Is Wix a good option today?
Today, Wix is one of the biggest players in the blogging and website creation landscape and hosts an impressive 160 million sites, but is it good for today?
Wix provides an excellent website creation platform for creating small websites. There are hundreds of free templates available that can be customized however you like.
Wix provides its own web hosting as well as domain names (free and paid). The App Marketplace facilitates the adoption of extra functionality such as photo galleries, booking forms, member areas and online stores. However, there are some drawbacks that make it less than ideal for larger sites.
Who should use Wix to build a blog or website?
Its visually stunning layouts are designed for small businesses, restaurants, online stores and artists such as musicians and photographers. They are optimized for mobile devices and can be spiced up with one of the numerous apps available on the Wix App Market.
In a way, you can compare Wix to a prefab house: the fundamental structure already exists and cannot be changed. You can, however, paint the walls to your liking (choose a theme) and add the furniture you love (photo galleries and other apps).
Which plan should I choose?
Wix is available for free for as long as you like. If you need professional features like your own domain name or e-commerce, you should choose from one of their premium plans ranging from “Combo” to “Business VIP”.
Combo is by far the best plan for regular sites without ecommerce. It is ad-free, includes a domain name for 1 year, and provides enough storage for most needs.
Ease of Use
The editor is very easy to understand. If you're stuck, the FAQ section will help. Short introductory videos give instructions on the different functions.
Getting started is very fun and initially impressive results are achieved quickly. Wix gives you a lot of freedom in the design process.
Choice and design flexibility for your Wix website and blog (templates)
The designs look professional and allow for pixel-perfect customizations.
There is a mobile-friendly version that can be individually adapted.
You can also embed videos in the background and even upload your own fonts to the Wix editor. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to switch models. If you want to change to a new one, you will have to copy your website content to a new template.
Languages
The editor supports 19 languages. Multilingual websites are often possible and may automatically display a language based on the user's browser settings. While it's a very efficient system that's easy to use, we don't recommend it for larger sites as it's not ideal for SEO (you can't use unique URLs for each language).
Wix features for blogs and websites
Wix supports domain endings, including: .com, .org, .net, .co.br and .info. Using the “Connect Domain” (and above) package you can move your existing domain to Wix or point it from another domain registrar to Wix. More information. Always included: SSL encryption (https).
Wix navigation depth for blog and website
A maximum of two levels is possible. A third level would be desirable as it is not very convenient now to manage a larger site with Wix (more than 30 pages). Also, the more pages you add, the slower the editor tends to load. Keep in mind that Wix sites have a page limit of 100 (not counting blog posts). However, you can get around this page limit by using dynamic pages, which are ideal for displaying standardized content such as portfolios, recipes, listings, and so on.
Widgets (small tools to add extra functionality)
The Wix App Market has a wide range of unique widgets and apps. We especially like Wix Music, for selling and promoting music, and wix bookings that will allow your customers to book and pay for appointments and consultations (and even online Zoom classes). External applications can also be integrated.
Monetization
You can integrate Google AdSense through your app store. Another possibility is banner ads and affiliate links. You can also control which sellers advertise on your site by uploading an Authorized Digital Sellers file.
E-commerce
An online store is included in the “Business & eCommerce” packages. You can also test the function on other planes. This allows you to sell physical and digital goods while keeping track of what you have in stock. There are even advanced features like subscription sales, Amazon integration, and dropshipping.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You may have heard bad things about Wix's SEO capabilities, which was still true a few years ago. However, they have massively improved, allowing you to edit page titles, meta descriptions, and alt tags individually.
There are even advanced SEO tools like 301 redirects and 'SEO Standards' that let you create rules to automatically generate titles and descriptions. Another useful thing is that you can manage your Google My Business profile from your Wix Dashboard. Beginners can use SEO Wiz, a guided tutorial.
Wix Blog
The Wix blog is a very good add-on, which is also SEO friendly.
It comes with most of the features you will need (eg tags, categories, RSS etc.).
