janne Parri: That might be something worth building. Okay, that was just one topic that I wanted to visit what is worth building that sounds cool, but I said, I believe it's an old problem with a new AI twist in it. Okay, what am I going to do? So I have two lanes here. I have my work and I have this podcast. I believe I have talked about the podcast in a previous solo episode of mine, but I will visit that too. But right now I am actually thinking of moving towards design or marketing.

21:49Janne Parri: As I said, I have experience on both of those. But I do not have my routines, my workflows, my rituals, so one of those will mean some learnings for me. The design side is actually pulling me a bit because I have done the marketing stuff. I do not want to be the guy who installs all the analytics and makes sure that the cookie content pop-ups work and so on. I do not like that part of my job at all. There might be more money on that side, I believe Samuel Gregory.

22:20Janne Parri: Said the same thing on the Command Plus AI show that if he was a cold emotionless person he might go that to that direction. But yeah, I believe that might not be for me. There might still be some part of my job that has to do with that. If one builds website, there are all the SEO, AEO stuff you kind of have to know about and probably end up doing, so you cannot erase that part completely. I believe design pulls me towards it a bit more. And here's why.

22:54Janne Parri: So design, I believe, is a bigger challenge. I have said many times on the show that development is kind of cool because it's black and white, it either works or it doesn't. And design is more subjective, people have opinions and Clients on the design side generally have more revisions than clients on the development side, especially if the design has already been approved. Developer has to just kind of copy it and as I said, it either works or it doesn't.

23:26Janne Parri: Because of all that, I believe that design is actually a bigger challenge for a person to master. And bigger challenge brings bigger rewards. And the other thing with design is that I believe it's more timeless. What do I mean by that? If you have come across old web pages or images of old apps or whatever technical products. What you usually see is the design or the user interface. You do not see the code. And usually people talk about the design side, not the coding part. Obviously there might be some developers trying to remember the times when they used

24:05Janne Parri: Some old coding language or whatever the tool back then was. But I believe by far people remember the visual stuff. And if you think of a museum of a websites, you would probably see a lot of the visual designs, not necessarily the code files. And this also relates to the value that we give to those parts. If it works, most of the people do not care who wrote the code. But if it's something visual, including websites and UI.

24:37Janne Parri: And especially with arts and illustrations I believe quite big chunk of humanity actually cares that it is done by a human. So I don't know, will AI solve the whole design side of things better than any human can do in coming years maybe, but I believe design has a better chance to survive as this artisan niche profession. And I also believe that those skills can be used in more ways than development skills. Maybe.

25:08Janne Parri: This is a quite vague topic and thought and I would love to hear what you think of that. Like is design more safe from AI? Even if AI does cool designs, will we still value the human created designs? And so on. Okay, I'll try to answer the question again. So what am I going to do? So I believe I will be investing more time to practicing design. And also right now I'm trying to build my first static site with Astro and Claude.

25:39Janne Parri: I started with a blank slate and my first experience was that okay that is actually quite blank. So way blanker than a fresh new Webflow project. With Astro you need to do basically all the stuff from the from the beginning. Obviously there's AI to help you and you kind of do not need to code. But at this point I'm kind of thinking that maybe I should try it out Lumos for Astro. Right out the gates because I believe that comes with all sorts of handy things. And Timothy also has that visual builder for Astro so I might try

26:15Janne Parri: That one out too. So short term I will probably offer those astro builds and Webflow builds depending on the clients in a longer run. I might wanna move more towards the design side of things. Maybe even brand design saw some of that. One concrete idea that I had, this is just an idea, was to help clients bridge the design to development and LLM gap. So building design systems that LLMs can easily access and understand. That might be a thing that will be solved with source or with other platforms or with

26:54Janne Parri: LLMs in general, but that's just an idea that I might wanna try out in the in the near future. What about the pod? Okay, my camera battery ran out, So this will be a bonus point of view for the video watchers that stick it to the end. So yeah, about the podcast. I have some interesting guests coming on and I kind of also wanna see this source thing play out. So I will be doing episodes with webflowers, with Webflow employees

27:25Janne Parri: With this Webflow on Friends title for the coming future. At some point I might do something more design related. And if it's something clearly different, I might start a new show. Something like design and Friends or whatever name that would be. But for now, there's still interesting stuff happening in Webflow Sphere. So I will be reporting on those and talking about those with you guys. Well, with the guests for you guys. Yeah. Yeah, I believe that it that is it. I'm hopeful that this gave you some sort of relief, some sort of peace of mind.

28:01Janne Parri: I got something out of this. It's good to voice these thoughts out and go through them again and again, especially when stuff is moving so fast. But yeah. Leave a comment what you are about to do. And I guess we'll see in the next one. Bye.