How A Wix Expert Builds A Wix Site
Whether you are building a site from scratch, picking out a template, or outsourcing your website to a developer, it's important that you have a strategy to getting your website live so that you don't waste time and money.
When building your Wix site you will want to think about the limitations of the Wix editor, yhe process that you are taking, and all of the back of house information you need to add.
The goal of this post is to give you a complete plan and strategy to get your site up and live and the fastest amount of time with as little effort as you can spend.
Wix gives you a great step by step on building a site but this post will give you more of a strategy to building your site.
Because as an entrepreneur you simply don't have the time or the budget to waste.
If you are wondering if Wix is even the right builder for you then check out this post I found giving some great reasons on why you should and should not choose Wix.
So here is how a Wix Expert build a Wix site.
Things To Keep In Mind Before Starting
Before you start your Wix site there are some things that you want to keep in mind throughout this process.
In order to have a Wix site with no Wix advertisements you will need to purchase a Wix premium account.
These Premium Accounts will range and pricing and depends on where your business is at.
You can purchase these accounts in monthly or yearly payments.
If you plan on having a custom domain for your site then you will also need to pay for a domain hosting fee.
So if you want your site to be www.mysite.com you will need to purchase a domain which you will be able to do from Wix or any other domain host.
if you want to accept payments on your site then you will need to have a premium Wix account. So if you plan on using an e-commerce store, you will need to upgrade to a premium account.
There are also apps within Wix that you can use but they will charge a premium fee for using all of their features. They should all come with a free version but you will have to pay for an upgrade.
Wix will give you at least three free email blast a month if you have any premium account but you will have to upgrade in order to have more email services.
I believe that for more most startup businesses you will not need an advanced premium account. I personally have the unlimited premium account and this works fine for my business right now.
What all of this means is that like any other website builder there are other fees involved that you will need to consider for your business.
If you are just starting out then most of these extra fees will not be crucial, but if you have a clear idea of what you need it is important that you research these fees before you start building.
You will also want to know some basic SEO if you are building the site yourself. Learn what is called “on page SEO” because as you are building the site you will want to keep these best practices in mind.
If you are outsourcing then you will want to make sure you ask your designer or developer what they offer in terms of SEO. Setting up the Wix SEO Wiz and having on page SEO set up is the most standard package I would consider.
Start A Template
If you are building your Wix site and do not want to go through the process of starting from scratch, you can choose from long list of all template options that wakes has provided for you.
This is the easiest most efficient way to get started for your business. The idea is that you pick a template, and then you add in your own content so that it reflects you our business.
Which has also created what is called there ADI website creator which will automatically create an entire website for you based on information you have given Wix.
Keep in mind with the ADI creator that you will not be able to customize nearly as much of your Wix site as you would with the editor.
Also, if you start with the ADI creator and switch to the Wix editor you will not be able to switch back without losing all of the design that you created in your editor. This would be crucial for Wix entrepreneurs if the platform was able to provide this.
If this was the case you could get a designer to create your entire site in the editor and then switch back to the ADI Creator and be able to easily manipulate what was on the site. Hopefully Wix can figure this out.
If you are not starting from a Wix built template and prefer to have your site fully customized there is an option in Wix to start from scratch.
This will give you a completely blank page and you will need to add every single element on your Wix site.
If you have not used Wix before and do not feel very comfortable using the platform I cannot recommend this for you or your business.
This requires you to have a very good understanding of what some of the Wix editor limitations are and how to make sure your site is responsive and everything functions how it should.
This is important for you to know if you are also wanting to outsource a website and have it made completely from scratch and customized.
When I design websites I will always start with the blank template but what I like to do is draw out the layout on a piece of paper first. Just a really rough draft, basically all boxes, that show me where I want to place text and pictures.
Traditional web developers well create these sorts of layout templates in Adobe or some other design software. With Wix this isn't really necessary because of the ease that you can create websites.
What you will also want to have in this stage is an idea of what fonts and colors that you are going to use for the site.
In traditional developing you would be able to write one line of code that could potentially change all of your text font. This is not how Wix works. You will have to change each text box on your side if you want to change the text.
