WHAT IS WIX: FEATURES, ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

A digital presence is a must for businesses and professionals in our digital era. Users and consumers use the internet, computers and their mobile phones to look for information about products, services and companies in order to make online purchases and bookings, and to interact with companies to request information or raise any complaints or incidents.

Having a website or online shop is a vital requirement today for almost any type of business, however, web development can be a complex process with a high cost.

Thanks to Wix, you can make a website or e-commerce page quickly, easily and affordably – all without the need for any experience in web design and programming.

What is Wix?

Wix is an online platform that offers a series of tools for creating professional websites in a quick and easy way. Thanks to pre-set features and a choice of custom templates, you can build a website in a very short amount of time and with great-quality results.

What are the features of Wix?

The main features that define Wix are:

• Cloud platform. Wix is a cloud service that can be accessed from your browser and which users can visit at any time, from any device (computer, mobile or tablet).
• Wix templates. Wix offers hundreds of templates to choose from, offering your website a professional appearance to meet the needs and characteristics of each company.
• Easy to use. Wix offers a simple and intuitive editor that allows you to create different parts of a website, using the ‘drag and drop’ system – meaning there’s no need to write any code (HTML, CSS or JavaScript, for example).
• Versatility. With Wix, you can develop a range of different types of websites, from a corporate site to a professional online shop from which to sell products and services online.
• Includes hosting. By registering on Wix, you’ll gain storage space to host your new website.
• Freemium. The Wix business model allows users to access basic web-development services for free, with the option to access more advanced options through a paid service.

Why you should use Wix

Wix offers a host of advantages when it comes to developing a website or a virtual shop, including its ease of use and low creation cost.

The main advantages of using Wix are:

Very gentle learning curve

The main advantage of Wix is that you only need to get registered to start creating your website. Its drag and drop system, as well as its simple and intuitive interface, gives the platform a very easy learning curve. It only takes a couple of hours of playing around with its options and features to get to grips with the tool.

You don’t need to worry about hosting

One of the first issues you’ll need to tackle when it comes to any web project is choosing a web-hosting service. With Wix, this won’t be a problem, as you’ll be automatically assigned space to host the website created on the platform when you sign up.

No web-programming knowledge is required

Anyone can use Wix to create a website and obtain high-quality results in a short period of time. You don’t need to write any code or have any prior understanding of web design, as the tools and options included on Wix will allow you to use it simply and intuitively.

Comes with a gallery of images

With Wix services, you’ll have access to a huge number of image galleries, where you’ll find photos and images to include on your website without incurring any copyright issues.

What’s more, it comes with its own image editor so you can modify, improve and adapt them to the website in an appropriate and personalised way.

Video backgrounds

One of the most interesting options offered by Wix is the option to include animated backgrounds on your website, using videos.

This way, you can create unique and impressive websites that help you stand out from the competition.

More than 500 templates

Wix offers its users and customers more than 500 templates from which to choose to give your website a professional appearance. These templates come with __responsive design__, meaning that they adapt perfectly to the inherent features of mobile devices.

Different websites

With Wix, you can create an e-commerce site, corporate page, blog, news site, or almost any kind of website. This is a highly versatile tool that offers various options and add-ons – allowing you to include a range of features on your website and adapt it to different uses.

What are the disadvantages of Wix?

Although Wix offers many benefits, there are also certain aspects that make this platform ill-suited to the creation of some web projects.

Here are some of the disadvantages of Wix:

It’s not Google friendly

Despite the best efforts of developers to improve the platform in this regard, to date, websites created on Wix do not position as well on Google as those created using CMSs like Woocommerce or PrestaShop, or web platforms like Shopify.

Positioning a website with Wix is very complicated, particularly if you want to reach the top rankings on Google results pages.

Optimising load times

Another downside of Wix can be found in its loading speeds, as pages generated on this platform suffer from delays in loading, which negatively affects user experience.

Problems with mobile devices

Although they use responsive templates, Wix websites present certain incompatibilities with mobile devices. The platform has been working to solve these types of problems which, so far, have made Wix a poor choice for mobile design.

Shared hosting

Although the hosting offered by Wix is free, this is a shared hosting service where server resources are shared with the rest of the hosted sites. This means very slow loading times and possible security problems (any problem that affects another user will impact other sites on the server).

Limited to one template

This limitation means that, after selecting and enabling a template, you’ll lose all your site content if you want to change this template at a later date, which significantly limits the options for updating and customising websites.

No options for migration

Wix websites cannot be migrated to other systems or hosting services, as you can do with WordPress, for example. Once you’ve created your website on Wix, it will be anchored to this platform.

Wix adverts

The free version of Wix shows ads on the website, this can only be disabled by paying €8.50 a month.

Wix is a free, simple and powerful web-creation platform. It’s a great choice for small projects and individuals who want to start an online business without any hassle.

However, for somewhat more ambitious and professional projects, it’s best to use other options like WordPress, PrestaShop or Shopify, given the many downsides and limitations of Wix.