Wix makes it easy to jump right in, throw together a web page and publish it.Before you do that you need to stop and think, and work out what your business needs for your online presence.
1. SEO
A search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is one of the most important pieces of any website. It’s one of the first things my customers focus on, before aesthetics and before traffic analytics. The question always comes back to, “How do I rank higher” or “I want my Website to be on Page 1 in Google”
SEO is easy to tackle when building a website in a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or HubSpot. You develop your strategy, and you implement it across every page, blog post and portfolio piece. It works, and it’s a proven system.
With a Wix.com site, implementing an SEO strategy is nearly impossible. You do not have the ability to download an SEO boosting plugin. Instead, you simply have the on-page SEO that Wix.com offers. Yes, you can get the basics done here, but it doesn’t offer you any Search Enginge previews or any help along the way like one of our favorite SEO plugins, WordPress SEO by Yoast, does. For a tool that caters to beginners, Wix.com is really missing the mark.
Most troubling is the link structure that Wix.com employs. In every single Wix.com site URL, you will notice a # or “hashbang” which is being served through javascript, and in turn is not readable by search engines.
Major fail.
Even worse, if a user has javascript disabled on their browser then the site will not render at all. Wix.com used to be built with Flash technology (which is not compatible with most mobile devices), and while that issue has been corrected, they have opened an entirely new can of worms.
2. Site Ownership
Site ownership is essential for every single website. Every business should own their own web property and they should have a relationship with their web host company. A company website is just as valuable and important for you to understand and maintain as any other business asset.
Wix.com states:
“Wix does not claim any intellectual property rights over the User Submissions. However, under the Wix.com Terms of Use, you grant Wix worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such User Submissions.”
That is scary. By signing up for Wix.com web services, you are allowing Wix.com to modify your site and your site’s content simply by agreeing to the Terms of Use.
Always have control over your website and your content. Period. End of story!
3. Mobile Sites
Mobile sites are the VHS video tapes to today’s DVDs. They will eventually play the same movie, but one has a substantially more sophisticated user experience than the other. Mobile websites were cool and effective before your parents started using Facebook, but now they just don’t make any sense. In their place, responsive websites are not just the new trend, they have officially become the new standard.
Having a completely seperate site for mobile users with a completely seperate editor leads to complications like two separate analytics accounts.
Modern browsers like Google Chrome can pick up where a browsing experience leaves off on a different device. Having a totally different mobile site from your desktop site provides a user with a lot of inconsistencies and most of the time, irrelevant or unupdated information.
The biggest disadvantage I see with Wix.com in the mobile category is that you have to specify that you would like to build a mobile site and then enter into the separate editor. None of the site templates are responsive.
“What If I’m Already on Wix.com?”
Already have a website on Wix.com? Don’t worry! You aren’t a total sitting duck. Unfortunately, you don’t have the ability to pick up your site as is and move it to a new hosting company – you don’t own your site, remember?
But, you can have your website professionally designed and implemented on a proven platform like WordPress or HubSpot (our two favorite CMS platforms). In doing so, you can even harness the SEO you have managed to build up on Wix.com by putting in place some 301 redirects.
Are you currently using Wix.com? How is it working for you? Let us know in the comments.