Wix Review

Intro

Wix is an all-around player in the website-builder field. You can build your company’s website in a matter of minutes thanks to Wix’s Artificial Design Intelligence, or invest a little more time and create a highly customized, modern and professional looking website through their first-class platform. And the best part: the drag-and-drop builder requires no experience with or knowledge of code.

Business owners from all industries can choose from over 500 professional-looking, beautifully designed and highly functional templates or start building your site from scratch with Wix’s blank canvas editor- a great option if you want to take more control of the creation process.

If you are looking for the website builder that has it all, Wix truly is the best option. But take note: While the innovative tools and features that are constantly being added take the hard work out of the website creation process, you should be prepared to spend some time familiarizing yourself with all of these elements (and the endless options the builder has to offer) to get the most out of the Wix platform.

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Our Wix review is pretty in-depth, covering all the bases.

Prefer to get straight to the point? See the most important Wix features in our 2-minute video:

In 2016, Wix launched their Artificial Design Intelligence which rightly deserves a mention and is therefore touched on below, followed by our comprehensive Wix review which examines their main website builder.

Artificial Design Intelligence

There is no denying Wix is one of the most innovative website builders, but when it comes to their Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI), they have officially hit the ball out of the website building park. Using their 12 years of experience with sites built by over 100,000 million users, Wix’s ADI only requires basic knowledge about your business in order to build a tailor-made site in a matter of minutes.

To get started, you will need to provide the ADI with answers to the following 6 basic questions about your business:

• What kind of business do you want to create a website for? Eg. lawyer, online store,
• Which features does your website require? Eg. Blog, Contact form, Appointment setter, selling capability
• What is your business name?
• Where is your business located? (Skip if location is irrelevant to your business)
• Contact details, logo & social media profiles
• Select design style (there are 6 suggested designs to choose from, but you can change them later).

Once you have completed these answers, Wix ADI creates your site at a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ speed.

The first result with the ADI is quite impressive and the more you use it, the more you will be amazed. Not only has the builder selected relevant images, but also created text that is targeted to our business type and potential customers. Certain elements of the design or content may not be to your liking, and the ADI expects that, which is why it has a step by step guide to walk you through the editing process.

At each stage of the editing process, Wix ADI again offers to change the chosen element for you or allows you to make the changes yourself. If you choose to let the ADI make the changes, not only does it do them in front of your eyes, it hovers over the editor menu and shows you where you would need to click in order to make the exact same changes yourself. This step-by-step process of the ADI editor and its method for teaching the user makes it an incredibly useful tool for first-time users of a website builder who are perhaps less tech-savvy.

Build a site in minutes with Wix ADI

For users who are looking for more control, or feel comfortable building their site from start to finish, we recommend using the powerful DIY Wix editor, reviewed below.

Templates

With over 500 uniquely-designed and professional-looking templates to choose from, you are bound to find a template that matches your business needs with Wix. Browsing through their range of templates, from ‘Business’ to ‘Online Store’, ‘Photography’ to ‘Restaurants’ and ‘Blog’ to ‘Accommodation’, it’s easy to understand that Wix has invested heavily in the design of their templates, not only from a quality perspective, but to offer designs that are clearly tailor-made for the widest range of industries (there are 16 main categories of templates and over 70 unique sub-categories).

This is really helpful for business owners who aren’t quite sure how to start building their site or what elements to include or just don’t have the time to really plan out the look of their website. But for those with a clear concept and design plan in mind, Wix also offers a blank canvas editor, allowing you to enjoy the convenience of their drag and drop builder to create your site from scratch.

The Editor

Once you have selected your template, you will be taken to Wix’s site editor. Whether you are a first time user, or slightly more advanced, you will find the interface easy to use, with an endless list of elements to add, edit, customize or remove from your site.

From the Editor’s menu on the left (as shown in the image above), you can control your website’s background design, upload your own images, videos and fonts, add a range of Wix Apps – higher-level website elements such as a blog, gallery, appointment booking widget (we review these further into this review) and control every in-page element you can think of, such as:

Double-clicking on each element individually will open an element-specific editor box, allowing you to control sizes, colors, fonts, effects and more (editing options differ per element type) of just that element. A range of ‘quick edit’ buttons will also open when certain elements are clicked on, which include the option to animate the element, change links, get help and more. When it comes to editing your site, it doesn’t get much easier than that!

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Mobile Editor

Wix will automatically generate a mobile-friendly version of your chosen template, saving you time as it uses the exact site content and elements you have edited on your desktop site. As well as doing the mobile-building work for you, the editor offers you complete freedom to edit or even hide certain elements from mobile, without changing the desktop site- a true benefit of Wix’s editor.

