Wix's New Ads Nailed It.
These new Wix ads made me laugh – they illustrate EXACTLY why Wordpress sites drive my clients and myself nuts. Watch the Wix ad videos lower in this post below...
I have been a Website Designer for over 16 years, and I've worked on way too many Wordpress sites during that time. When I discovered Wix in 2015, it was just coming into it's own after changing from being Flash-based to being HTML5-based, a game changer. And boy, it's come a long way in the past 6 years, all of my initial concerns with the platform have been resolved by Wix over time (SEO functionality, custom URLs, ability to customize with code), and now I believe it to be a very robust platform that works for 95% of my client's website design needs.
While I don't think that Wix needed to highlight Wordpress issues in their commercials... as Wix is already earning the support of website designers like me all over the globe because of their amazing editor... without having to nay-say other platforms... I must admit, these ads nailed it on the head.
It's true. Wordpress sites are a constant hassle. If you're not busy enough updating plugins and the WP software on a regular basis, you're dealing with hackers getting in and posting spammy links in your code, or plugins getting outdated or conflicting with each other. It's an ongoing battle to keep Wordpress sites clean and functional. Any business owner with Wordpress for their website will relate to any of these ads:
I can't tell you how many of my website design clients come to me as they have existing Wordpress sites that are stale, broken, hacked, or have outdated versions or plugins, conflicting plugins, the list goes on... Many clients share that it's just plain impossible for them to understand how to edit their Wordpress websites so they let them get stagnate and outdated for years. Many Wordpress website business owners are afraid they'll break the website if they try to do the updates themselves, which is true – you better know what you're doing if you start fooling around with the updates. A simple update can turn into a couple hours of troubleshooting if anything goes wrong. And sometimes, your Wordpress's website hosting provider won't let you update due to PHP or other server limitations so you can't update at all. Frustrating, to say the least.
It is possible to keep a Wordpress website healthy and up-to-date, but it's an ongoing process, and it's best to backup your site files and databases before casually clicking the "Update" button in your WP dashboard... JUST in case you need to restore anything if it breaks the website or if the website is hacked. And, you should know how to restore backups if, indeed, the updates should cause any issues. Fun times, let me assure you. It's of course possible to keep a Wordpress site healthy, but unless you're a WP developer, the constant need for software and plugin updates are time-consuming and daunting at best. Worst of all, all of this extra time isn't even spent on keeping your website content updated – the updates are just to keep the site running smoothly and from getting hacked. If you don't update the content on your actual website, your website becomes stale and doesn't perform as well in the rankings of Google and other search engines. I find that many business-owner's Wordpress websites tend to get stagnant because clients simply can't figure out how to edit them easily or comfortably. Many of my clients with Wordpress feel like their website is a captive held hostage.
Wix has a whole series of these new ads about Wordpress gripes:
Moving Websites from Wordpress to Wix
I have moved hundreds of unhappy business owners who had websites on Wordpress to Wix — and they are ecstatic when I show them the new Wix editor. After struggling with Wordpress for so long, the Wix editor is like a breath of fresh air for small business owners. Wix is perfect for restaurants, artists, law firms, tree care companies, garden centers, seed companies, bloggers, podcasts, gardening magazines, schools, colleges, non-profits, composting companies, doctor offices, and so many more types of businesses and organizations. No software or plugin updates are needed on Wix, so businesses can focus their website time updating their website with current events, info, products, classes, menus, etc.
Here are some of the things I hear on a regular basis when my clients first get trained on how to edit their own Wix website that we designed for them:
“Wow, this is so much more intuitive!”
“Really?! There's a site history, so I don't have to worry about messing it up? AWESOME.”
“Thank you so much, I'm so excited that I can handle my own website updates now.”
“Yay! Now I can finally keep my own website updated!”
“I love that I can change the design on each and every page on our new Wix website. On our old Wordpress site, we had a homepage template and a subpage template, so all of our subpages looked similar and the design was very limited. Now we can quickly build landing pages and change the design on any page easily and quickly, no programming or theme edits needed. I love all the image and gallery options, they are so easy to use. I'm amazed by the Wix editor, thanks for designing our modern, mobile-friendly website, and for training me so that I can make my own website changes. What a difference it makes, now I actually enjoy working on our business website!”
“My Wordpress site kept getting hacked, and I paid big bucks to get it fixed repeatedly over the years. I'm so happy to have a more secure platform that doesn't need to be babysat. Now I can focus all my valuable time on posting new information about my business and products.”
“I have always felt like working on my Wordpress website was like going into battle. Making simple design or content edits was like pulling teeth. I love my new Wix website, now I can change out images, backgrounds, and edit and add pages so much more easily. Thank you for building our beautiful new website and for the Wix training, I no longer feel like my website is holding my business hostage!”
