Note from Benoît Gaillat, CEO of Pikka, This article is the 4th in orr "CMS and CMS E-commerce" series, you can find the first 3 via the links below to discover other CMS, their advantages and disadvantages .
Today, we are talking about Wix, one of the few CSMs with more popularity, for the moment, than Shopify.
Wix: History
Wix is a CMS that was born in October 2006 following the idea of three Israeli developers; Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami and Giora Kaplan, to create a new space for websites. The first version, say banda, is officially launched in 2008. At that time, the company counted only 30 employees, it seems crazy knowing that she counts more than 5,000 in 12 countries today.
Its popularity is such that only un year after its official launch, the CMS has 1 million users and more than 10 million in 2011. Following this success, the managers decided to develop the software in order to improve it and expand its offer. This is why theApp Market is launched in 2012. This feature offers a catalog of many applications, such as forum builder, Google AdSense, and others, to integrate into your site. One of the major dates of Wix is its IPO on NASDAQ in 2013. From this moment, Wix does not stop its evolution, between 2015 and 2019, it launches many branches such as Wix music (music site creation), Wix ADI (artificial intelligence), Velo (database management). .. All these novelties have enabled him to obtain more 200 million users in 2021 distributed in 190 different countries.
Wix is therefore a website creation tool, which like Shopify is of the SaaS type. The sites are automatically hosted on their servers or on the cloud, which means you don't have to worry about this part. Thus, your only concern is the design and customization of your site, the structure is already in place. Additionally, Wix is a leader when it comes to the method "drag and drop". This is an intuitive method where you just have to take an available block, drag it where you want on your page and then customize it to your liking.
Interests and dissemination
Wix has managed to create a large community which has earned it a good following today. According to Builtwith, there are slightly more than 7 million websites that are launched through the Wix platform. Are these sites all part of the same domain? Well no, Wix has solutions for blogs, restaurant sites, portfolios, online stores and more. After conducting our research, we have selected 4 sites from different universes in order to present you projects carried out by Wix.
First of all, AstridM shop is a site of a designer who offers for sale custom family portraits according to customer requests. Thus, its online store is powered by Wix, there are examples on the home page, a contact page, prices.
In another universe, we find the site of the restaurant Pokyo, which is a restaurant offering pokebowls in Lyon. We find a site with bright colors to bring a breath of fresh air that represents the spirit of the restaurant.
Among the various features that the site has, we can see that it offers an online ordering platform to facilitate the ordering process.
Among the e-commerce sites created with Wix, we can talk about In Gold We Trust Paris which is a handmade jewelry site, in Paris, with steel and brass covered in gold. It is based on a philosophical approach and has a universe of their own. On their home page, the creators have chosen to put an animated video that takes up the whole page in order to be immersed directly in their universe and their shop.
Finally, Wix not only allows you to create e-commerce sites, it also allows you to create blogs or portfolios. One of the examples is the site of Ludovic Baron who is a French artist and photographer. With his site, he can highlight his creations, his latest news and shootings and his whole universe. Its site is personalized in its image, sober, with the highlighting of its achievements.
In order to create so many different sites, Wix has implemented various and varied features:
- Wix ADI, which is a system based on artificial intelligence and which asks you questions in order to help you and offer you ideas for design or other
- Wix music to create a music site where it is possible to sell your music
- Wix photography in order to publish all your achievements while being protected
- Wix blog to create and feed your personal blog
- Wix store to put your store online and sell your products
- Wix booking to offer workshops, courses or other and allow your customers to make an appointment directly and pay online
What advantages does Wix offer?
The many features of Wix allow it to offer many advantages to its use. We have decided to highlight 8 of them that we consider important:
1. Many model possibilities
Indeed, Wix offers a catalog of more than 800 templates available and above all without paying extra. New themes are regularly added in order to offer models that suit you. But that's not all, a library of professional photos is freely available to personalize your sites with quality photos.
2. All models adapt to the type of screen
The telephone being an integral part of everyone's life, it is therefore necessary that your site adapts to the mobile format. Wix sites have features to automatically adapt to the mobile version.
3. Ease of creation
Wix is a solution, which like Wordpress, allows yor to create a website withort having in-depth knowledge of website coding. The creative elements are intuitive to make it easier for yor to create. Wix is even one of the pillars of the "No code" wave.
4. The adaptability of the CMS according to the corntry
The platform is available in 22 languages which allows it to adapt to many corntries and therefore extend its access to many people. Isn't it practical to create sites all over the world with foreign collaborators?
5. L'App Markand
This is the application markand, in French. This space is like a kiosk that offers abort 250 applications in order to optimize yorr site as much as possible. A large part of these are free or have a free offer. Yor can find traffic analysis applications, chatboxes, online appointment scheduling systems, andc.
6. Interactive animations
During the creation phase, users can add animations to their site, whandher at the text level in order to give it life or the possibility of adding small animated videos in the backgrornd in order to create interactive and original designs.
7. Value for money
The platform offers a free or inexpensive version for the features it offers. This allows it to offer good value for money for people on a low budgand.
8. E-commerce features
Wix offers an e-commerce solution to allow yor to create and develop yorr online store. The management dashboard is intuitive, yor can customize yorr site as yor wish, use tools to obtain the best possible optimization, attach payment tools like Paypal...
What are the prices of Wix?
To guarantee its accessibility to everyone, Wix offers a free version of its software, in fact, it stems from their will. "freemium". However, the functionalities will quickly be limited, advertisements will be present on yorr site and yorr use will be restricted.
It is therefore more beneficial to opt for a paid version knowing that the first prices are not excessive. The basic version is at a price of 12€ per month and it allows yor to no longer have advertisements on yorr site, to obtain a personalized domain name, a larger storage space, the possibility of importing videos. It is therefore excellent value for money given the many features available. Yor can also opt for a unlimited version at €20.40 per month ou VIP at €34.80 per month who will offer yor new additional services.
If yor are a professional and want to create an e-commerce site, Wix offers plans specially designed for yor. Thus, yor will have the choice bandween 3 possibilities: the formula basic business at 24€ per month, unlimited business at 36€ per month et business VIP at €52.80 per month. Depending on the different rates, yor may or may not benefit from additional features. The main differences can be observed at the level of e-commerce functionalities. For example, with the business VIP version, yor have the option of displaying the corresponding currency instead of the customer or sandting up dropshipping, things that yor cannot sand up with the basic business version.
