- Review: Wix.com
- Rating: ★★★★★
- Published: 11 May 2019
table of contents
Disclosure
This is a professional review blog which gets compensated for the products reviewed by the companies who produce them. All of the products are tested thoroughly and high grades are received only by the best ones. I am an independent blogger and the reviews are done based on my own opinions.
introduction
Wix review. Are you thinking about your own personal or business website? What is suitable for me? This review will enable you to choose. Introducing the Wix online website builder platform.
After signup, you are able to use Wix Editor where you can pick the elements that are going to be placed within your website’s structure. From there, you can align them, write your site copy, add graphics, and finally publish everything for the world to see. Building a website with Wix is much like crafting a document, all you have to do is pick individual elements and place them on a canvas. There are powerful creation/building tools and Wix also takes care of hosting and all the other technical details.
This is a big advantage, as it enables you to just focus on creating content and managing your products, instead of having to worry if your store is still online due to some hosting/tech-related issues.
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how user-friendly is wix
Due to the overall “ease of use” and the fact that Wix delivers quite powerful functionality (while at the same time not expecting the user to have any technical or site-building skills), it can effectively be used by nearly anyone.
Wix site builder is possibly the best solution for users and business owners who want to be able to do everything on their own, and have full control over their online store’s appearance without having to hire a web designer or a web admin person.
And we’re not talking about “sub-par, kind of okay-looking websites” here. No, Wix offers a range of quality website templates that look just as good as if they were built by a skilled designer. With Wix, you do not need to settle for good enough designs. Instead, you can find something that you really like.
In summary, if it’s your first-time experience building an online store, but you want to be able to handle everything on your own regardless, then Wix is the best solution for you.
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DESIGN & ADDITIONAL FEATURES
Wix Design
Wix website builder presents a set of pre-made designs that you can use for your new store. Wix launched it’s new version of Wix Editor, you get to use a nice range of modern designs and templates. The great thing here is that they are categorized and built with specific niches in mind. For example, you can start by choosing whether you are going to be selling women’s fashion items, cameras, headphones, food, jewelry, t-shirts, or tens of other types of products.
That being said, you don’t necessarily have to choose the type of design that best describes your niche. This is somewhat of a helper on Wix’s part. In other words, if you want to sell clothing, you don’t have to select a design with “clothing” in its name. Just pick whatever you like.
Template
Wix has a large number of template galleries, with above 500 templates. Even better, all of them are free, which is not the case with competitors like Shopify and Bigcommerce.
All templates look professional and are visually appealing. Wix websites certainly don’t look like a do-it-yourself creation. The templates make good use of spacing and fonts to create impact and are particularly effective when used with high-quality photographs.
Wix site builder also provides a large library of professionally shot images that you can use for free, and on top of that, you can access Shutterstock directly from Wix Editor.
The templates are organized into intuitive categories, and you should be able to find a template which meets your needs fairly easily. A large number of templates means you can get very specific: for example, in the online store’s category, there is a category for Fashion and Clothing, with 19 different templates. Compare this to Jimdo’s four main categories with only a few templates in each, and you can see that templates are a major strength for Wix.
One big caveat is that you need to find the right template and stick with it, because you can’t change templates. If you change templates part way through your website creation, you will need to start again from scratch. Not fun. Many of Wix’s competitors are more flexible – Jimdo, for example, allows you to switch templates part way through without losing any content, and the same goes for Squarespace.
The Editor
Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI)
Wix is usable by anyone, No matter how much web design knowledge they have. ADI technology creates your website by asking you some basic questions and collecting whatever information is available. Editing is done via the drag and drop user interface.
Wix Editor
Wix Editor requires some basic computing skills, it’s equivalent in complexity to using Microsoft Word to layout a newsletter. Wix Editor gives you the flexibility to alter the layout, but there are still limitations compared to a fully-fledged HTML/CSS solution.
App Market
Wix offers an App Market with over 250 apps available, some made by Wix and some by third parties. Most apps involve monthly subscriptions or have only limited functionality when free versions are used. The App Market is easy to use and provides a lot of useful functionality which you can add to your website, including online chat, pop-ups, and calendars. Another way to add functionality from third-party apps is by using an HTML block to insert a widget from one of those apps.
SEO Tools
The Wix SEO function is generally good and it allows you to easily perform key SEO tasks, including:
- Add alt text
- Add meta descriptions
- Edit page URLs
- Create 301 redirects
If you have no idea what all these SEO terms are, don’t worry Wix has an SEO wizard to explain what you are doing. If you are on a premium plan the SEO Wiz can also help you register your site with Google Search Console.
