Why WIX? Why Not? And a beef with Adobe...

Why would a professional use a free consumer app instead of "professional" software? Good question.

I haven't worked in an agency or at another company that does what I do, so I'm not 100% sure what other professionals are using to create websites, create graphics or edit video these days, so I'm guessing that Adobe software is still the professional choice. Along with some straight up coding. A lot of professionally built websites are created in WordPress, too.

I've done many websites in WordPress & Joomla, which are great, but when it came to building my freelance site, I wanted to try something else. There are a number of options out there these days, but I didn't even consider going to the Adobe software to create it. I haven't used Dreamweaver to build a whole site in years. By the time I closed my previous company, Big Sky Multimedia, I was only using Dreamweaver to clean up code in Joomla and Wordpress sites. I know they have a drag and drop option now, but meh, you still have to pay for the privilege of use.

So let me share my beef with the Adobe software a la 2017. You can only get this software in a subscription service now. You can either pay for one app or all of the apps. You can't choose 3 or 4 you actually use, so you end up paying for a bunch of stuff that you wouldn't use, ever. That rubs me the wrong way. One app or all of them. Why not an a la carte choice so that you can save some money or at least not feel that you are paying for something you aren't going to use? Adobe has always been a little unreasonable in their pricing, but back in the day, you had to pay because there weren't other choices (Corel Draw... ugh no).

Now Adobe and even Microsoft Office need to take note of the new choices out there for not only professionals but all consumers who want to create digital assets. One of these choices is WIX, a website builder that starts off free and can be upgraded for added functionality. I picked WIX to try first because I had heard good things about it.

I LOVE WIX! There, I said it. The ease of use, amount of features and apps/widgets, the affordable price, the excellent mobile editor and great looking mobile sites are hard to resist! They have a ton of nicely designed templates that work as a starting point for any type of small to medium business websites. You can even use built in apps to create invoices and track payments. Cool.

Why would a consumer hire a designer to build a Wix site when they can do it themselves for free? Another good Question...

Even though Wix provides a lot of choices in their templates, customizing them for a particular business brand still needs a professional eye and knowledge of interface & information design. Many of the details in this site would have been passed over by the average Wix user. I won't tell you what they are, as I've got to have a couple of trade secrets, but believe me, these are the things that make a site not just slapped together but seamlessly professional.

Even more in favour of Wix, today they launched Wix Code. Without getting too nerdy, this new cloud platform allows developers to add multifunctional, database driven experiences to websites. This allows even the biggest of companies with complex functions to go with Wix. I'll be delving into this new offering as I have time.

So I encourage anyone who is looking for an easy to build, easy to manage and great looking website to check out Wix. Give me a shout if you need some of that "secret sauce" added to make it stand out of the do-it-yourself crowd!