Client Overview

A leading real estate company, specializing in connecting buyers and sellers with their ideal properties, needed a robust digital platform to manage property profiles and user interactions. Their existing platform was built using Webflow for front-end design, with Make.com handling back-end workflows and automation. However, as the company grew, they encountered significant limitations with the Make.com setup, including issues with scalability, performance, and data management. To overcome these challenges, the company partnered with Value Added Tech, a specialist in digital solutions, to rebuild their platform using Xano and Wized.

Challenges

  1. Scalability Issues: The existing setup with Make.com could not efficiently handle the growing volume of property profiles and user interactions, leading to slow load times and a poor user experience.
  2. Data Management Limitations: Managing complex property profiles and user data within the existing CMS collections was cumbersome, limiting the company’s ability to customize and update profiles efficiently.
  3. Integration Complexity: The client needed a more integrated and flexible solution that could handle the growing complexity of their operations without sacrificing ease of use or performance.
  4. Seamless Transition: Ensuring a smooth migration of existing data and workflows to the new platform, without disrupting the service or user experience, was a critical concern.

Solution Provided by Value Added Tech

Value Added Tech approached the project with a focus on rebuilding the client’s platform using Xano for back-end database management and API creation, and Wized for front-end integration within Webflow. The key components of the solution included:

  1. Database and API Development in Xano:
  • Value Added Tech imported existing CMS collections and schemas into Xano, creating a scalable and flexible database architecture.
  • Custom APIs were developed in Xano to handle property profiles, user profiles, and related data transactions. This provided the client with real-time data management capabilities and the ability to handle increased traffic without performance degradation.
  1. Wized Actions and Functions Setup:
  • Wized was utilized to link Xano's back-end capabilities with Webflow’s front-end design, ensuring that all interactions, such as updating property profiles or managing user data, were handled efficiently and in real-time.
  • Custom functions were created in Wized to enable complex workflows, such as property searches, filtering, and user-specific content display.
  1. Enhanced Webflow Integration:
  • Value Added Tech integrated Wized attributes directly into the Webflow environment, optimizing the platform for dynamic content delivery and ensuring a seamless user experience.
  • Additional features were added to enhance the platform’s functionality, such as real-time property availability updates and personalized user dashboards.
  1. Migration and Testing:
  • A comprehensive migration strategy was developed to transfer data from Make.com to Xano, ensuring data integrity and minimal downtime.
  • Extensive testing was conducted to validate the new setup, ensuring that all functionalities were working as intended and that the user experience remained smooth and intuitive.

Results

  1. Improved Performance:
  • The new Xano-based architecture resulted in a 35% reduction in load times for property searches and profile updates.
  • The platform now handles 50% more concurrent users without performance issues, supporting the client’s growth ambitions.
  1. Enhanced Scalability:
  • The platform can now scale effortlessly to accommodate new properties and users, with the potential to handle 100% more data than the previous setup.
  1. Increased Efficiency:
  • The streamlined workflows and improved data management reduced the time required to update property profiles by 40%, enabling the client to react more quickly to market changes.
  1. User Satisfaction:
  • User engagement metrics improved, with a 20% increase in time spent on the platform and a 15% decrease in bounce rates due to the enhanced user experience.

Conclusion

By transitioning the real estate platform from Make.com to a robust Xano and Wized-based solution, Value Added Tech successfully addressed the client’s challenges around scalability, performance, and data management. The new setup not only supports the company’s current needs but also positions them for future growth, with a more efficient, scalable, and user-friendly platform. This project highlights Value Added Tech’s ability to deliver tailored digital solutions that drive significant improvements in both operational efficiency and user satisfaction.

If you’re looking to transform your business operations and drive outstanding results, reach out to us at sales@vatech.io. Let us help you make the leap into a more efficient, tech-driven future.

The Technical Migration: Make.com to Xano

The decision to move away from Make.com wasn't about Make.com being a bad tool — it's excellent for workflow automation. The problem was using it as a backend database and API layer, which it wasn't designed for. The client had built their entire property data management on Make.com data stores and webhooks, which created three specific problems:

Latency: Every property search triggered a Make.com scenario that queried the data store, filtered results, and returned them. At low volume this was fine. At 500+ concurrent users during peak hours, scenario queue times pushed page load times above 8 seconds.

