Wix Online Store Website Review; Is It For You?

Updated: March 4, 2024

Website builders and the online stores they provide promise a lot. Wix says they are a platform with infinite possibilities. I know this is marketing hype, but their product better be good if they are going to raise our expectations like that.

There is a minimum baseline that an online store must meet to be useful to entrepreneurs. We want a website builder that provides a degree of control at an affordable price. We want a website that performs well, both for our users' experience and for search engine optimization purposes.

I understand that some people tend to use the terms "online store" and "website" interchangeably, which can lead to confusion when they are referred to separately. As you already know, a website is a collection of web pages that are accessible via the internet. However, an online store, although still a website, has additional business features such as the ability to take orders and payments, upload and display products, and integrate with marketing features. This allows for a more streamlined and effective online shopping experience for customers.

This is a review on a Wix online store. Here are the criteria we used, and how it performed in all of them.

Ease of Creating Your Website

When you begin building your website, you have one goal in mind: to emerge on the other side with an online store. To some, this is an enjoyable process, but to others, it is only a necessary evil. The degree to which we enjoy doing things is determined by how easy or hard it is. If you hate dancing, it's probably because you suck at it.

Creating your website can and should be a tolerable, if not an enjoyable experience. We paid attention to this factor as we were creating our online store. From the homepage, the moment you log in, every step of the way is choreographed until the end.

My intuition is to create a website and work out details such as uploading products and setting up payments. Wix does it the other way around. Creating a website is one of the last things you do on the checklist. Delaying your gratification can be frustrating because you have to understand how to do all these things that you'd like to do later.

The most annoying bit was the dilemmas. I was asked to make choices with little to no information. Maybe there was no wrong choice, but such moments make you feel like there is one.

In the image above, you will see one of the questions I had to answer. For crying out loud! I don't know what I want. I don't know which is better between Wix and EditorX. Please don't let my business fail because of my ignorance. You see what I mean? Maybe one option is better than the other, why should I have the option to choose the wrong one?

There were several such choices along the way to creating my online store. Perhaps most people enjoy having to make them. I don't. It is for that reason that I will give the website a score of 3 on ease.

Ease of Editing Your Website

You won't get it right the first time, and that is the nature of building websites. Later on, you will want to change and improve your website as you learn things, or just to freshen things up. That is why ease of editing matters.

Wix provides you with a website editor that looks simple. But is it simple to use? If you haven't read a guide on editing, you would need to tinker around with the buttons. You have an easy-to-spot undo and redo button, and if you do too much damage, as long as you haven’t saved and published your changes, you can still undo. It is, therefore, a safe sandbox for you to learn.

Wix uses a lot of icons to save space, and they get my marks for having labels on these icons. Some terms that Wix uses are not obvious, like layers and strips, yet the information about them has to be sought. I understand that is part of the learning curve; I just wish this could be handled better.

We have covered editing comprehensively, and you can check out our guide for a better picture on how easy it is. Based on that, I'll score Wix 4/5 on the editing frontier.

Ease of Operating the Dashboard

The dashboard is where you operate everything outside of the website. It is where you will upload and edit products; it is where you set up shipping and payments; it is where you organize the marketing of your products. The list of functions goes on, but you get the picture.

You can set up everything in your online store within a couple of clicks. Wix also shows you the steps to take through guided buttons and, other times, through an interactive video. I felt more at home in the dashboard than I did in the Wix website editor.

They did a good job on this one. 5 / 5 is the score I hand out.

Ease of creating and updating products

You are in business to sell products and services. Therefore, an online store should make it easy to upload your products and edit them. Wix should also enable you to give as much information as possible, in a presentable manner, to your customers.

It is easy to upload products to your online store. Wix enables you to add plenty of information on a product, including variants like shoe sizes or even color, which works in the user’s favor. You can even manage inventory by uploading the number of products available, and Wix will adjust the number as orders come in.

The only challenge I came across was the assumption that sellers want to operate in their local currency. It took some hunting to find out where I could adjust the currency of a product.

This part was easy, and it scores a 5.

Price and Affordability

The price you pay to get your online store matters. There is no point in paying a price that is significantly higher than other alternatives, especially if the features don’t match the price point. You will also need to pay for your online store every month for as long as your business runs.