A quick click on the Mobile icon in the top right menu changes your view to the mobile editor, where you will be met with an elongated view of your mobile site and 3 main options for editing:

• Background: Change the background image or colors of just your mobile site.
• Mobile: Here you have a further 3 options for optimizing your mobile site.
  • Mobile View: changes your site layout to ‘Mobile Friendly View’. This ensures your users are fed with a version of your site that is easier to read and engage with (ie. mobile-friendly) rather than viewing the desktop layout on mobile devices. Although you have the option to turn off the ‘mobile-friendly’ setting, this is not recommended.
  • Back to Top Button: Places a small button on your mobile site that allows users to scroll back to the top of the page in one click.
  • Mobile Action Bar: adds a ‘toolbar’ at the footer of the user’s mobile screen with buttons to call your business, see your email/physical address, connect to your business’s social media profiles or open the site menu.

• Hidden Elements: here you can select the elements you may wish to hide from the mobile version of your site.

Wix Mobile App

Wix’s Mobile App allows users to:

• Manage their website, business or blog on the go
• Receive real-time updates
• Reply to or call customers
• Receive notifications when someone visits their site
• Welcome visitors in real time
• Receive notifications every time a new sale is made
• Write new posts, add links and take photos on the go
• Manage invoices

The Wix Mobile App is available for both iOS and Android.

Wix Apps

One of the standout features of Wix is the Wix App Market- a marketplace of over 250 web apps created by both Wix and 3rd parties. From booking forms to photo galleries, eCommerce to comment boxes and site search to social media streaming – Wix probably has an app to cover all the elements you could possibly want on your website. The majority of apps are free, optimized for mobile devices, customizable and can be added to your site with a few quick clicks.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the most commonly used Wix Apps:

Wix Blog

No matter your business type, the Wix Blog creates a dedicated blog page on your site where you can create, edit and schedule blog posts. Posts can be tagged or categorized, include reader comments and images/videos. The blog supports HTML code, meaning it can be customized and has social sharing integration.

Wix Pro Gallery

The Pro Gallery offers advanced image settings such as image protection, quality and sharpness control, layout, download options and more. Embedded within a page, the gallery can contain images, video and text. In a matter of minutes, you can upload hundreds or thousands of photos and videos and have them displayed beautifully across your site.

Wix Stores

Wix Stores is a paid, premium app allowing you to add a fully functional and customizable online store to your Wix site in just one click. Create product galleries, manage orders and inventory and offer your consumers a secure checkout process. The premium Wix Stores plans even include 24/7 customer support. The most popular eCommerce plan- ‘Business Unlimited’- starts at US$25 per month.

Build your own online store

Wix Bookings

Available in both a free and premium (paid) version, the Wix Bookings App enables customers to easily schedule appointments through your website. The free version allows for simple appointment booking, email notifications and calendar syncing, whilst the premium version (starting at US$9) also allows you to send auto-reminder emails to clients, enables customers to pay for bookings via PayPal or Stripe, handles group and class enrollments and more.

Wix Email Marketing

Found in the main Dashboard, Wix Email Marketing allows you to send your clients business news, product updates, promotions and more by creating tailored email marketing campaigns. Email campaigns can be created from the editor, where you can customize images, video, text and more. Either add email addresses manually or import your contacts and view the campaign’s results within the Email Marketing Dashboard.

Support

Wix’s platform offers the most comprehensive in-editor support of all the website builders we have reviewed. Within the editor, all help options open as a popup that can be moved around your screen as you continue to edit different elements.

There are a number of options to choose from when it comes to in-editor help:

• Editor Help Center: opens a popup with a list of help categories, or start typing your question and related answers will show up.

• Keyboard Shortcuts for the Editor: pops up similar to the editor help center. Lists common keyboard shortcuts such as (Ctrl + V = Paste), as well as Editor specific shortcuts (such as Ctrl + J = Switch between mobile/desktop views) which are sure to save time.
• Step-by-Step Videos: Short videos explaining how to use the Wix editor to add a range of features to your website.

• Connect a Domain: covers all the topics related to connecting a custom domain to your website, including purchasing a new domain name from Wix or connecting your pre-purchased domain name.
• Getting Found Online (SEO): another popup, you can watch a video or read about the website elements you can optimize through WIX to enhance your SEO.

Online Help Centre

Wix also has a comprehensive Help Centre with thousands of helpful articles that should answer most of your website-building related questions. The support hub covers topics from ‘How to Begin’, ‘Using Your Editor’ and ‘Mobile Features’ to ‘Technical Difficulties’, ‘Feature Updates’ and ‘Wix App Market’ as well as industry-specific help such as ‘Setting up Wix Hotels’, ‘Wix Pro Gallery’ and more.

Contact Page

Before Wix shares their call center’s phone number with you on their contact page, you are asked to answer a short questionnaire regarding the help you are seeking – another attempt by Wix to answer your question without the need to talk to a customer service representative. If your question is still not answered by their system, you are invited to submit a ticket which will be answered online by a customer service rep, or you can request a callback.

Premium Plan owners will have their support ticket or request for a callback promoted to a ‘premium’ queue and support requests from VIP users from the US or Canada are handled by Wix’s VIP center.

Search Engine Optimization

Much has been written about the SEO capabilities of website builders such as Wix, and whilst Wix websites may have experienced some hiccups in the past when it came to Google indexing and ranking potential, a quick check of the current editor exposes a multitude of options to optimize your website for search engines.

