The Open Template

The Business Case

I recently moved back to a primarily rural area. I quickly noticed that small businesses were often surprisingly complex, often offering a mix of products, services and events - sometimes both online and in the bricks and mortar world. Many of the simple website templates I saw were narrowly focussed and a bad fit for these types of businesses.

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The Fix

I wanted to create a template that had a highly flexible landing page design that could accommodate products, services or events - and even certain types of payments - while functioning on a less-expensive CMS Webflow site plan instead of the more expensive e-commerce plan.

Stripe Payment Links (SPL) are a relatively new type of payment from Stripe. Websites that use them do not require the full e-commerce system with shopping cart and login memberships. The SPL system requires a some work to learn, but it's relatively user-friendly. The drawback is that, without a shopping cart, a customer can only purchase one type of item or package of items per transaction. It's useful for clients selling one-off unique items or when they expect the customer will normally only be buying 1 type or package of items. Think an author selling her books, a solopreneur selling subscription boxes, a teacher selling classes.

This template isn't limited to selling, it can be used by someone who wants to market products/services/events that will happen purely in the physical world.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

All Webflow sites are built on a system that favours good google rankings. I customized the CMS to have input fields for meta tags and meta descriptions. This way, the author of the landing pages can ensure that each dynamically-generated page has full control over the keywords and key phrases that go into each landing page.