My take on websites, are that a lot of the time they are the window into your business, but like a great shopfront window – you do not want to put everything on display - you want to give people enough information to wish to contact you and start a conversation. From looking at questions asked by new business owners, creating a website can be daunting – there are lots of great companies out there who can build a website for you and update the content – however a lot of new businesses do not have a big marketing budget, so often want something that is functional and works for them. When I set-up Virtual Satsuma, I created my own website – I did not have the time to learn WordPress, so I went with WIX.
WIX is great for sole traders, small businesses, restaurants, online stores, and artists such as musicians and photographers. Wix is optimized for mobile devices and can be spiced up with one of the numerous apps available from the Wix App Market such as ecommerce and shopping carts.
Wix is not free, (although you can try it for free to begin with) you will need to pay for it – I would recommend going with the Pro package. For me, the great things about Wix is you can start with knowing nothing about building a website, and at the end of the day have a website built, a domain name, a logo, and an email address. Wix offers lots of templates by business type – so you can choose a template to go with then populate it with your information. Wix also gives lots of help on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation – basically the way people find you on the internet using key words – this is an overly simplistic explanation – true SEO seems to be a dark art – but getting it right will increase traffic to your site massively).
An added payable extra which Wix offers is logo creation – again you can add your industry and business name and Wix will create some logo ideas – if you are happy with a design you can pay for it – then Wix will send you the design and all the associated vector and social media files - which I think is a fantastic extra.
Wix seems to work well for smaller websites – up to 30 pages. Most importantly when creating your website make sure you put a ‘call to action’ on every page – allow readers to contact you very easily – personally, I think people get bored after 4 clicks to find information on a website.
I would recommend Wix, even if you are still unsure about using it – you can speak to people such as myself – who can do the initial set-up for you. For suppor
