Wix is a Website builder that has been advertised fairly heavy over the past year. In this article, we are going to examine the service and look at our experience and some input from the Web. It’s worth reading this full article before making a decision about making a website with Wix. We’ll share our experience, and our clients experience.

With Website builders like Wix, you can easily create a simple website for your business and get up and running. But what are the drawbacks?

Five Reasons Why You Should Avoid Wix

The Cost:

Wix is not cheap in the long run. A custom designed website may cost you more upfront but you’ll get more options and not be paying a large monthly fee. For example, website hosting costs approx $5 – $10/month for a small business. Wix is running for $10 – $40 each month for the most basic plans with limited features.

The lack of true customization:

The design of your website comes from a selection of templates available at Wix and if you are looking for something truly unique, you’ll run into problems. A Website Designer can take the look, feel and brand of your business to create something truly unique. In addition, your content & design is built into their system. If you are ever dissatisfied with the service, you need to start from the beginning.

If you have a new idea that hasn’t been done on the web yet, you’ll face an issue with any custom features you may want created. The lack of customisation also presents a disadvantage when a website needs dramatic change, for example integrating an online store or other custom software.

A custom website will allow you to fully make edits similar to Wix but with all the benefits of a properly built Website.

Limited Features:

Wix websites come with limited features. The free plan is extremely limiting and most websites will struggle pretty quickly trying to do anything custom, or “Out of the box”. If you are planning on offering E-Commerce, you will be limited by the payment methods they provide, the limited features available and required to get a professional plan.

The limited features may be good for a small store that needs 1 – 2 pages but any features beyond that and you’ll find yourself extremely frustrated.

We move clients away from Wix to a custom website due to the limited features on a regular basis. This is the biggest complaint we hear about Wix from our clients.

E-Commerce:

The ability to sell products on your website could be the main focus of your website and creating a custom E-Commerce space is part of that image. Wix has extremely limited features for E-commerce websites and we find clients generally have an issue connecting with users or showcasing their product in the right way.

A large part of our approach when building E-commerce websites is the follow-up and engagement of the customers with your website. A good engagement email can have a 30% – 40% conversion bringing you return customers and steady income. This is a feature that is unavailable at Wix and a highly requested feature with our clients.

In addition, our E-Commerce websites are packed with features that blow away our clients when we show them. These features include Customer Engagement, Advanced Coupons, Cart Abandonment Systems, Real-Time Shipping Tracking, Subscription Based Payment Systems and more!

SEO

Search engine optimization is the practice of making your website appeal to Google. Optimizing your website for search rankings can place your website in the #1 result for Google searches.

This is achieved through many different methods including on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is the act of modifying parts of your website to help boost your rankings.

SEO has always been a big issue with Wix. A Wix website will always take longer to rank properly vs a custom website. In some cases, the Wix website may never achieve the same rankings as a custom website.

• You cannot edit or customize your sitemap
• Items such schema markup / structured data that are impossible to implement in Wix
• You cannot perform full SEO to your blog posts
• You can’t improve your Website Speed. Your website is hosted on their servers and you are stuck with it.

If not Wix, What should we Do?

Customers prefer a Custom Built Website. Hiring a Website designer is still the best practice for 2019. Hiring a Website designer will save you money in the long run, create something truly unique for your business, and help you reach #1 in Google.