Analytics and conversion tracking: Wix enables their customers good support for analytics tools, providing built-in integrations for:
- Google Analytics
- Google AdWords
- Google Tag Manager
- Facebook Pixel
- Yandex Metrica
- Verification Code
You can also use a Google tag manager to implement any other third party code or pixels or add custom code directly to your Wix site to track conversions.
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Pros & Cons
THE PROS
Free Plan
There is a free plan available so that you can test everything out, design and build your store before spending a dime.
Templates
Comes with tons of templates, many of them high quality, and new ones are constantly being added.
HTML5 Editor
Comes integrated with an HTML5 editor that allows you to customize everything.
E-Commerce Integration
Good and easy-to-use online payments integration.
Site Builder
The site builder works with drag-and-drop functionality.
THE CONS
Picking The Right Template
The sheer number of designs can make it difficult to pick the best one for you.
Product Attributes
Not that many products attribute to set.
Standard Website Building
Geared more at standard website building rather than e-commerce store building, although it can handle the e-commerce things just as well.
Activation
You need to sign up for a paid plan before you can launch your store.
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pricing & plans
Free Plan
The good news is that there is a 100% free plan available that lets you test things out, get some experience with the platform, and overall see if you like it. As part of that free plan, you can launch your first website and put it online as a sub-domain. In this free version, you are not able to launch a live online store. Actually, I would like to recommend you to take advantage of that free plan with Wix to see if the platform fits your individual needs and then upgrade later on.
Domain plan ($5 per month)
In addition to the features provided on the free plan, the ‘Connect domain’ plan provides you with the option to you to use your own web address such as www.my-site.com, rather than a sub-domain of Wix, such as www.wix.com/my-site. It comes with 500MB storage and 1GB bandwidth.
Combo plan ($11 per month)
This plan will remove Wix brand advertising from your site. This advertising is fairly intrusive, inserting a noticeable call to action at the top of your site. This plan also gives you a free domain registration for the first year. The Combo plan comes with 3GB storage and 2GB bandwidth. You will get 30 video minutes’ on this plan — as the feature’s name suggests, this means you can upload 30 minutes of video to Wix. Given that in many cases it’s more beneficial to upload the video to a social platform like YouTube, I’m not sure how useful Wix’s video minutes are.
Unlimited plan ($14 per month)
The unlimited’ plan is the cheapest Wix plan that you can really use to run a small business website with. This plan will allow you to collect contact information from visitors to your website using custom web forms. Web forms are essential if you want to use your site to build an email list.This plan also offers $300 of Vouchers’. These can be used to pay for advertising with Google Adwords and Bing Ads. However, it’s quite easy to get similar ad vouchers elsewhere. The plan also provides access to the site booster app – a third party app by AppSharp that submits your website to search engines. Finally, this plan comes with 10GB storage, unlimited bandwidth and 1 hour worth of video minutes.
Pro plan ($19 per month)
This plan gives you more storage and video hours than the unlimited’ plan; it also gives you access to a logo making tool, the ability to customize social icons and a calendar tool which allows you to provide event listings on your site.
VIP plan ($29 per month)
The VIP plan is basically the same as the Pro plan but gives you a higher priority for user support. Wix site builder felt the need to include this option that what is their standard customer service like, to make it worth an extra $10 per month for VIP service? You can also get a one-time website review by Wix experts. Otherwise, it’s the same as the eCommerce plan.
Business Basic ($20 per month)
The plan is the cheapest Wix plan available which facilitates e-commerce services. It is similar in features to the “Unlimited” plan but allows you to accept online payments and connect Google Analytics. It also provides more generous 5 video hours. As a freelancer, this Wix plan probably represents the sweet spot’ in the line-up, because it is relatively featured rich and facilitates commerce without breaking the bank.
Business Unlimited ($25 per month)
The “Business Unlimited” plan is the same as the Business Basic’ one but adds logo making tools, social icon tools and more generous storage (35GB) and 10 video hours.
Business VIP ($35 per month)
The “Business VIP” package is described by Wix as constituting the full suite and provides more generous limits on storage and video (50GB and unlimited hours respectively) than the unlimited’ plan. But the main thing you are paying extra for is priority support.
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support
When using Wix, I was able to find answers to almost everything I wanted to know by searching in Wix’s Help Centre, which contains a large library of articles and good search functionality. There is also excellent contextual help provided throughout the site. If you can’t find what you need in the Help Centre, then you can contact support at the bottom of each support page. Wix provides support over the phone and via email, but there’s no live chat.
Phone support is available on weekdays from 5am to 5pm Pacific Time (1pm to 1am GMT), and offers help in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. You will need to request a callback, which at least means you don’t need to wait on hold. According to Wix, most callbacks are within 5 minutes (an impressively short wait if accurate).