It is also possible to schedule blog posts. With the Wix Owner mobile app you can edit as well as publish articles on the go.
Also, you can even sell paid subscriptions to your blog posts. One downside is the complicated comments feature: your visitors need to sign up for an account on your site to leave a comment.
visitor statistics
Wix's built-in analytics tool provides comprehensive as well as customizable reports on traffic, sales, contacts and blog engagement. It is also possible to integrate paid sites with Google Analytics.
Form of counted
There is a simple contact form builder, which limits you to 5 forms and 10 fields per form. So to increase that, you'll need to add an Ascend by Wix plan, which gives you access to Wix's full range of built-in marketing tools. More sophisticated tools can be found in the App Marketplace.
Password protection and member areas
Pages can be allocated an individual password. Then, you can even create a small subscription site where users sign up to receive personal login credentials. It is possible to create member areas within your store, in addition, even for reservations, events, blogs, forums etc. So you decide whether members are approved instantly or manually by you. Both features included in all plans.
newsletter tool
You can use Wix's own email marketing newsletter service (part of the Wix Ascend product suite). It's very easy to use, but not as powerful as specialized external providers.
Add HTML code
Embed various widgets as well as other tools through an integrated application called HTML iframe. But that's not all: Code Wix (Velo) caters to people with advanced coding skills and lets you configure custom API interactions via JavaScript. You can also create databases.
storage space
500MB – 35GB of web space, depending on price level. Please note that there is also a monthly bandwidth limit on most plans. This is only relevant for large websites, for example the 2GB bandwidth of the Combo plan should be enough for around 3.000-5.000 visitors per month). Unlimited as well as VIP plans offer unlimited bandwidth.
Backups & Restore
Wix comes with a very convenient version control system, called Site History, which will allow you to restore any previous version of your site with one click.
Using the Wix editor on your website and blog
The only real downside with Wix designs is that they are not mobile responsive by default. While Wix creates a mobile-friendly view of your website, it's not always perfect. So, a little tweaking in the mobile version of your website is usually necessary.
Recognizing this limitation, Wix introduced Editor X in early 2020, which is a completely different product. As an advanced editor aimed at more experienced users (in particular, designers as well as agencies), it allows you to build responsive websites for different breakpoints.
But if you really want to get into your Wix site code, there's Wix Velo. This one is for those with serious technical knowledge (read: developers).
As an open development platform, it allows you to build advanced websites and applications by adding custom functionality to your website (via JavaScript and APIs) as well as the ability to develop databases.
While it's not something most Wix users will need to use, it's certainly useful to know that this functionality exists if you have big plans for your Wix site in the future.
Improving your website and blog with Wix apps
As we briefly mentioned, you can easily add extra functionality to any Wix site with the help of an app. The Wix App Market is one of the best features of Wix as it includes around 300 apps that can be enabled with just a few clicks. These include not only external apps, but also Wix's wide range of apps.
Ascend is one of Wix's flagship apps – it's aimed at small business owners and in addition includes a CRM, email marketing, automations, forms, live chat and more. It's useful as an all-in-one solution (and in addition it can be used on a limited free plan); however, we feel that premium packages could offer a little more.
Conclusion about Wix for blog and website
Wix has the widest selection of rebuilt projects for any type of industry. As it is not possible to switch to a new theme after your initial choice, then it is more difficult to redesign your website (you will have to redesign it manually or start from scratch). On the positive side, this limitation facilitates Wix's greatest strength: unrivaled flexibility within the chosen theme.
And even if at some point down the road you would like to get into the ecommerce game, you can easily add a shopping cart for a relatively small cost.
What Wix has created here is certainly impressive in many ways with a development speed that is almost breathtaking. Just be sure to try the free plan before switching to a paid plan to find out if it's the right choice for you.
With Colors Agency, we guarantee much more than just an attractive look and a modern layout for your website.
Our main focus is to offer companies around the world effective solutions, that is, to generate visibility on the internet.
Our agency develops SEO strategies as well as brand positioning for multinational companies, large, medium and small, all projects are important to us.
