Six Reasons Why You Should Not Use WIX, Weebly or Squarespace For Your Website

Six Reasons Why You Should Not Use WIX, Weebly or Squarespace For Your Website

One of my clients asked me if it’s good to build her website on WIX. In fact, the only good thing about Wix websites is that they are so easy that even the most technologically-challenged person can have a site up and running within an hour.

I know why people use Wix sites (or Weebly). Folks are a bit intimidated about setting up their websites but this is one shortcut that is not worth it. I want you to know why you should not use Wix for your website or blog, no matter how tempting it is.

1. It’s not good for branding.

Wix is known for cheap, but you own nothing for yourself. The domain, the template, or even the content. People will feel that you are not actually in business if you are using a domain like xxx.wix.com.

Wix makes it easy to jump right in, throw collectively an internet page and post it.  before you do, you want to stop and assume, and work out what your enterprise desires for your online presence.

2. Wix Websites Use Flash Technology

A lot of Wix websites are built on Flash technology (they’re trying to push HTML5 now so they do have that capability now), which is the enemy of web prosperity. Flash is so frowned upon that many phones don’t even display it, and some tablets don’t either. This means you’re already excluding a portion of people who might want to see your website. People who are perusing the web on their phones will have a hard time with your site.

3. People online might not find you

What you see isn’t what Google sees.  Although Google does take user experience into account it’s mostly about content and mobile friendliness and things like that.  One of the most basic elements Google cares about is how your page titles are structured and what they tell about the page, yet for a few Wix websites I’ve seen, there is no attention paid to this despite Wix supporting SEO settings for pages.

Google doesn’t really care if your button looks nice, or your image is stunning.  The search result below is quite typical when you don’t know what to do.  There’s no call to action in the result, and the description doesn’t say what the page is about.  If this is one of ten similar results I’d probably click on a more enticing one.

Google is not a fan of Wix. Part of it is because of the Flash it uses. Your website will not rank well, which makes it harder for people to find. This will affect how much traffic you can potentially get because your site will not be search engine optimized. In 2014, that’s an expensive mistake.

4. Your Website Will Load Slow

Wix websites load slower than those built on HTML (like WordPress) and this will lose people who do want to read about you. Why? We have very little patience and having to wait 10 seconds to see a website is something we’re not used to. We will just click off. Slow loading sites will turn visitors off, and first impressions on the web can be everything. It can keep someone from visiting your site again.

And with a slow-loading website, you will be further penalized by search engines because they know that your site provides a poor user experience and they won’t want to vouch for it. That goes back to Google not liking it. See? It’s a cycle of meh.

You deserve better than that.

5. When your business outgrew Wix, you got nowhere to go

When you develop your website using Wix you have no place to go – they host your website and you can’t go elsewhere. You cannot migrate your WIX data elsewhere easily. So you get lucky and your website is performing well and you want to add features to it that aren’t supported by Wix, or want a major overhaul.  Essentially you’ve outgrown your website.

If this happens it is very difficult to move your content away from Wix.  If you had a WordPress-based website you can keep all your content and apply another theme, or a customized theme (which is effectively a layout).  Your website looks completely different but you don’t have to re-enter your content.  There is still work to be done when you switch themes as they all have their own way of working, and different image sizes in different slots, but you can keep all your content.

If you think you may outgrow Wix, maybe a full web development is outside of your budget right now, but remember to factor in that potential cost in the future.

6.  Wix Isn’t Free – It May Be More Expensive Than You Think | Opportunity Cost

Wix is a very attractive initial platform as the base offering is free.  It’s a very effective sales technique that gets customers in the door.  MailChimp uses a similar technique but even Mailchimp doesn’t allow you access to automated email sequences in their base offering – this is an essential part of email marketing.

With the free plans, you have Wix branding on your site, and the little icon shown in the browser bar will be a Wix logo.  You also can’t add in Google Analytics tracking until you get onto a premium plan.

Premium plans start at a mere $4 or so per month so it’s not expensive by any means, and they go up to $24 per month. When you start adding functionality Wix has an ‘app store’ so you can choose which apps to use.  There are loads of apps to choose from and many starts with a ‘freemium’ offering with more functionality provided at a price so head back to that website brief and factor in what you want into your costs.

The largest cost of using Wix for many people is a hidden one.  It’s the cost of websites built by users who may not know what makes a website really work, therefore it doesn’t get found, or it doesn’t function well.  That lack of functionality is probably costing your business.

So if you would like any help with your website or if you need to hire a website designer, or want a health check done on your online presence, get in touch today.

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Johanna is Director of Business Development of DBWebs. She offers practical advice on website designing and building for individuals and business owners on how to get more exposure online and get more leads. She believes in branding with fantastic design and well-structured search engine optimization.