You might think that web designers would either (a) scoff at a tool that allows amateurs to design their own sites, or (b) quake in their boots, afraid that this tool would steal their business out from under them. In this case, neither is true! We like Wix a lot, and it has its place for some projects.
Solid Templates
One of the major differences between Wix and Squarespace is the wide variety of templates available. Squarespace demands that you adhere to a fairly spare, minimalist look, while Wix offers a much broader selection of templates that can accommodate almost any industry or style. We like that they have a huge selection of fonts available, and that the color schemes can be readily changed. Your Wix website doesn’t have to have a templatey look at all.
These templates look good out of the box, but of course it is still easy to go horribly, horribly awry, and we’ve seen it happen. If you do go the route of modifying a Wix template, we recommend that you keep in mind classic design principles, like “Use no more than 3 fonts.” (If you need more variety, use different weights or sizes.) Or consult a web design firm!
No HTML or CSS Necessary
Unlike some other website building tools, Wix genuinely does not require any knowledge of HTML. You will need to know how to paste links in if you’re linking to documents external to your site, and it’s definitely a good thing to have some knowledge of graphic design. You don’t want to upload a 5 MB TIFF file to use on your site when it should be a 30 kB JPG. Additionally, you should know how to scale images proportionally, and you should take note of the hexadecimal value of the colors you use so you can be exact when you are changing color values. (Every color on the web has a hexadecimal code that looks like this: #FFFFFF.)
Price
The price for a Wix website is excellent. Most businesses could get by on Wix’s $12.42 per month plan. They tend to run sales around holidays, so set up a trial account and opt in to their newsletter. They’ll send you notices of their sales.
Built-in Mobile Responsiveness
Having a website that works well on mobile devices is critical these days, and all of Wix’s websites offer a mobile responsive version. Every one we’ve experimented with so far works elegantly and as expected.
Support
If you have an issue, you can open a ticket, and their support team is fairly quick to respond to your issue, and can even fix it for you in some cases. Their support is comparable to Squarespace’s tech support.
Stuff We Don’t Like
- In general, we don’t love the idea that you can’t take your website with you. You can’t move your Wix website to another platform. It’s on Wix for good.
- We don’t love the weird URLs used by Wix. For example, on your Wix site you might have a URL that looks like this: http://www.yourcompany.com/#!products/cp8k. Why does it have to have the #! and the nonsensical string of characters at the end? Wouldn’t it be nicer if the domain were just http://www.yourcompany.com/products? Wix defends this URL structure by saying that they are part of Wix’s AJAX technology and deep linking mechanism, and that they’re important for SEO purposes. This could be an issue if you ever do move your website to a new platform… you would need to create lots of redirects to deal with your URLs.
- There are some features we like to use on websites that are not as flexible or robust as we typically need. For example, we often use portfolios to showcase a client’s work, and Wix doesn’t give us much in that arena.
So, long story short: we like Wix! It’s a great tool for setting up a fairly simple website very quickly, at minimal costs. If you’ve got some graphic design prowess, you’ll find yourself able to create a fairly custom-looking website. If you don’t, contact us and we can help!