Wix has several plans available, and they differ in the features they offer. The basic plan, being the cheapest, is helpful, and you can use it as you get your business started. It offers many features, and most people may not feel the necessity to upgrade in a long time.

The pricier plans have a significant margin between them and the basic plan. I tried wrapping my finger around what exactly would cause these differences, and I wasn’t satisfied with the conclusion. You can check out the differences between the plans for yourself and see what you come up with. In relation to other platforms, I’ll compare Wix to another that we have covered comprehensively, GoDaddy. Wix’s cheapest ecommerce plan is still pricier than GoDaddy’s ecommerce plan. GoDaddy’s ecommerce plan comes with email marketing for up to 25,000 recipients in a month, while with Wix, you have to purchase a separate email plan. Check out our GoDaddy website builder review to see what we think about it.

On the pricing, I have to say, I am not impressed. Wix scores 2 / 5.

Customization

Your website is a reflection of your business. People see how it looks, and they quickly get an idea of whether they would like to deal with you. This goes beyond the realm of aesthetics into the functional. We want to know how easy it is to give your customers an experience that you have designed.

Wix allows you to customize through addition of apps and editing features to your website. If you want to collect your customers’ contacts, they have Wix forms that you can integrate to your website. If you would like a particular color scheme, you can do it within a few clicks.

You can add images, videos, and text from all sources. Bring your own from Google Drive, Google Photos, and other sources. If these are not enough, you can get some more from the Wix image library or even purchase them from Unsplash and Shutterstock.

You do feel a degree of control over the outcome when you start customizing your features and for that Wix gets a 5.

SEO and Mobile Friendliness

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are the actions you take to get your website discovered and understood by search engines. We categorize these actions into two: those that you’ll do and those that your website builder will do. We are interested in whether Wix carries their weight in making your website understood by search engines.

This is vital to you because your website will not only rely on paid traffic but also on organic traffic. If your SEO scores are poor, you may not get organic traffic, which is free.

I used PageSpeed Insights to test how Wix pages perform on various metrics. PageSpeed Insights’ opinion matters because the tool is provided by Google, and the metrics they use are the ones that matter.

The tool ranks on four main metrics: performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO. Wix performs extremely well on accessibility and best practices, while also performing poorly on performance and SEO. The latter two are unforgivable because they affect your customer experience and how they find you.

I measured a product page for good measure and got a similar performance. I will disclose that I wasn’t using a premium plan, and maybe they offer better websites to their paying customers. That being said, anyone trying out a website will make their decision based on what they see in the trial.

That's 2 / 5. A website that has a score of 49 on performance , is just not good enough.

Integration to Other Ecosystems

Your online store will need to integrate with other systems, especially for services offered by third parties. The alternative that no one wants is to handle these systems independently. Imagine handling your shipping, orders, and payments on separate platforms. As your business grows, you'll interact with more needs, so this problem would only intensify.

Wix has got you covered in this regard. When it comes to selling, you can easily integrate with other selling platforms. You will only need to upload your products once on Wix, and they will automatically update on the other platforms.

Wix has made it possible to integrate with payment and shipping solutions. You can access the Wix App Market, which offers other solutions that you can integrate into your website. Additionally, companies create solutions that integrate with Wix, continually expanding the app market. These factors contribute to Wix's high score of 5 for integration with other ecosystems.

Guides and Documentation

We all need guidance when starting to use new tools. While it would be great if all tools were simple, unfortunately, we live in a world where many tools are complicated. However, what's unacceptable is bad documentation and a lack of guides. If you're not given the right information, it becomes difficult to fully utilize an online store.

Wix provides you with guides in the form of articles and videos. There is a navigable help center with all the resources you need. You can also reach out to their support if you have any issues, and they’ll help.

I’ll give Wix a score of 5 on their guides and documentation.

Finally

Wix has wild swings in its performance and it varies depending on the category being assessed. Their average score is 4 out of 5, which is as an average of the scores in the nine categories I covered.

Our advice is to give Wix a try and see for yourself if our review is objective. It's important to develop your own opinion, and to focus on the individual categories we examined rather than just the overall score. While we assumed that all categories were equally important, your priorities may differ. For example, if price is your top consideration, you should take a closer look at how we rated Wix and why.

See you on the next one!