If you hated web design before and just couldn’t see why web design was simple for others but not for you, you will be delighted to read about these easy solutions we have researched for you. All will change when you discovere this simple program, a web design machine made for those who just don’t understand that you can do it if, you would only keep your web design as simple as possible.
Since using these programs we have been able to launch two website with our own web design styles within two months. While these websites aren’t perfect, they do look very professional. And, they carry our own touch and feel. You too, at last, will be able to boost to your friends how easy web design is for you, because they have no clue that you are using your new little secret weapon for your web design.
What does it take to design your own website?
Now, for those who don’t understand what it take to design your own website from scratch, I will give you five important steps you need to master, before you can get your website to the next level.
Five steps for perfect web design:
1) You Need Some Type Of Web Design Software
No one and I repeat no one, is doing web design the expensive way (The truth: Some are still wasting money paying for web design). Those who has enough money, pay for their web design, and those who can’t will have to get their hands on a easy to use web design software that gets the job done.
2) You Need To Know Some HTML
No matter what type of web design software your using, you must educate yourself with a little HTML. There is no way around that. Once you get the feel for simple little HTML code snippets, you will notice that you never ever need to know more than that, because you already have my little secret weapon ( My secret web design software program, that I will lead you to very soon).
3) You Need To Know How To Layout Your Website
Wow, another killer, I had no clue how or what to do, much less layout a web site. That all changed when I bought my little secret weapon, it came with a manual loaded with tips on not only how to use the software, but also how to layout your website template.
4) You Need To Master Internal Linking
If you going to design your own website, you must know how to internally link you website together. Ah, well, not really if you have my secret web design software you won’t need to know how. This is taken of by the program, it creates all your internal linking, without you even understand how it’s done, isn’t that cool.
5) You Need To Keep Your Web Design Simple
This one should have been number one, because it is so important and yet so overlooked. Look around the web and notice the top sites online, they are all use very simple web design with lots of white space. Don’t get flashy if your building a website for profit. Look at Google and Yahoo, they are very simple and that’s what you need to do when you design your website.
Anyway, I have given you some tips that should set your web design on fire, if you follow and study successful web sites online, you will see the trend, simplicity wind the web design war. And now, for the long awaited secret weapon, just browse through the following websites and you will understand why these site builders are a secret weapon that will allow you to launch a new, good looking website in minutes not days or months.
Wix vs Squarespace Webdesign Platform Comparison
Wix’s website building platform has attracted 160 million users since launching in 2006. A drag and drop page-builder makes design easy and fun, and a powerful group of features and software make it a good choice for small enterprises, entrepreneurs and design professionals.
Wix and Squarespace websites are built by adding content blocks to pages, in a visual WYSIWYG (drag and drop) editor. Everyday objects such as text, photography galleries contact forms and even more are available to add to to pre designed templates. After that you can customize to suit your needs, using settings panels that act like editing Powerpoint templates.
What is Squarespace?
Squarespace has been around since 2003, and has a loyal following of users. Begin by using a professionally designed template, and add extra functionality to suit your needs. Squarespace sites have much focus on looks, mobile responsiveness and speed. Templates have less customization options than Wix, however the curated styles look nice.
What is Wix.com?
With Wix, you can use anybody of the hundreds of templates available, and tweak everything to your taste. They have a dedicated mobile site editor, that allows you to look good on the run.
Wix offers a wider range of functionality than Squarespace, because of their iPhone app market. Almost anything and all you can think of will there be, from superior animations with the Rollover App, to cookie policy plugins, or business tools to help SEO.
Squarespace supports both alternative party, and native integrations, which covers many common website use cases, but they are limited in number in comparison to Wix.
Getting started off with Wix is free, and you may use most apps with limited functionality without ever paying a penny. Use their free website name when you explore the platform, until you will be ready to launch.
Squarespace offers a 14-day trial offer, before shutting down usage of your site.
Both platforms handle hosting and you may buy or hook up domains, as long as you have a premium plan.
Wix has evolved to be more when compared to a simple website builder, with a suite of business management tools, like a CRM, invoicing tools, and the ability to create membership sites, take bookings for your team, organise your calendars , handle GDPR queries therefore much more.
If you want to get right up and running within an hour, Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) gives you to build a site in minutes. You can then proceed to the Wix Editor, gives you total design freedom or advanced sites there exists Wix Corvid. It’s possible extend your site’s functionality with Wix Corvid APIs and your own JavaScript. You could create any kind of website, including paid-membership sites, an web store, a complex news site or even your own platform, and manage it all, in a single easy-to-use dashboard.
IMPORTANT THING: Wix and Squarespace are evolving fast. Both are visually led platforms targeted at users who need professional looking sites, and want advanced functionality minus the headaches that come with WordPress or custom developed sites. Wix holds the advantage over Squarespace due to sophistication of these iPhone app ecosystem and powerful Wix Corvid functionality.
2. Ease of Use
Wix makes building a site easy and intuitive. Here’s how:
- Wix has with an industry-leading drag and drop website builder. No coding skills or development experience are required.
- Wix has over 500 designer-made templates-all 100% customizable.
