Best Tips For Hiring A Wix Partner In The Wix Marketplace
Updated: Apr 19, 2020
There are over 154 million users on the Wix platform today and 4.2 million of those are paid Wix subscribers which explains why there is an increasing demand for Wix Partners and the support they provide.
Rebranded from the old moniker, Wix Experts, the label of Partner has been a recent change Wix has incorporated as part of the larger growth of the platform.
The continued growth for Wix means more entrepreneurs, which means there will be more need for support, which means the growth of the Partner economy.
Wix Partners are Wix designers and builders who can submit at least 4 premium websites they have built to be reviewed by Wix. If accepted, they will have access and be available in the Wix Marketplace.
The Wix Marketplace is the marketplace for entrepreneurs and Partners to connect and work on projects together. It's only one way to find Wix support but is the fastest to get direct support because of the financial transaction.
An entrepreneur will fill out an offer and this offer will be sent to several partners who can send a proposal if they wish to work on the offer.
Entrepreneurs also have the option to search through the list of partners to find someone they like and can directly message from here.
This article will give you steps on how to find and hire a partner, what to watch out for, how to be prepared to get the best support you can, and how to develop a long relationship so you can hold on to the Partners that do the best work.
Finding A Wix Partner
There are essentially two ways provided by the Wix Marketplace in order to find your Partner and get help for your project.
You can choose to click on the button on the landing page labeled "Start Now" or you go through the list of partners yourself and find one that you like by clicking on the "Explore Services" tab at the top of your screen.
Let Wix Find Your Partner
I will explain both of these below but we will start with the easiest option for your business which would be clicking the "Start Now" button in order to have Wix guide us through a series of questions and make the process as painless as possible.
When you click on the "Start Now" button it will take you through a process of questions in order to find out who is going to be the best match for your needs.
You will be able to choose your budget, location preferences, business info, website, and what your issue is based on options provided.
When you submit to the Wix Marketplace your request it will automatically be sent to the partners whose profiles match with your selections.
When a partner sets up their profile they have the option to select different services and rates for those services. These selections are matched with yours and multiple partners will be sent your offer through email and have a chance to respond.
The partners have incentives to respond quickly to your offer and determine if they would like to work with you. They do have the option to deny your offer if they feel it is not right for their business.
If a partner decides that they do want to send a proposal, they will have the email you provided and will easily be able to send you a response and have all your project details as well.
Searching For A Wix Partner Yourself
You don't have to let Wix choose your partner in the Wix Marketplace for you because you have the option to comb through the list of partners yourself and pick someone that you feel is going to give you the results you want.
In order to do this Wix has created a whole section of categories from you to choose from so that you can filter through the hundreds of partners available.
Click on the "Explore Services" tab at the top of the screen.
Click on the service that you need help with your for site. In our example we will click on the "Classic Website" category.
This will give us a list of options and it should also pull up partners in your local area by default.
You will see this filter along with a whole bunch of other options that you will be able to use as filters to find the best support you can.
Click on any individual profile to be able to see their rates, services, previous projects, descriptions of their company, reviews, and social media links.
You can also click on the '"Get Quote" button underneath the profile pic in order to reach out directly for an estimate for your project.
Every partner is able to select their top projects so that they can be displayed for you. Simply rollover the website you wish to see and click on the icon in the bottom right of the thumbnail to open the site.
This is a great way to check to see if your partner is keeping up with the profiles or to see how many of these websites are even still active. Maybe they built these sites years ago and they no longer work and the partner has no recent work to show.
I will go over these considerations more in the selection below.
Hiring A Wix Partner
Whether you let Wix choose your partner for you or if you picked out your own Partner, the hiring process is very easy compared to other marketplace platforms.
Once you have sent off your offer now you wait for the partner to reply through email.
They will have an incentive to get their reply to you within 24 hours. If they do not then they will be slightly penalized for waiting to long.
Wix will lower their ability to be shown to potential clients and they will lose out on opportunities for their business.
Wix will even suspend the account in the for longer periods of bad service so that the partner does not show at all in the Wix Marketplace.
This creates a more competitive advantage for you as the entrepreneur and for the system to be more efficient and weed out those partners who aren't serious about their business.
Since the marketplace is set up so that all entrepreneurs and freelancers/agencies have autonomy when making their selections it's important to consider you are on your own for the most part.
There will be no customer service to turn to if you do not work it out with your partner.
If you hire someone through upwork and the relationship turns sour you can easily contact their support team and get someone to try and facilitate the problem but with Wix this is not a possibility since you are working with the freelancer directly.
I will cover this more in the next section but you will want to have all your basics covered before moving forward.
