QUICK WIX VS. BUILDING YOUR OWN WEBSITE
You may have noticed I have been banging on about my Quick Wix service lately.
That's because Quick Wix is such a great way to help fledgling businesses create their first website.
Let's be honest, when you are just starting out, paying someone to build a website is big investment. Especially if you consider that you can build a website for nothing using Wix!
I've written this blog post to help you weigh up the pros and cons of building your own Wix website vs. using me to do it for you.
WHY USE WIX?
Of all the website editors out there, I prefer using Wix (in fact, I won't work in anything else) and that's what I would recommend to anyone who wanted to build their first website. Here's why:
Wix is incredibly easy to use and to customise
Wix has over 800 design templates
It's really easy to link different types of media in Wix, plus you get access to a great free image library
As a platform Wix has loads of potential to grow with your business
Wix has a great tool that lets you optimise your site for mobile devices - essential as mobile devices generate 54.8 percent of global website traffic
Wix allows you to set keyword phrases for maximum on-page and advanced search engine optimisation (SEO)
You can also check out my blog post Why Use Wix? for more info.
Let's assume that you follow my advice and choose to use Wix to build your website. What's it going to cost, and how long will it take?
DOING IT YOURSELF: How long will it take?
The cost of your time isn't just how much you charge per hour, it's also about the opportunity cost of using your time to build a website when you could be focusing on the thing you do that makes you money.
Clearly the amount of time it will take to build your new website is a variable factor, depending on how computer literate you are, how fussy you are, and how much content you have.
You can dive into using Wix immediately, and if you use one of their preset website templates and have all your content and images ready, you could get up and running in a day.
Yes that's right - a day.
In fact, if all you need is a basic business card style landing page, you could put one together in just on hour. Check out how to do that here.
Being realistic, it's going to take most people a good couple of days to get to grips with the Wix editor, get the content on the site and tweak the layout for each page.
Then you're going to have to set up the website for mobile (remember, more than 50% of people look at websites on their phone), test it all and optimise it for SEO. You're probably going to have to access some of Wix's excellent tutorials to learn how do that, which takes some more time, maybe another day or so.
As a conservative estimate, I'd say it would take you about three times as long as a Wix expert to do the basic work to get a five page website up and running.
DOING IT YOURSELF: HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?
You're going to need to pay our hosting costs and purchase a domain name regardless of the platform you use or whether you decide to build a site yourself or have me build it for you.
You will need a Wix premium plan in order to connect your domain name. You can create a free website without a premium plan, but the site address will be something like your.name.wixsite.com and there will be Wix ads displayed at the top of the page. That's not too bad for a personal blogging site, but it's not really credible for a professional company.
Wix plans are available monthly, annually, or over two years and the cost decreases depending on the length of time you commit to. The cheapest monthly plan is £6.50 per month, but Wix has regular 50% deals available when you first sign up, so I would definitely advise taking advantage of one of those.
Wix plans also include a free domain name for a year, but they will bill you for renewal of the domain name after a year, so I would usually recommend purcahsing a domain name from elsewhere for longer. I use 123Reg for all my domain names and the cost varies from 99p upwards. Usually you are looking at around £12-15 per annum for your domain name.
For some helpful information about domain names, check out my blog post.
USING MY QUICK WIX SERVICE
If you're short of time, not that tech-savvy or confident, or just stuck for inspiration with the design of your website, then Quick Wix is a great low cost solution that allows you to take advantage of my Wix knowledge and design expertise.
I developed Quick Wix after requests from clients to fix the websites that they had started to create themselves but just got stuck with.
I also wanted to create an affordable website service on a platform that could grow and expand with each business, that the clients could easily edit themselves if they needed to.
In summary, my Quick Wix service is essentially a five page website, custom built for you and featuring your branding, content and images, for £450.
HOW LONG DOES QUICK WIX TAKE?
It really depends on you!
If you have design ideas and content ready to go then i's a very fast process.
We start with a consultation, where I will guide you through what's needed for your site, and then you supply the content, images and logos. After that the website essentially takes me around ten hours to build.
Halfway through the process I'll share the site with you to make sure you're happy with the design concept.
After tweaking and mobile and search engine optimisation, your website could be live in just a couple of days.
WHAT'S INCLUDED WITH QUICK WIX?
Quick Wix includes everything you need to get you up & running.
The fee of £450 includes:
Free initial design consultation
Five pages showcasing your company
Your brand colours, photos and logos
All mobile & tablet optimisation
Full search engine optimisation (SEO)
Sorting out your domain name
A 30 minute tutorial showing you how to keep your site updated
Who is Quick Wix for?
Quick Wix suits anyone who:
is running a small businesses or start-up
is an entrepreneur who is short of time
has tried to build their own site but keeps getting stuck
just doesn't have the time to sort their existing site out
knows what they want but stuggles to make it look nice
needs a quick and simple website
wants a great website without the hassle
is great at what they do but struggles with the technical stuff
Summary
If you are thinking about building your new website yourself, I hope this post has helped you; there are some great resources out there from Wix to get you started.
Cost of doing it yourself: from £90 for hosting & domain name + your time
Cost of quick Wix: from £90 for hosting & domain name + my time at £450
If you would like to chat further, feel free to call me on 07732 000906, or drop an email to cat@catlund.com
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