• Getting Found Online (SEO): This SEO tool can be found under the Help menu within the editor. The pop-up allows you to ask SEO related questions as you build your site, watch a video about SEO and follow links to their support center, with guides on how to optimize text, images and more on your site. If you understand the basic concepts of SEO then this may be enough to show you how to edit the main elements. There are also guides to connect your website and submit your sitemap through Google Search Console.

• Site Manager – SEO: The Site Manager (found under the ‘Site’ menu in the editor) allows you to manage the basic settings of your site, such as domain, mobile and social settings as well as SEO and Analytics integration. The SEO section of the Site Manager allows you to control whether you want search engines to crawl your site (keep this ON for your site to rank in Google search results), add meta tags to the header code, such as for Google Search Console verification, Twitter Cards and more as well as manage 301 redirects from your old website to your Wix site.
• Page Settings- SEO: When you hover over each page within the Pages menu, a round button appears next to the page name. When clicked, it opens a selection of page-specific settings, one of which is SEO. Here you can control page-specific elements such as title tag and meta description, blog the page from search engines, create a unique URL for the page and even preview that page’s Google results page snippet.
• SEO Wiz: This step-by-step tool is accessible from the ‘Get Found On Google’ link under the ‘Site’ Menu in the editor, or from your Dashboard (SEO Wiz can be found under ‘My Apps’). Once you enter your business name and 5 keywords that best explain your business offering, the Wizard will create a SEO plan for your website. It highlights what is already ‘SEO- ready’ and what you still need to optimize. By providing instructions, the Wizard encourages you to enter the editor to make these optimizations yourself.

It is important to note that SEO success is not primarily dependent on the builder you use to create your site, rather the actions you take to best optimize your website. Optimizing your site for both search engines and users is the key to ranking well in Google and requires research, planning and- in terms of using Wix- a small investment of time to complete all the SEO tools mentioned above (an investment that will reap you big rewards in terms of rankings and SEO).

Hosting/Domain

Hosting

Free Wix hosting is included with all plans. The amount of bandwidth and storage available increases as the value of your selected plan increases. The most popular plan -‘Unlimited’- offers 10GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth. See plans below for further details about storage & bandwidth options.

While some other platforms do allow you to export your website, it is important to note that Wix does not offer this capability.

Domain

All sites created with Wix are automatically given a Wix URL under the format: username.wixsite.com/sitename/page-url.

Free accounts maintain this domain/ URL structure, but we recommend upgrading your account to connect a custom domain to your site. Upon publishing your new site with Wix, you have the option to either transfer a pre-purchased domain name, or purchase a domain from Wix (note: domain registration for the first year is free on premium plans).

You can either connect (domain remains hosted at current domain host) or transfer (Wix becomes the domain host) your domain to Wix – both options require a premium plan. Easy to follow instructions for both options can be found in Wix’s Help Center.

Domains can be purchased from Wix outright, but you will need to upgrade to a paid plan in order to connect it to your site. .com/ .net / .org domains purchased outright cost approximately $15 a year but can be pre-paid for up to three years at a discounted price.

Wix domains can be transferred to an external site (away from Wix). The process can be done after 60 days from the domain purchase date and usually takes 7 days.

Get free domain registration for 1 year with Wix

Pricing/Plans

Wix offers four core plans to choose from, ranging from $4.50 a month to $24.50 a month. When comparing the features and benefits of each plan (both between each Wix plan and against other website builders’ plans), it becomes clear that Wix’s plans are fairly priced, offering the best value for money to users.

Let’s take Wix’s most popular plan- ‘Unlimited’- as an example. For $12.50 a month, you receive (with a Yearly Subscription):

• Unlimited Bandwidth and 10GB Storage (Free Hosting)
• Free Domain (first year) and Domain Connection
• 1 hour of high definition video
• $75 in Ad Vouchers
• Visitor Analytics App & Site Booster App (valued at $60 each)
• Google Analytics integration

Consider that if you were to create your site without a website builder, your minimum monthly costs would include:

• Hosting
• Developer
• Designer

These costs alone would easily amount to more than $12.50 a month, more likely in the hundreds of dollars a month.

See the image below for a brief overview of all yearly plans (prices shown are per month).

Note that plans purchased on a month-to-month basis are more expensive, meaning you will save approximately 20%-30% per year by subscribing to a yearly plan depending on the plan chosen. Two-year subscriptions are also available, reducing the price by roughly $1-$1.50 per month depending on the chosen plan. All plans include a 14 day money back guarantee and can be paid for by Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover Network credit cards.  All subscription types are priced as follows:

When you first sign up for Wix, you can open a free account, meaning there are no monthly fees. Although free account users have access to Wix’s full image library, the Wix App Market and support resources, they are limited with just 500MB of storage, Wix logos displayed across the website and a non-unique domain name (following the format: username.wixsite.com/sitename/page-url). We recommend using the free account whilst you build your site, but upgrading to one of the above-mentioned plans when you are ready to go live.

See Wix’s Premium Plans

Integrations