- Wix’s alternative to the traditional Wix Editor is Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI). Just answer a few pre-determined questions and Wix ADI creates a custom website simply for you complete with images and text.
- Wix handle hosting, and SSL certificates, rendering it easy to get started
- Wix has an instant signup process-just complete your email and begin for free.
You’ll be asked to choose from both different domain options: use the free Wix.com domain or connect to your own customized domain. If you wish to use a custom website name (e.g www.london-flowers.com), then you will need to subscribe to one of the premium plans.
The downside to all or any these customisation options is the fact it may become quite fiddly to change the appearance and feel of your site if you have an alteration of heart. Swapping templates with one click is extremely hard ,unlike with Squarespace.
Squarespace 7, the latest version of the platform, has improved the interface to become more intuitive than its predecessor. Simply clicking most elements gives you to edit and style the content. Adding blocks to the page is performed with a panel on the left hand side of the page, click to include your chosen content block, then style using the WYSIWYG interface.
Bottom Line: Wix is becoming better, and with so many choices, it does require some learning to get the most from it. If you do need to employ a specialist, the Wix Arena has 100’s of accredited designers and coders on hand.
Squarespace is actually simple to use, but for more advanced work, it becomes challenging and you’ll need to get support from a Squarespace Specialist.
3. Design and Customization Options
Wix has a slogan, ‘creation without limits’ and claims to be the most flexible website builder on the marketplace. Wix offers 100% customizable templates, stunning design features and a number of Apps for your website. You will discover over 500 templates for different categories, including business, ecommerce, photography, art, food and restaurants, hotels, websites and more. Some of the templates are outdated, but new ones are added constantly which keeps Wix fresh.
In addition, there are more than 200 Apps you may use in your Wix site. Some of our favourites are:
- E-MAIL MARKETING: This enables you to collect contact information on prospects who expressed affinity for your site/product/service and talk to them via e-mail marketing campaigns.
- Wix Video: If you use video for marketing and communication purposes, Wix Video is super useful tool. Just upload your videos and choose layout. There’s also a live stream video option available in which viewers can comment instantly.
- Wix Stores. You will generate coupon codes, manage orders, choose from various product page templates and also have a smartly designed storefront. Great solution for small and medium size shops, no commissions takes from sales.
- Wix Events: Enables you to create stunning invitations, sell tickets and track and talk to attendees. They enable you to add specific functions to your Wix site.
- Wix Bookings: Allows you to get booked and receives a commission for the services you offer online. You can include multiple services and staff members, sync your Wix and Google calendars and send automated emails to customers so they never miss a scheduled appointment. By upgrading to reduced Plan, you may take payments through Wix Bookings
Important thing: With so many design possibilities, Wix has turned into a little overwhelming, and can be awkward and frustrating. Squarespace keeps things simple, with global design style changes made easy, it’s perfect for individuals who want a straightforward clean look for their website.
4. SEO
Wix covers all the SEO capabilities that a site must rank higher browsing engines. The Wix SEO Wiz may be used to help your rise the rankings. Answer a few simple questions about your business and the markets you are targeting, a customized SEO plan is generated. Follow the step-by-step guide to hook up your site to Google, – your site will be live. It offers basic SEO features such as search console integration and sitemap generation, as well as some advanced ones.
Furthermore, Wix offers some SEO/Analytics software in the Wix App Market:
- Site Booster: Helps you to get found on a Google serp’s page, rank higher and finally have more exposure.
- Visitor Analytics: Helps you better understand your users’ behaviors and characteristics (i.e. Ip), retrieve useful stats and graphs regarding site performance and understand how to boost results overtime.
- Bottom line: Both Squarespace and Wix have built-in SEO features for higher search ranking and better online presence, but Wix gets the upper hand because of it’s instant- indexing partnership with Google.
5. Support
Wix has faced criticism in the past for poor customer support but has upped its game. There are now more than 200,000 issues posted in their official help center/knowledge base, with hundreds hours of video lessons and walkthroughs. In the event that you can’t fix the problem yourself, Wix offers email and phone support, with the average wait time of less than three minutes.
Squarespace has an online help center which is not hard to find and navigate. Their articles and videos are obvious and detailed, and therefore you’ll have the ability to resolve most questions yourself. If you do need to talk with someone, Chat is available 16 hours every day.
Important thing: Wix provides direct help and keeps their intensive knowledge base content current. Squarespace’s support offering is similar, but with Chat support open Monday-Friday 4am-8pm Eastern, they hold the edge.
6. Pricing
You will keep your website free forever with Wix, so it’s fine for school assignments or family projects. You can upgrade whenever you want-for significantly less than five US dollar a month. Upgrading to some of their Premium plans isn’t mandatory, but is vital as your business grows.
Premium Plans offer you more bandwidth and storage, gives you to hook up your own domain and removes all Wix ads (Note: Starting at the Combo Arrange for $8.50/mo.). Wix represents excellent value for the money considering endless functionality, continual innovation to the product, free ad vouchers (included in some plans) to perform ads with and even more.
