Ok, so here's the thing, I'm not developer. I'm a front end kinda girl and frankly that's the way I like it. I want to design and build sites that look good, and perform well without getting caught up in the 0's and 1's of it all. This post outlines the reasons I use and recommend Wix and Editor X to build and host my sites.
Wix
Wix is a design-led builder with a customer base of over 100 million people. Ease of use is a key selling point. You can build a professional site without needing to add a single line of code (that said.. you can also add code to a Wix site to to enhance it's capabilities). It's reasonably priced, and its features list isn’t to be smirked at. It comprises of two areas: The dashboard, where you access all of your settings, manage your databases, products, etc. It’s straightforward to use, but still provides tons of tools and options for customisation. The ‘website editor’ is where you create and modify your web pages.
Both Wix and Editor X are drag-and-drop editors, which makes the web building process incredibly simple. You can insert, delete, and utilise a variety of website elements, widgets, and plugins all within a matter of clicks! You will find Wix at the top of many 'best all-rounder' lists and that's because it is an excellent all rounder.
Editor X
Editor X is a platform by Wix, created with the needs of web design professionals in mind. As such, it isn’t as user-friendly as Wix. For clients who want to be able to make more substantial changes to the design, there's a bit more to learn. However, being built on the foundation of Wix means it's still very user friendly so you have the flexibility to tweak content, replace images, or tackle larger branding changes without paying a designer or a developer! If it's just the content that you need to update then EditorX is pretty easy to get your head around. Even for the non technical.
It’s ideal for designers like myself who want the option of fully customising designs and breaking free of template led design. I use it for sites with more custom requirements and specific design requests that may not be achievable using a simpler website builder platform like Wix. The design freedom it gives is comparable to a more customisable platform like Wordpress. It can be most easily compared to Webflow (of which i'm a huge fan). In fact Editor X is similar to Webflow in allot of ways. Both are targeted at web design professionals, and they both use Flex Box Layout which allows responsive elements within a container to be automatically arranged depending upon screen size. Both Wix and Editor X have CMS capabilities (content management systems).
This is just a very brief overview and doesn't scratch the surface of what both platforms can offer in terms of features.
SEO
So i've said i'm more of a front end girl but like I also said.. it's important that sites don't just look good. They have to perform well and people have to be able to find them amongst the millions of websites out there.
Wix has a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to SEO but the reasons behind this are outdated.
Wix has all the basic SEO features built in, and most of the advanced ones too.
Admittedly, I'm not an SEO expert, but Mark Preston is and he migrated his site from wordpress to Wix. You can learn why and what the migration did for his SEO on his post here. There are so many things which effect a sites SEO (there are levels to this SEO thing) and many are unrelated to the CMS of the site itself. Pagespeed is one ranking factor. Wix Turbo is just one of many innovations Wix provides to its customers as it continues to evolve. It's release means website load times are better than ever before, images are clearer, and site uptimes are more resilient. You will find many speed comparison tables online and some will cite Wix as Fast, others as slow. In my personal experience using Wix for my own and client websites, i've had no issues with speed.
Here is what I know about Wix SEO. It has/can do all of the following (and the majority of these are built in):
Add Meta Titles
Meta Description
Custom URL's
Headings (H1 Tags)
Image alt text
Good speed and uptime
Mobile friendly
301 redirects
SSL encryption
Google analytics can be added
social media integration
Ability to set pages to no follow
Canonical tags
Manage sitemaps using the google search console
Having done lots of research and comparing the SEO of some other well known and commonly used platforms such as wordpress. My conclusion is that unless your site requires advanced SEO functions (that are too technical for me to be able to speak on confidently) then Wix has it covered. The platform has worked hard to lose it's bad rep around SEO and has come leaps and bounds in the last couple of years. Wix sites don’t have a hard time ranking on Google. If you do need more advanced or technical SEO, Wordpress is probably a better fit.
How do they compare to other platforms like Wordpress, and Webflow.
Comparison is the thief of Joy but it's an important decision to make and important to know what the alternatives are. Especially as one of the cons of Wix is you can't export your site to take it elsewhere. So here's why I choose Wix over some of the other options.
Wordpress:
Wordpress is a content management system (CMS)— not a website builder. CMS’s are flexible but have a learning curve. Website builders are less flexible but easier to use. For my clients who are usually small businesses and entrepreneurs, there's more value in a practical web builder that's easy to use then there is in something that's more technical. Yes it's more flexible but in my experience you need to know at least some code to make the most of its flexibility so actually I find myself restricted by templates (unless of course it's coded from scratch). Whilst I understand html, css, and Javascript enough to make tweeks (and I've completed a Javascript course), as i've said I prefer my projects to be design led and Wordpress just isn't as client friendly when it comes to making changes and maintenance. My online portfolio was previously built on Wordpress but I found the design end is too removed from the back-end for a visual designer like myself. I just didn't enjoy using it and found myself turning down work because I just wasn't excited about the platform. I'm a big fan of the fact that it's open source and free but as a creative and self proclaimed front end girl.. I just can't get along with it and I don't like the amount of plugins I end up with.. for me.. it's messy.
Webflow:
After deciding Wordpress wasn't for me. I was on the hunt for a platform that I could get creative on and bring my ideas to life without having to learn more code. A builder that allowed me to focus on design. I found Webflow and I loved it! I built my own site on it. However when it comes to handing it over to the client.. I wasn't singing it's praises with quite the same vigour. When I took on a client that I couldn't convince to try Webflow, I gave Wix another chance (i'd used it years earlier) and I was pleasantly surprised. After taking on a couple more Wix projects I realised that there was nothing on my Webflow site that I couldn't achieve using Wix (and a few lines of code) for cheaper. On top of that the management and dashboard were easier to use.
The good thing about Webflow is the code is cleaner and it can be exported, and as a professional you can't really brag about building a site on wix because it's pretty easy to do.
The customisability of Webflow beats Wix. You can definitely get more creative if you want to achieve something different. I've seen amazing games and animations built on Webflow, but this level of customisability is just not something my clients ever require. Since the launch of Editor X, for the most part the things I love about Weblow I've found in Editor X.
Sitecore:
In my last full time role as a website designer for Contiki Marketing Lab I used Sitecore. In the Sitecore vs Wordpress battle, Sitecore wins for enterprise level organisations. Sitecore boasts a lot more functionality but again, this level of functionality is just not required for most website requirements.
Squarespace:
I've had a play with Squarespace which has a loyal following of users. Templates have less customisation options than Wix, but the curated styles are great. I get the impression Squarespace is considered the more stylish platform. All the it-girl template web-designers seem to use it. Both Squarespace and Wix have built-in SEO features for higher search ranking and better online presence, but Wix has the upper hand thanks to it’s instant- indexing partnership with Google. It's also super easy to use. There's not too much that separates the two platforms but for me, Wix comes out on top. Wix offers a wider range of functionality than Squarespace, thanks to their app market . Squarespace supports both third party, and native integrations, which covers many common website use cases, but these are limited in number compared to Wix.
Deciding which platform to choose for your website is a difficult decision because you obviously want to make the right choice the first time rather than switching at a later date after realising that the platform you chose wasn’t right for you.
If your interested in a Wix or Editor X site you can book me to help you create a beautiful site. Use my contact form to get in touch to discuss.
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