Wix vs Web Developers

I was recently contacted by a client who inquired about the following:

With the advent of resources such as Wix, do we still need web developers and is learning web development still worthwhile?

That, in my mind, is an extremely fascinating issue!

And it’s real – it’s incredibly simple to create a website for your company using utilities like Wix or Squarespace. You do not need to be familiar with HTML, CSS, or JavaScript, and you also do not need deep knowledge of frameworks or something similar.

As a result, you can create web pages with minimal effort (or at the very least, with little to no web development knowledge) and expand your company.

Sounds promising, doesn’t it?

And it is true! At the very least, for some types of companies and website types.

What Wix Is Particularly Effective At

Wix is fantastic whether you’re looking for a landing page or a “portfolio-style” web page.

There are hundreds of official Wix Templates that are almost exclusively designed for this kind of website.

Naturally, for a valid cause!

Since a lot of companies simply want a website. You simply need a website on which your customers can locate you, learn more about you and your services, and then contact you.

Most “offline companies” (e.g., auto dealerships, offline stores, and doctor’s offices) possibly only need this kind of website. Additionally, certain remote/online businesses do not need anything additional (e.g. consultancies, peer-to-peer coaching sites).

It’s then extremely simple to create a fantastic website for your company and share all the content you want to share with your clients using Wix and related services.

It is also possible to build a web store! At the very least a basic one.

Things Wix Isn’t As Effective At

However, Wix is not a one-size-fits-all solution.

When you need more than a portfolio-style website, when you require a high degree of flexibility, and particularly when your primary company and product is a web service, you would be unable to create this using just Wix.

Consider “products” such as YouTube, Facebook, and Udemy, as well as mobile applications such as Google Docs.

This cannot be built using Wix, Squarespace, or similar platforms. This requires the assistance of a web developer.

Since, in this case, the website is more than a place to share information with visitors. Apart from that, it is a fully fledged service, a fully fledged framework that runs in the browser.

That is clearly not the aim of Wix and similar platforms. Such a service cannot be “dragged and dropped.” You’ll usually require a great deal of abstract theory behind the scenes, as well as non-trivial user interfaces. Both entail the development of actual code.

Additionally, you will wish to design your own website (or employ a web developer) if you want full control over the content. If you want to be able to tailor and refine anything, for example. Or if you require a highly customized interface.

Summary

To summarize, Wix (and Squarespace, among others) is ideal for these kinds of websites:

Landing pages
Porfolio pages on which you can showcase yourself or your product
Simple online stores
Pages containing information that you want to share with your customers

You will use the services of a web developer for pages such as the following:

Applications for the web (e.g. Udemy, Google Docs)
Digital goods that are “embedded” in the website (e.g., YouTube, Facebook)
Specific designs or optimizations

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, creating web sites is a lot of fun. Furthermore, you can save money if you’re capable of creating some kind of page on your own :).

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