Wix Ecommerce Review: Is the Platform Suitable for Your Store?

A lot of new retailers use Wix as a convenient and easy-navigable website builder to launch their online business. It’s an effective tool for creating a simple personal website with the help of a drag-and-drop tool that saves a handful of time and significantly cuts down upfront costs.

However, it usually happens that users outgrow their Wix platform. One of the major reasons is that this software is initially designed for website building, not for running a fully-fledged online store. Today, in this Wix review, we will try to figure out what's causing the decrease of platform's popularity among retailers, discuss its main pros and cons and find a way out for those, who are not satisfied with their current ecommerce solution.

Wix Ecommerce Review: What’s there for Store Owners?

Ease-of-use

As we have already mentioned Wix is one of the most widely used site builders. According to BuiltWith statistics, currently it is being used by 3 800 881 live websites.

Due to its extremely user-friendly and intuitive backend, a day to day administration has turned to a piece of cake for store owners. The platform also grants you with full control over a website structure and look. It’s possible to position various elements anywhere you like with the drop-and-drag tool and add content to them. This task can be performed with standard Wix Editor or with the assistance of Artificial Design Intelligence. If you get confused with the initial website building procedure - ADI will create a design draft for you with ease. Pay attention that this solution works well only if Wix is able to collect enough information about the project from public sources, otherwise, you’ll get poor results.

Templates and design

One of the major advantages of using Wix is access to over 500 free professionally-designed templates. They are tailored for varied industries and are likely to meet clients' specific needs to the full extent. If you want to implement your creative ideas - choose blank templates and develop your unique design from scratch.

Note that Wix demonstrates rigidity when it comes to template change. You are free to choose from numerous premade themes and shift from one to another whenever you want, but there is no automatic content transfer between them. Thus, all the data (e.g., text, images, etc.) has to be manually copied to a new template, that is why it can be particularly annoying for larger sized stores.

SEO Capabilities

In general, Wix provides good basic on-page SEO tools like customizable page titles, descriptions, alt texts for images, etc. that allow a website to rank well in Google search results. However, they remain insufficient for implementing complex marketing strategies for more professional stores.

Plugins & Extensions

There is an official App Market where you can find various 3rd party extensions to boost extra features for your Wix store. However, a lot of apps are just Iframe solutions that don’t actually integrate additional functionality to your website.

For example, adding the Etsy app means adding just a window to the storefront where visitors can navigate your Etsy shop without leaving your Wix site. It's also reported that integration with Wix’s iFrame solutions may cause some accessibility issues and mess with your website analytics. As a result, you may end up with website malfunctioning problems and lack of features for Wix online shop development.

Pricing

Running a store using a Wix platform isn’t as cheap as it may seem at first glance. There is a free plan that is a perfect option for creating an initial website, but it doesn’t offer functionality for an online shop and Wix branding is obligatory.

Wix ecommerce pricing plan starts from $17 per month and allows you to remove Wix ads and provides some useful apps for free. The cons are that bandwidth and storage place are limited to 20GB each. Bandwidth limitation is a significant drawback and can become a sticking point for your business. The reason is that every time after exceeding your bandwidth volume, you’d have to pay extra fees to keep an online store available for users. To get rid of this restriction users need to upgrade to the most expensive VIP plan for 35$ per month. It also includes a few handy apps and VIP support, but still, doesn’t allow unlimited storage place.

Community and Support

If you need some assistance in store maintenance, visit Wix Help Center to gain access to numerous tutorials, videos and step-by-step guides on various topics.

Luckily, you have a chance to contact Wix’s support directly by phone or submit a ticket by email. Keep in mind that the call center works 24/7.

Wix has a core set of e-Commerce features including multiple payment options, coupons tax, and shipment management, that are sufficient for managing small and mid-sized online stores. But, it has some functional restriction that can be particularly distressing for retailers. You can compensate the lack of e-Commerce built-in functionality with 3rd party apps, but if you are aimed at developing a more professional website a lot of advanced tools may be simply out of reach.

Pros and Cons of Using Wix

In order to make a well-informed decision whether this platform meets your business needs to the full extent, take time to consider its strengths and weaknesses:

Pros

• allows to create a website from scratch with ease
• provides a wide choice of professionally-looking free templates
• availability of handy 3rd party plugins on official marketplace

Cons

• restricted possibilities for shifting between templates
• insufficient SEO capabilities for more professional store
• absence of advanced ecommerce features
• limited customer support

Its functionality can be simply insufficient for building a highly lucrative online shop, to compare with an advanced set of features offered by other solution e.g. Shopify or BigCommerce, that keep their main focus on online retail and boosting your sales and income. Thus, to secure the best results for your business it’s recommended to think over shifting to more specialized platform.

Migration Process

If you wish to switch to something more scalable, this task will be a bit problematic since Wix doesn’t support export function and all the data has to be transferred by copy-pasting. The whole process usually takes a pretty long time and requires some technical skills. You can also delegate this painstaking job to the developer company and get your data moved qualitatively, but their services usually come at a steep price.

Luckily, Cart2Cart service can transform your migration journey into a simple and hassle-free procedure. This automated tool helps to avoid manual data input, messing with a code, as well as hiring expensive freelancers. Moreover, you can launch your data migration and continue selling products with no harm to your revenue while the store undergoes a major overhaul. For instance, you can shift your data swiftly and qualitatively to one of the popular solutions like Shopify or BigCommerce, that are also hosted platforms specifically designed for users who are seeking to build a website in an uncomplicated way.

To see how our service works, try out FREE Demo migration and move a limited number of entities to your store in no more than 30 minutes. You can also rely on Cart2Cart’s 24/7 professional support team that will readily answer your questions and provide incomparable migration experience.

Wix Ecommerce Review - FAQs

Can you use Wix eCommerce for free?

There is no way you can sell through your Wix website without signing up for a premium plan. With the free plan, you can build your store and get it ready to go before upgrading to an e-commerce plan. As soon as you upgrade, you'll have access to built-in eCommerce features, allowing you to accept payments on your website.

Can you integrate Wix eCommerce with other platforms, like Shopify?

Wix users who have both Shopify and Wix accounts can add eCommerce to their Wix websites using the Shopify Buy Button. An eCommerce Wix website is being made to work with Shopify's selling tools, which requires coding. If you want to use both brands, this is a great way to combine them! Additionally, you can use Wix apps to integrate other platforms like Etsy, Amazon, and eBay.

Not all the product images were transferred to my new Wix store during the data migration. What’s the problem?

Due to the Wix shopping cart peculiarities, importing max 19 product images to the Wix store is possible. In case, there are more than 19 images related to the product - Wix will randomly choose 19 and import them to the new store.

What size business is Wix eCommerce best for?

There are three eCommerce plans available on Wix, so it's easy to scale up. For first-time sellers and small businesses looking to start growing fast, Wix is a great choice!

If you've been thinking of switching platforms for a long time, don't hesitate - perform the migration and create your ideal store.