You can also submit an email ticket. Wix doesn’t commit to a timeline for answering these, simply promising to get back to you as soon as possible. When I submitted a question, a member of the Wix support team got back to me at the start of the next business day.
If you are paying extra for VIP support, then you will jump the line so long as you use the email address associated with the account.
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faq's
Who is it for?
Wix provides completely code-free drag and drop site builder designed for all users. Its virtual interface enables users to create and manage various websites. Wix is a good option for creating simple informative business websites, personal portfolios, blogs, one-page sites and also simple websites.
Wix also has an offering for freelance designers. If you’ve got web design skills, you can join Wix Arena to get your talent advertised to thousands of potential clients, looking to hire a pro. By joining the Arena, you’ll get some exclusive treats from Wix: monthly rewards, premium support, and the ability to get first access to new Wix feature, among other benefits.
How does Wix work?
Wix is a cloud-based system that allows to create and manage a website from any computer or mobile device. Your website data is saved on Wix cloud servers. Your website is available for editing and managing no matter which device you use to log in. All you need is to sign up with the system and remember your account login (e-mail) and password.
Is it free?
Wix has enabled a free version for all which will never expire. It comes with hundreds of free templates, included hosting, mobile-friendly version of your site and a basic feature set. The free version of Wix offers enough tools to set up and publish a simple website, and the only visible disadvantage is the inability to connect a custom domain name and Wix ads – all free websites display a pretty noticeable banner at the top and bottom of the page that says “Powered by Wix”. So, technically, you can publish a site using Wix for free, but it won’t have a professional look.
Can I change Wix templates?
Wix provides an impressive selection templates in over 70 industry categories. They feature modern web design trends and look just perfect. The only frustrating thing about Wix templates is that it’s impossible to switch them. Once you have chosen a template, you can’t go back to the library and choose another one. While this is possible with Weebly, it’s impossible with Wix which relies on the absolute positioning model.
The box model places users content to boxes or containers that make up a template, thus making it possible to transfer that content from one template to another. The absolute positioning approach gives users more freedom letting them visually make pixel-perfect changes and place any site elements anywhere on the canvas, making it impossible to gracefully transfer those elements later.
Important note: If you own a Wix website that needs a total redesign, you can create a new site, manually move your content from your old site to your new site and then transfer your premium account to it.
Are Wix websites mobile-friendly?
Wix is a mobile-friendly website builder. The Wix editor has a separate area in which you can use the template for the mobile version. The mobile and desktop versions are designed separately based on the same template; all your changes in the Mobile editor won’t affect your main site. However, it’s important to mention that you’ll have a single website, which means you don’t have to update both versions of the site. By updating your desktop site you update the mobile look, too.
Is Wix SEO-friendly?
If you ask me, is it good for SEO – I will tell you, definitely yes. Wix provides a powerful SEO Wizard tool that will guide you through all the process of correct SEO setup. Some users blame Wix that it has SEO problems, but the real problem is in an incorrect basic understanding of SEO (how to fill in meta tags, pages, and images description). The use of Wix in terms of SEO has no differences that the use of any other website builder or CMS.
Am I able to edit my Wix site on a code level?
Sites created using Wix don’t show their source code, so you can’t manually edit the generated source. But you can use Wix Code interface to inject an additional code or to create a web application.
Why my Wix website is so slow?
Wix websites work fast that is true. The website loading speed directly depends on its size. Lots of images could make a heavy website and slow down its loading speed. So you should carefully select a visual content for your site and optimize it before uploading.
Is Wix good for e-commerce?
Yes, Wix has a specialized eCommerce module that allows you to create a stunning web store. No matter how many goods you are planning to sell – 10 or 1000, Wix eCommerce solution deals with it in a proper way. Note that launching an online store needs a paid subscription. There’s a special Commerce’ plan, that allows you to manage your store with an unlimited number of products.
What eCommerce platform does Wix use?
Wix doesn’t use any third-party eCommerce platforms. Instead, it has its own powerful eCommerce engine, which comes with diverse web store design settings, customization tools, niche templates and allows building and launching full-featured mobile-optimized eCommerce websites.
How to add comments to Wix blog?
Adding a comment box to the Wix blog is super easy. You can choose between adding Facebook comments, Disqus comments or a third-party comments app to let users leave their comments under each blog post. Make sure to add the comment box under each article. That’s it.
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Conclusion
Wix has been providing services from many years. They offer reliable services. Most of their customers are entrepreneurs, bloggers, freelancers, businessmen, and students. So start your new business with Wix site builder. I would like to recommend you to sign up in Wix. They are always ready to serve you.