Surely many of you have come across promising ads on the rapidly growing service Wix.com. Reviews and his reviews appear on the network almost constantly. But what do ordinary users and specialists think about this site builder? Let's find out.
History of creation
Work on the development of the Wix.com service, reviews of which raised great hype in the network, began back in 2006. After two years of hard work in the summer of 2008, the world saw a beta version of the designer. A team of thirty professionals worked on the project. Already during the first year of operation Wix united more than a million users under its wing!
There were no more doubts: the designer simply demonstrated huge potential, and the creators of the service took advantage of the moment and simultaneously released Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Polish and other versions.
It’s hard at the moment to find someone who has never heard of Wix.com. Reviews of the project confirm that the results of the team’s many years of work were not in vain: the system boasts 41 million users, and the company’s offices can be seen in different parts of the world - in New York, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Vilnius. The company has more than five hundred employees and continues to grow.
Concept
What is the main idea of Wix? User reviews in this regard are not diverse: the service is very similar to most alternative site designers, it is designed to leave behind the curtains all complex technical tasks and issues, providing users with a truly simple and intuitive way to create a site.
Wix is a service that positions itself as a universal designer. And this means that it is equally well suited both for the simplest sites and personal pages, and for working with full-fledged online stores.
Just a quick look at the proposed templates to determine the target audience of the project is, first of all, artists, designers and representatives of other creative professions. Undoubtedly, Wix.com is also a find for small businesses - restaurants and online stores are actively using the services of this system.
Patterns
What do users get by registering at ru.wix.com? Reviews posted on the network say that templates are one of the system’s greatest strengths. In this constructor, they are divided into various categories: business and services, entertainment, music, restaurants and hotels, online stores, photography, etc. In addition, each category includes several subcategories with dozens of diverse templates - unlike analogues The project, in the Wix system, the choice is truly impressive.
Depending on your preference, you can create a site in Flash or HTML5. An important advantage is the ability to simultaneously create mobile versions - for this purpose, developers have implemented a special Wix Mobile editor in the system, which makes it possible to adapt the appearance of sites to smartphones. Although it should be noted that this function does not apply to all templates - those that are suitable for working with it are highlighted with the corresponding mark "Compatible with Mobile".
However, the process of working with templates is not without its pitfalls. The key disadvantage is the inability to change the template already selected for a particular site. That is, choosing it once, in the future you will not be able to change your mind and replace it with another option. Given the ever-changing trends, this can be a serious problem. It is worth saying that changing the template is not an absolutely impossible task, however, this will have to be done literally through a stump deck.
Domain
We continue to consider the positive and negative features of the Wix.com service. User reviews often mention another small flaw in the system - the choice of a domain name. This problem does not concern anyone who wants to use their own, pre-purchased and paid domain. But those who want to use the free name from the Wix system itself may encounter certain difficulties: the service does not provide its users with a standard third-level subdomain, but with a domain of the form username.wix.com/sitename. Naturally, this negatively affects memorability and makes you think about buying a premium account, which makes it possible to transfer the site to its own, simpler and clearer domain.
Functional
And now we got to the most interesting. Standard features of the http://www.wix.com service:
- create and delete pages;
- creating new menu items;
- changing the size and color of various elements of the site;
- adding feedback forms;
- Adding Google Maps
- Adding eBay and PayPal services
- work with Flash and HTML elements;
- Work with images and galleries from Instagram, Flickr and Tumblr;
- synchronization with social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+);
- adding video and audio materials;
- using the functions of the online store;
- background change.
Unfortunately, the fact that Wix hides all the technical details behind the scenes and uses a simple drag-and-drop interface is not only its advantage, but also its drawback - the process of creating a new site is invariably tied to the proposed blocks and forms. However, due to the presence of a special Wix App Market, this problem is not so acute - in the store you can find a huge number of plug-ins and widgets that can significantly expand the basic functionality of the service.
Every year, millions of people who want to create their own website come to Wix.com. Reviews about this service are quite controversial - from enthusiastic to disappointed. However, the fact remains: even despite the existing shortcomings, of all the currently existing free website builders, he has no equal either in terms of simplicity or in terms of functionality.
To summarize
So, having examined the main features of the system, we can make an approximate idea of it and highlight the main advantages and disadvantages of ru.wix.com.
Minuses
- a poorly readable domain name provided by the system (in the format username.wix.com/sitename);
- in order to change the domain, you need to pay a premium account;
- not provided the ability to view statistics on site visits and user activity;
- advertising on the site hosted by the system (typical for all free designers);
- limited amount of memory for storing files (up to 500 MB);
- in the process of editing the template uses a huge amount of RAM (for example, when working with Firefox, this figure may exceed 1.5 million megabytes).
pros
- truly high-quality, stylish modern templates;
- wide functionality (additionally expanded by the Wix App Market store);
- soil for SEO optimization and promotion in search engines;
- simplicity and intuitive interface, allowing even those users who do not understand the features of site building, to create a convenient and beautiful site;
- Opportunities for integration with social networks;
- A large number of instructions, tutorials and useful educational information in Russian;
- A detailed FAQ and good, online technical support.
Have you created your website on Wix.com?
As you can see, this service made a real revolution in the world of site designers and simplified the process of creating and launching work as much as possible. If you have already used this service and created sites using http: // ru. wix. com, the reviews left by you will help with the choice of site builder to other people.