“Wix seems so easy, why doesn't Wordpress do something like this?”
Indeed, why has Wordpress lived in the dark ages of the internet for so long? I think Wordpress and other platforms like Shopify need to step up their game and create and offer better options for a securely hosted WYSIWG page editor for ease-of-use by business owners who are NOT developers. It would be nice if there was an option for Wordpress to be hosted with security put into place and automatic updates regularly, so it's behind the scenes –and not on the shoulders of the business owner, who rarely has time or the know-how to stay on top of platform updates. WPEngine (one of the best Wordpress hosts out there), and some other hosts offer some support for automatically updates and backups of Wordpress sites, which is good, but most of the WP clients who come to us are not hosted servers that offer this service. Additionally, Shopify's and Wordpress's themes are difficult to change for anyone but a website developer/programmer. Wordpress's attempts to add WSIWYG editing such as with their blocks and other editor improvements have been poor at best. The Wordpress backend still feels like an outdated clunky blog, and the constant software/plugin updates needed are a pain for most small businesses.
Want to know what Wix sites can look like? Above are some examples of some of our Best Wix Websites »
Wix websites are not set to any theme or template, and each and every page can be custom designed. Editing in Wix is similar to editing in Adobe Illustrator or InDesign, you have abilities to add and place elements such as images, galleries, videos, text boxes, buttons, full image or video backgrounds, and so much more. You can move, resize or reorder any of these elements by simply dragging and dropping where you want them to be, very much like other design programs. And, you have full control over the mobile view of your website, which means you can reorder, resize, hide/show various elements from desktop in a vertical format that works great on phones. This makes it much easier to control what your mobile viewers see, rather than relying on the automated responsive themes of Wordpress that shuffle into mobile vertical format that is typically out of your control (unless you're a developer). You may want to change the order, or size or even visibility of elements on mobile, and in Wordpress that is often very difficult to do unless you know how to edit the theme code to customize it, a time-consuming process.
Complete design control and ease-of-editing (not to mention the lack of having to update the platform) is what makes Wix stand apart. Anyone can be trained and learn how to edit a Wix website, and no ongoing maintenance is needed. While Wix may not be easy to design and set one up from scratch — hiring an expert Wix Designer is often your best bet if you're not an experienced web designer — but once they're designed and setup, editing a well-designed Wix websites is a breeze. We train all of our clients on how to use their new Wix websites so they can take the ball and run with it.
To circle back to the Wix Ads...
So while I don't believe negative advertising is the best way to approach things, I do think a lot of Wordpress-website business owners will relate to these new 2021 Wix ads and will likely even consider switching to Wix if it makes their lives easier. After all, who has time for fixing conflicting plugins, website hacks, and software updates?
Why not instead spend valuable time keeping the website updated with new products, information, news and good SEO blog posts to help the website get found and succeed? That's what Wix offers, my clients can now spend their time improving and adding to their site, rather than struggling to edit or fix it. Thanks, Wix! You've changed the game.
Hopefully Wordpress will see the issues that Wix's ads highlight as useful, constructive feedback, and they will work on improving the platform to be easier to edit, easier to maintain, and more secure. Competition is a good thing, and as all platforms adapt and improve over time with user experience in mind, hopefully they will all inspire each other to do better. I would be excited to see a true WYSIWG editor added to platforms like Wordpress and Shopify in the future! On this note, check out this great letter to Wordpress creator Matt Mullenweg from Wix’s CEO, Avishai Abrahami, in response to Mullenweg's harsh post about Wix's new ads. I love everything he had to say.
For now, I've switched from Wordpress to Wix for all my sites, and I must admit, I don't want to go back.
P.S. Check out some of my related posts on this topic:
Looking for a Wix Designer? I love working with small businesses.
One last note: I also still work in Wordpress, and I often recommend Shopify for complex ecommerce needs, but Wix is a great fit for 95% of my clients. Wix also has a couple shopping cart options, which can work for some needs – but I can give you an honest recommendation on whether Wix, Shopify, or Wordpress is best for your needs. I do work with the BEST Wordpress developer who is local and super easy to work with as well, so I count on her when working on Wordpress websites for clients.
I don't often recommend Wordpress anymore, especially for clients with smaller budgets, which is surprising since I used to work on so many Wordpress sites over the years. If clients have much bigger ongoing budgets with highly complex custom needs, Wordpress may be a better fit, but most clients don't need anything fancy, they just want a beautiful, easy-to-use editable website that doesn't require costly development and constant babysitting, and Wix is just that.