The same idea works for colors as well. If you start with the colors that you want to use then you will not have to go through and individually change each color.
This is why it can be so important to have the fonts and colors ready to go before you start building your site.
Once you have an idea of the layout, have your colors and text picked out, then you can go to your editor and start building your site.
Add Placeholders
Working in the Wix editor is pretty easy when you get the hang of things but there is a learning curve that will take you sometime to understand.
What you will want to keep in mind when working in the editor is that there are what are called grid lines.
These are the vertical dotted lines that run on your page and you will want to keep all of your Wix elements inside of these lines.
Unless you are familiar with using Wix columns and Wix strips. You can read my post here if you want to understand a little more about how these work.
What these lines represent is what will be cut off on smaller screen sizes like tablets.
But you will also want to know before building on your side is that there is another side to your editor where you will be able to align your mobile site.
I highly recommend waiting to align your mobile site until your desktop is finished. This is because any time that you add or remove element from your desktop it will affect how your mobile site looks.
It can be very frustrating for you to align your mobile perfectly and then something happens to your desktop and it changes your work.
Try to make sure that your desktop design is completely finished before you move over to your mobile.
How I like to start when building in my editor it's by taking the layouts that I have already created and begin just by adding element placeholders.
I also like to use strips as a container to put my elements in. If I can get away with not using a strip then I will just place the elements directly on the page.
This is because like any other elements on your page, the more you have the more space it will take up on your Wix site.
This is important to watch out for because your site can load slower depending on how much you have added to it.
So I go through the entire site and just start adding placeholders for all of my elements. What I will try to do is copy and paste all paragraph text boxes so that I will not have to go back and change the font type for each one.
Using copy and paste can be very important and a huge time saver. But, you want to watch out when using this for headers because depending on which heading tag you use, your SEO can be affected.
If you want to learn more about Wix SEO and best practices you can read my post about how you can optimize your side.
It does not matter at this point what your text actually says and if you add pictures to your side, it does not matter what picture is actually there.
What you are doing is just setting up a blank template/layout for your site. You are making sure that every section of every page has a placeholder for your actual content.
I also find that designing becomes MUCH easier if you already have something on a page. It is usually the blank canvas that is the hardest part.
Once you have all your place holders on the site then you can start adding all of your amazing content!
Put In Your Content
At this point you should have your site placeholders set up in your editor and you are ready to start adding your content.
I would recommend having a google doc or word doc with all the copy for your website and having a folder that contains all the pictures you want to add to your site.
Now when you start adding all of your contents it will be in one place so you can easily take your pictures or your text and add it to your site.
If you are copying and pasting text on to your site from a Google doc or word doc then I recommend using Ctrl + Shift + V to paste.
What this does is make sure that your font type remains the same on your site. If you do not use this method there is a chance that you are font type will change depending on which font type you are using in your Google doc or word doc.
I recommend when you are adding pictures to your site to upload all of your pictures at one time to your Wix media gallery.
This will make it easy for you to add these pictures to your Wix site without having to look through your computer files constantly.
You can even create folders within your Wix media gallery to organize your photos even more. You could make a folder for each page of your website and put the photos that belong on those pages inside of those folders.
This would make it very easy for you to go through your pages and know exactly which photos are supposed to be there.
Because you took the time to organize your content beforehand and also set up your layout beforehand, adding your content to the site should be a fairly quick process.
Once you are done it is time to put on some finishing touches!
Finishing Design Touches
At this point in building your website is when I would start thinking about adding some finishing design touches.
You can do this in a variety of ways but one thing to keep in mind is that the more you add to your sides that more complicated you make your site.
The more complicated you site is, the slower it can load for your guest. You want to make sure you are providing the best experience you can for your guests.
This is more important than what you feel like the design should be.
So if you end up building a design that you love but causes your site to load very slowly and does not give your guests the best experience, you will want to change this.
Guests will not have a good experience and leave your site causing your SEO to suffer.
When I am adding finishing design choices to a site I am thinking a lot about animations, consistency, shapes, and brand theme.
Animations can be added to many Wix elements. These animations will cause your Wix elements like your texts or pictures to move when people are scrolling on your page.
