The pros and cons of using Canva in your digital strategy

To make your content stand out, design platforms like Canva are becoming increasingly popular. With Canva, you are able to create exciting and unique content for your business—from leaflets to social media and website designs. In this blog we’ll take you through some of the pros and cons of using Canva as part of your digital strategy...

We’ll start with the pros...

Integrations

Not only does Canva have its own in-app integrations like GIPHY, and Dropbox but there are also scheduling tools that allow you to use Canva straight from their platform. For example, because of its Canva integration, on Social Pilot you can create a Canva design alongside the copy for your social post without having to leave the site. The only downside to this is that you can’t pull up existing designs from your account, you can only create a new one from scratch. If you have a bank of designs ready to go, this might not be for you. 

If you are looking to create unique content for your users, Canva has a wide range of integrations like Google Maps that you can embed into any design. You can interact with the map as normal on your design, without having to divert to another site. This makes it incredibly easy for users to find you, whether it’s a shop, or an event location. Another useful integration to help users get easily from A to B is the QR code feature. The code can be embedded within your design for users to scan and automatically load your site. These integrations allow you to create an easy customer journey and help guide users towards a decision.

Templates

Canva lets you create your own templates and save them for future edits in a dedicated folder. This means you can have a bank of confirmed design templates with your required sizes and styles ready to go. Having a prepared set of templates at the ready means it’s easy for you to make copies and edit them further to personalise each post. 

Once you have been using it for a while, it will keep track of your recently used templates and recommend designs to help you with new creative ideas that you can then edit to meet your needs. 

Styles

Whenever creating a design there are a variety of different elements and additions for you to choose from. For example, if you want an image to be more transparent or you want wider line spacing—Canva gives you the choice. You can even make still image designs into animations, with different transitions, music and timing. 

If you want to use an image but don't like its background or want to add your brand colours, you can use the background remover feature to create a plain background to edit. This can be useful for professional photos or mock ups. 

There is also a drag and drop feature that will not only upload your requested image to your account, but also add it straight into your slide, eliminating timely steps from the process. 

Canva is useful not only for marketing content creators, but also for designers. In Canva, designers can find the design features that are important to them, for example, padding between elements. The tool offers margin suggestions to keep everything in line and also gives the distances between elements for the more beady-eyed creator.

Canva also recently updated their ‘elements’ feature to include everything from photos, to graphics, to music all in the one section, rather than in separate folders. This makes it much faster and easier to find what you're looking for. 

Personalised/customisable features

When set up with a premium account Canva allows you to save your ‘brand kit’, which includes colours, fonts and logos, into a folder so that every time you create content you have them all within easy access. You can also update and save the font styles of your default headings and subheadings so that when you click add text it is already set up to meet your branding. 

Example of brand kit settings & how it displays when designing

Another really useful feature Canva has is the smart mockup section where you can choose between everything from tshirt designs to computer mockups to show off your product—digital or not. It helps promote your product or service in a really professional way with royalty free images.

If you start designing content and realise you need it for a different platform and therefore, in a different size,  the premium plan lets you simply resize the document. Alternatively, you can keep your current design and use the ‘copy and resize’ feature.

Flexibility

Even though Canva’s free plan can be restrictive depending on your needs, it is still a great starting point for creators looking to change up their designs without hiring a designer. You have access to over 250,000 templates and 100+ design types which allows you to create as much content as you need in exactly the formats that you need it

Once you have created your designs there are options to download in a host of different formats. Whether it is a PNG, JPEG or PDF, you can schedule your post from Canva (premium plan only, which also provides a content calendar). This allows you a lot of flexibility if you want to post your content in different places. For example, LinkedIn carousels work best if you upload a document as a pdf, but that same carousel would be separate images for Instagram. Canva makes it easy to download your design as many times as you want in different formats, ensuring your creative is optimised for each social platform. 

There are many benefits to using Canva, particularly if you’re looking to raise the stakes on your social media and website design. However, there are a few drawbacks to using the design tool, including glitches, occasional crashes and the interface not being as intuitive as it could be.

Recommended image sizes not always up-to-date

Even though the recommended image sizes for each social media platform can be very useful on Canva, they are not always updated as regularly as the platform itself, so it’s best to double check. The good thing is that the custom sizing tool allows you to create a design to any dimensions you like.  

Example of home page with automatic sizing options & custom size button

Glitches when downloading designs 

Even if your design looks correct when viewing it on your app or browser, sometimes, once downloaded, the elements of your design move around slightly, which knocks the alignment and can be frustrating. 

Templates can only be one size 

All images in one design template need to be the same size, for example if you wanted to do the same design across multiple platforms which all require different sizing, you need to copy and resize which adds an extra step in your content creation. If you resize your current design it will change all slides to that same size, not just the one you’re working on. 

Additionally, some care has to be taken if using the templates Canva provides. Your designs can quickly end up looking the same as everyone else's, so you have to keep your own brand guidelines in mind. 

Bigger projects can be tricky

Canva is great for anything fairly small and  digital, i.e. social media posts. But it's not great for creating a whole suite of brand assets from scratch—especially anything destined to be printed, or multi-page booklets/magazines.

Crashes 

Occasionally when working on a design, the Canva page will crash and reload—not always saving your designs, which can of course be frustrating. Hopefully Canva can fix this issue in the near future. 

There are a lot more pros to using Canva than there are cons, and it is a great stepping stone between marketing and design. There are also constant updates to improve the user experience and available elements and in saying this, many  of the cons we mentioned are glitches that may soon be smoothed out and improved. If you are a small or large business looking to innovate your designs on a budget, Canva could be the tool for you. 

If you want help with your digital strategy, get in touch today or find out about our services, including digital marketing and design, here.