What To Watch Out For
Working outside of any protected platform can be intimidating for an entrepreneur who so often needs this exact type of protection.
When you are hiring a partner from the marketplace there are some necessary considerations to make and keep in mind when you are going through the process.
1. You Are Not Protected - When you hire someone through a different marketplace like Fiverr or Upwork, you will have certain protections to ensure that if you and the freelancer don't end up seeing eye to eye that something can be worked out.
Depending on which platform these protections will fluctuate but when you are working from the Marketplace you are working directly with that freelancer with no platform facilitating.
This means that you don't get a service fee for using the platform but that also you need to negotiate your contracts and securities yourself.
Make sure that you have everything in writing if there is no contract given. Exact deadlines with exact amounts stated. Make sure that you are not paying for the entire project upfront and break it down into multiple payments.
You will also want to make sure that you have a good idea of what you are looking for when making your offer in the Marketplace.
If you are sending out a vulnerable message explaining you have no idea what you are doing and looking for some guidance, this might be attracting the wrong kind of freelancers. You may get some help but you may also be opening yourself up to be taken advantage of.
Save these types of messages for the free platforms like Wix Facebook Groups and Wix Forums where you can ask for advice and get help for free.
Take your advice that you received from the Facebook Group and use it in your offer so that you can know exactly what help you need and what needs to happen in order to receive it.
You will be saving money in the long run instead of paying freelancers who only give you what they think you need and move on.
2. Check Reviews and Portfolio - The only real way to determine is someone is running a successful business is to look at the numbers. If someone has 20+ reviews and they are all 4 stars and above that's probably a good sign.
If you go on and read the reviews and they seem genuine and talk passionately about the Partner then you can have confidence knowing this partner knows what they are doing.
When you are checking the portfolio of your partner you need to make sure that the links actually work.
You need to actually make sure the pieces are still active and check to see if they look like the same design.
Often times Partners will not update their portfolios and keep up old projects that don't work anymore and there are other ways of exploiting this type of system.
I remember outsourcing through upwork for a project and after checking several portfolios realized that several different developers had the EXACT SAME portfolio pieces in each of their profiles.
It would be highly unlikely that several developers worked on the exact same project and more likely that some platform was giving away portfolio pieces for money to freelancers who wanted to get their profiles started.
So they never even created the sites that were on their portfolios.
This is why it is important to check out all of the sites from the partners that you want to use. You never know exactly what you are going to find.
How To Be Prepared
I mentioned this above but a great way to be prepared for your partner is by doing a little research first.
Use the facebook groups and forums in order to ask your questions and get some background info on different ways people would go about solving your problem.
Take that info and decide what path you want to take and then create your offer in the Wix Marketplace.
This way you wont waste your money on trying to find someone who will actually help you and you will attract the exact support you need.
If you are needing help with a specific problem then take pictures or videos of your issues.
Giving someone real documentation of what your issue is could take away a lot of the miscommunication that can happen between you and your Partner.
You will also want to be able to share you site with your Partner so that they can see what you have and make better estimates for the time and cost needed for a project.
The only two ways that you can share you site is by publishing it so that it is live. You can then take the link URL and share it with your partner like any other website you would be sharing.
You can also make your partner a contributor to your site. This is only recommended if you know and trust the partner because this will give them access to your site editor where they will be able to make any changes they want.
If you are trying to keep your site hidden and not show it to the world yet this will be the only way to share your site. It is important to show your site to your partner so they have an idea of what problems you are having.
With these considerations in mind you should do just find when finding and hiring your Partner.
Conclusion
Make sure that when you are looking for a Wix Partner that you go through their reviews and portfolio to make sure you have a good idea on the service they provide. You will find some key information that may ultimately decide if you want to continue with that particular Partner.
Be prepared for you partner by creating documentation for them. Make sure they will be able to see your site. You can always unpublish at a later time but the Partner will not be able to give you an accurate cost or time needed if they can't even see your site.
YOU ARE NOT PROTECTED when you use the Marketplace. You are going to be working directly with the freelancer/agency so all liability concerns and documentation are on you to take care of. Make sure you get exact details in writing of project deadlines, cost, and details of what will be provided. You also need pay in multiple payments instead of payment upfront.
Are you hiring through the Marketplace and working with a Partner for your Wix site? What's the biggest struggle you are having? Comment and let me know so I can do some research about the best way to fix that.
Like and share the post if this helped you learned more about hiring your Wix Partner and getting a successful relationship started!
If you need immediate help with designing or building your Wix site then sign up for my free, 10-minute Wix Support Session so we can talk about your problems and get some clear next steps started to help you out.