This is a great technique to keep your guest engaged and giving them an enjoyable experience while seeing your site.
You can also add backgrounds animations which will allow you to display your section backgrounds in very unique ways.
Also consider adding different shapes to you site depending on the style you are going for.
Small rectangles or circles or organic shapes can all add a unique design choice to your site and make it feel more unique to your brand.
One of the most important considerations to make is the about your consistency of the design.
Make sure that your negative spaces are even for each section. The space between the bottom of a picture or text and the top of the next picture or text should be even for the different places these spaces exist.
This will give your site a more professional feel and will ease your audience when they are looking.
Always remember that when you are adding more to your site you could potentially be slowing down your site making it worse for your SEO and for your guests.
Align Mobile
Now that you have your entire desktop version of your site finished it's time to move on to the mobile.
I'm not a huge fan of Wix mobile editor because I feel there should be more customization options and it needs to be more independent from the desktop editor.
The main thing to remember when aligning your mobile sign in Wix is that you want to wait until your desktop version is finished.
You will need to make more changes to your mobile editor if you make more changes on your desktop.
So if you are outsourcing your mobile alignment you want to make sure you do this only when your desktop is completely finished.
One big hint that I recommend when aligning your mobile site yourself is to click on the page optimizer on the left hand side menu.
This will do a decent job at making your mobile look acceptable.
More than likely you will still need to work on aligning your mobile to get a design that is very friendly for your visitors but this could save you a lot of time in trying to align everything.
If you do not like the look of the page optimizer you can always hit the back button in your editor and it will undo all of these changes.
Aligning your mobile can seem a little overwhelming depending on how much content you have on your website. If there are a lot of elements on your mobile editor trying to isolate them by hiding them.
You can always add them back your mobile page but hiding your element will remove it but not delete it. This can allow you to work on your mobile editor one element at a time so that it does not seem overwhelming.
Once you are done aligning everything, go ahead and hit save and publish and your mobile site will be set up and ready to go.
Wix Dashboard
At this point in the process you have created a layout, you built your template, you added all of your content, you've aligned your mobile, and now it is time to add all of the back of house.
Wix makes it extremely easy for you as an entrepreneur to do this.
All you have to do is go through the different sections in your dashboard and fill out the information for your business.
Some of the main sections that you will want to fill out SEO, general info, social media, And your advanced settings.
I would recommend going through each section of your dashboard to be familiar with all the moving parts of your site because some of these features can be very powerful for you site and your business.
You can also add google analytics in the dashboard area of the site and I highly recommend doing this even if you don’t know what to do with it quite yet. Having data for your site will be much better for you in the long term if you have a lot.
Your Wix SEO Wiz will allow you to take some very good first steps to getting your site started with a great foundation.
The general info section is where you will be able to add your favicon and general business information,
The social media section will allow you to update you photo used when sharing and connect your Facebook.
Test
That’s about it! At this point you have everything on your site set up and all the back of house info plugged in.
All that there is left to do is test the site. Go through all links, all buttons, all menu tabs, and any other functions on your site to see if everything looks good.
I would spend a few hours just trying everything on the site and looking for something that doesn’t work.
If you take the time to do this last step then you can rest easy knowing that your site has everything taken care of and you have made sure your site is set up from start to finish.
Conclusion
1. Start by drawing or creating a very basic layout of your site. No details.
2. Create this same layout on a Wix template but do not worry about all your text and pictures being there. Just make sure you are using the right font and colors you want.
3. Add in all your content to the site. Make sure you organize all the pictures and text into one place so you can easily upload to Wix.
4. Make any finishing design choices for your site like animations, shapes, and consistency.
5. Align the mobile of your site. Make sure you desktop is completely finished and use the page optimizer button to give you a head start.
6. Fill out all the key areas in your dashboard so your site has a good foundation to start on.
7. Test you site for every button, link, menu tab, form, etc. Make sure no stone is left unturned.
If you enjoyed this post then please like, comment, share, or message me and let me know how you felt! Or what you would have liked to see more of!
If you need help setting up a Wix site and want some free advice then pick a date here and we can go over your problems using a video call and screen sharing! Let me know how I can support your better because I know your business is awesome...let me prove it!