Squarespace has a 14 day trial before forcing you to decide to go premium, or pass. The entry way is $12 every month, going up to $36
Important thing: If you build a successful website, the small price difference can be irrelevant. Both platforms offer stable hosting and that is invaluable. Much of the look and build work can be carried out yourself, however, should you want to hire a specialist web developer, you will probably pay between $400-750 every day.
Conclusion
Wix is a much-loved platform that goes from strength to strength. They may have faced up to their faults and built a site builder that is both easy to use and show rich. What’s more, they have got built a back-end Dashboard that provides small business owners a suite of tools to help manage their digital operations.
Wix is intuitive to use and for non technical users, it’s a good choice. For experienced developers, Wix Corvid can be an interesting proposition that permits fast build times and powerful databasing and dynamic pages.
Squarespace is a tried and tested platform, ideal for blogs, for portfolio’s and simple stores. The templates are stylish, and are mobile responsive. There’s a developer portal which means Squarespace is ideal for programmers, and non programmers.
It’s hard to split these two web-heavyweights. Both companies have crafted elegant website building solutions, and continue to enhance their products year-on-year. If you’re seeking to create a magnificent looking website, you won’t be dissatisfied with either option. Nevertheless, you simply choose one, Wix is preferred.
Wix Ease of use
- Centered on user experience, which is often seen throughout from the homepage of their website to the website editor itself.
- Powerful drag & drop editor which is adaptable to your level of tech expertise and web development knowledge. The workflow is very smooth and no coding skills are needed.
- Wix comes with an extensive list of elements allowing you to make changes, add or remove text boxes, lightboxes, buttons, videos and even more – in a few clicks. Super intuitive interface.
- Experienced coders can fully customize their site according to their needs through Wix Code.
- Additional hosting and domain registry services are provided within the Wix platform, making it an all in a single solution for website creation.
- Over 180 million users, from more than 80 countries use Wix to grow their business, because of its outstanding simplicity and functionality.
Wix Design options
- With over 70 categories Wix covers almost every kind of business and answers every companies needs over 500 professionally designed templates, mapped by industry.
- A couple of one-pagers (landing pages) to totally structured templates.
- Wix templates are mobile friendly. Mobile version can be adjusted by the editor and elements can be hidden and re-organized to optimize the appearance and feel.
- Furthermore to its readymade templates Wix offers blank template which allows you to create and build your site from scratch.
- The majority of template categories are free, whilst some specific templates require upgraded packages.
- Switching templates can’t be done through the editing process. Choosing a fresh template forces an individual to make adjustments and add content from scratch.
- Released in June 2016, Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) feature empowers the net creation process.
- Based on a few simple questions (business name and type, required features, logo etc) it tailors unique design and relevant content (YES, yes it’s true) that matches the business needs.
Wix SEO
There are benefits and drawbacks when discussing Wix in conditions of SEO. In 2016, a few critical fixes were made and Wix now covers all SEO functions that a lot of standard websites need. On top of basic functionalities like editing web-page titles (text that appears as a label in your browser tab) and meta descriptions (appears on internet search engine results-page) below are a few more complex SEO features WIX
- You could (and really should) connect your site to Google Search Console.
- Wix has a mobile editor that lets you improve compatibility, affecting search ranking.
- Wix produces a niche site map .xml file which is employed to help search engines identify key values. The file isn’t accessible and editable, but works fine for some websites.
- Search engines prioritize secured websites [with URL’s beginning https]. Wix automatically issues an SSL certificate. This feature is highly valuable for eCommerce sites.
- Editing alt text is optional from the Wix Editor. This text helps search engines ‘read’ the images and index the site for relevant Google images.
- You can personalize URLs for your pages, but Wix adds a brief string to post URLs.
- Canonical tags, permitting you tell the various search engines how to prioritize each page, in the event in which a page has duplicated content across multiple URLs. However, this is a brilliant advanced SEO feature most users won’t need.
Wix Support and Knowledge Base
- Wix has an excellent help center consisting of thousands of well written articles, covering the entire platform, in a whopping 9 different languages from Japanese to French and German.
- Wix editor contains step-by-step walkthrough videos for practically every feature and element.
- Wix Education (Wix Ed) YouTube channel has a large number of tutorials and product overview videos to make it easy to troubleshoot issues and find out the platform.
- Further assistance can be found through email support by submitting a ticket, or by contacting its call center during business hours.
- Coding related questions and challenges can be addressed in the comprehensive Wix Code Forum.
- Wix helps it be a breeze to request new features, by constantly monitoring recurring issues and collecting votes from users.
Wix Pricing
- Wix provides several pricing plans including its most popular Unlimited Plan.
- All plans can be found over a monthly or yearly basis. Yearly subscriptions cost approximately 25% less monthly and unlike monthly subscriptions include 12 months domain registry and vouchers (see below).
- Wix’s Premium Plans are well structured and vary from $5 connect domain to $24.5 VIP per year on a yearly basis.
- G Suite packages can be found for $5 per user per month.
- Upgrading your plan, as the business enterprise scales is actually possible.
- Wix offers a free of charge plan that is included with a branded strip in underneath of the page.