Query limitations: Make.com data stores don't support complex queries — no joins, no aggregations, no full-text search. The client's property search needed to filter by location radius, price range, property type, bedroom count, and availability simultaneously. This required multiple scenario runs and client-side filtering, which was slow and unreliable.

Data integrity: With no relational database structure, maintaining consistency between property records, user profiles, and saved searches was done through manual field matching. When a property was updated, related records didn't update automatically.

Building the Xano Backend

Xano gave us a proper PostgreSQL database with a visual API builder. The migration involved three phases:

Phase 1 — Schema design: We mapped the existing Make.com data store structure to a relational schema. The core tables:

  • properties — 47 fields covering all property attributes, with PostGIS extension for geographic coordinates
  • users — authentication, profile data, saved search preferences
  • saved_searches — linked to users, stores filter criteria as JSON
  • inquiries — links users to properties with timestamp, message, and status
  • property_images — separate table linked to properties, with ordering and alt text fields

The PostGIS extension was the key unlock for location-based search. We could now run a single SQL query like WHERE ST_DWithin(coordinates, ST_MakePoint(lng, lat), radius_meters) instead of fetching all properties and filtering client-side.

Phase 2 — API development: Xano's API builder let us create endpoints without writing raw SQL. The property search endpoint accepted 8 filter parameters and returned paginated results in under 200ms — compared to 3–8 seconds with the Make.com setup. We built 23 API endpoints covering all the operations the Webflow front-end needed.

Phase 3 — Data migration: We exported all existing property data from Make.com data stores as JSON, wrote a Python script to transform the field names and data types to match the new Xano schema, and imported via Xano's bulk import API. 2,847 property records migrated with zero data loss. The migration ran on a Saturday night with a 4-hour maintenance window.

Wized as the Webflow-Xano Bridge

Webflow is a design tool, not an application framework. It doesn't natively support dynamic data from external APIs. Wized fills this gap by letting you bind Webflow elements to API responses without writing JavaScript.

The implementation involved:

Wized Actions: We defined 23 actions corresponding to the 23 Xano API endpoints. Each action specified the endpoint URL, authentication headers, request parameters, and how to handle the response. Actions were triggered by user interactions (search button click, filter change, save property button) or page load events.

Wized Bindings: Webflow elements were bound to Wized data. A property card's image, title, price, and bedroom count were each bound to the corresponding field in the Xano API response. When the search results updated, all bound elements updated automatically.

Authentication flow: User login and registration went through Xano's built-in auth endpoints. Wized stored the JWT token in localStorage and included it in the Authorization header for all subsequent API calls. Protected pages (saved searches, inquiry history) checked for a valid token on load and redirected to login if absent.

Real-time availability: Property availability status updated via a Wized action that ran every 60 seconds on property detail pages. If a property's status changed to "Under Offer" while a user was viewing it, the page updated without requiring a refresh.

What the 35% Load Time Reduction Actually Came From

The improvement wasn't uniform across all page types:

  • Property search results: 78% faster (8.2s → 1.8s) — the biggest gain, driven by the PostGIS query replacing client-side filtering
  • Property detail pages: 41% faster (3.1s → 1.8s) — Xano API response vs. Make.com scenario execution
  • User dashboard (saved searches): 22% faster (2.3s → 1.8s) — smaller gain because this page was less complex to begin with

The 35% figure is the average across all page types weighted by traffic volume. Search results pages account for ~60% of traffic, so the 78% improvement there drove the overall average.

When to Choose Xano + Wized Over Make.com

Make.com is the right tool when you need to automate workflows between existing applications — moving data from one SaaS tool to another, triggering actions based on events, building notification systems. It's not the right tool when you need a queryable database with complex filtering, user authentication, or real-time data access.

Xano + Wized is the right choice when:

  • You're building a Webflow site that needs to display dynamic data from a database
  • You need user authentication and personalized content
  • Your data has relationships that require joins or aggregations
  • You need search with multiple simultaneous filters
  • Page load performance is a priority

The migration cost (time and money) is real. For this client, the business case was clear: slow load times were directly causing users to abandon property searches, which reduced inquiry volume. The 20% increase in time-on-site and 15% decrease in bounce rate translated to measurable increases in inquiry submissions.

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