Online store on WIX: our experience and wishes

Good day to all.

In this post I am not going to advertise the well-known site builder WIX. The task is to share our experience, while staying more at the weak points of the resource in the hope that the developers will take note, since there are a few weak points.
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To begin with a couple of introductory words. Our first online store turned out to be what is called the “first damn lump”, since we decided to immediately open a “shopping center” with our own hands: the logo, the design and the structure of the site were invented by ourselves, and low-cost specialists were hired to write the code. As a result, our “shopping center” looked like a fake store and scared customers, and due to numerous subsequent improvements, the total cost of developing the store has already exceeded all our spare budgets. Who cares, in more detail the whole story is described here .

The bottom line on the first store we still have a great experience, how not to do the many recommendations of well-wishers (in a good way). The main advice was that the store of any one group of goods would be more successful. This time we didn’t plan to spend months developing the site, moreover, we planned to test several areas, so we resorted to ready-made templates. Of the designers, we chose WIX for the following reasons:

1) A small annual fee (100 euros) for hosting and ready-made template;
2) A large number of templates in html5;
3) Availability of a mobile version;
4) Search engine optimization (SEO);
5) There is Yandex Metrica, which is important for advertising campaigns;
6) There is a mail hosting on Gmail, but it is paid separately (1500 rubles per year);
7) A lot of positive reviews on the Internet.

We compared it with inSales, but it seemed to us a little expensive to start, although it was higher in functionality.

Then we chose two directions: sound (headphones, portable acoustics - www.sound4you.ru ) and children's toys. It took us 1 day to create each store. They chose the templates they liked, inserted their pictures and wrote unique texts for the product cards. Wrote the texts themselves, so it still took 3-4 days. In general, the WIX editor itself is made simple, intuitively, everything is clear. There is no need to edit pictures, as the editor himself optimizes and customizes them to the desired size. For each page there are SEO settings, so after studying the statistics on requests, it was easy to fill in the cells with headings, descriptions, and prescribe keywords. Products can be tied to different pre-created categories, which allows you to combine products according to different characteristics. In general, for a quick and inexpensive start is a good way out of the situation. As the store developed, we planned that we would buy more different modules and options, but that was not the case. As it turned out, WIX has very weak integration capabilities, therefore many (and very important functions) are simply not available.

For example, by paying for goods you can choose only one way: either “offline payment” (cash to the courier), or one of the wallets (PayPal, PagSeguro, Scrill, Webmoney, Authorize.net and PayU), where it’s relevant for the domestic consumer, perhaps, Webmoney. Why not make both payment methods? And where is the payment by plastic cards?



Further, the module "Delivery". It is possible to put a standing commission, which does not depend on the geography of delivery. And it is also possible to add your delivery settings, but by country. Why should I choose other countries if the store operates within the same country? It is important for me, first of all, to be able to customize the delivery conditions in your region! Therefore, with each order the customer has to additionally pronounce the cost of delivery. Yes, of course, these conditions are described on the store's website, but it is important that the customer receives the calculation not only of the shopping cart, but also of the delivery.



Now about informing customers. When a customer places an order, then, as a store administrator, I receive a letter from which it is not clear who ordered what.



You have to go to your office by the link and see the details of the order. What do you think, and what letter does the customer receive? No! The customer does not automatically receive an order confirmation at all, without which the store cannot work. Therefore, each time you have to do printskrin order in his office and send an order confirmation in manual mode. But at the same time, WIX has a news distribution module for clients; apparently, in their opinion, this is a more important option.
For example, with all the inconveniences listed above, a store may exist, since with proper attention the client will understand nothing. But is it possible to increase customer loyalty when the main page is loaded from mobile devices with the speed of the dial-up modem of the last century. According to Google PageSpeed, this is what happens:



Even if you disable the "Slideshow" on the main page, the speed increases by only 2-3 points.
But I have to admit that WIX has a very operational and responsible "Support Service". They answer all questions quickly enough.

Here is a small list of those small moments, without which it is difficult to comfortably and effectively develop an online store on WIX:

1) The text is not copied from the item card.
2) Many html modules are not compatible with WIX, for example, the Yandex.Market Feedback module.
3) I still do not display favicon in search engines when issuing.
4) CNC, although indexed by search robots, would be much more convenient in terms of visual perception if Russian letters would be converted not into characters like (3047459821 /% D0% BD% D0% B0% D1% 8), but into transliterate.
5) If you have several sites on one account, then the catalog of pictures will have a common library, which is very inconvenient when you have to work with a large number of images.

To summarize, those who are only going to test their skills in online commerce, I can say that on WIX it is possible to make a good showcase, since with the existing shortcomings, our store was accepted by the moderators Yandex.Market from the first time. It still says a lot. But if the showcase grows into a full-fledged store, then it is necessary to switch to a more professional CMS. By the way, the WIX designer is perfect, in my opinion, for those who work in the service sector, or if a simple information resource is needed. Although for blogs the right solution would be WordPress.

I have only one wish for the developers of WIX - you need more additional modules that are needed for stores (payment, notifying customers about the order, etc.), let them be paid. The main thing is that the store owner has more freedom in creating an online store.