Editor X logo
Going With the Workflow
Using the tools already in place.
November 6, 2023 at 9:23 pm
As a designer, I’m often tempted to tear down the old and create something brand new. But while starting fresh has its benefits, it’s not always the right choice.
I took on a new client last month who had her website on Wix. The site had a solid brand identity and an active shop, but my first instinct was to build something completely different for another web hosting company. I thought, “Why would I use Wix? I’m a seasoned full stack web developer after all, and Wix, frankly, is for beginners.”
For those who don’t know, Wix is a browser-based drag-and-drop editor, also known as a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. People who can’t code can basically draw a website with a mouse. Why would I use a clumsy mouse to create a website when I could lay out a pixel-perfect design with CSS? I didn’t like the existing platform, but I still gave it a shot.
Dragging and dropping container boxes on Wix was indeed clumsy at times. Blank spaces would show up between sections and then mysteriously disappear. I couldn’t completely center my grid, and the heights of the first and last boxes were off by one pixel. These are things that wouldn’t bother most people, but I need my layouts to be flawless. I love typing HTML and CSS and watching my designs come to life. It gives me the control I need to perfect my vision.
If only Wix would give me a little more control over positioning elements and setting responsive breakpoints. I dug through the documentation and that’s when I learned about Editor X, which is Wix on steroids for coders like me. Honestly, I liked it. I didn’t mind as much any glitches while positioning elements in the interface, because I could easily correct their positioning with responsive units in the side panels. But there was still a problem.
This all worked for me, but did it work for my client? No! Editor X was expensive, and all its technical tools that I needed to build my design would ultimately make my client’s day-to-day maintenance of the site more confusing. Plus the backend of the old site had her entire online shop, and I wasn’t hired to work on that part. Connecting that to Editor X using the same URL didn’t seem possible – it was all becoming too complicated, and I felt trapped in a corner.
With much thought and reluctance I returned to the original Wix site. After poking around some more, I truly saw its potential with all the valuable product data and embedded contact form. I couldn’t create my original design using Wix’s limited tools, but I could build something close and clean up areas of the site that were poorly formatted, such as the navigation bar.
The lesson I learned here is that if the client already has a site and doesn’t want to hire ongoing maintenance, I need to design using the tools in place. It’s important to allow clients to be their own webmaster and manage their own content in this situation. This client was having difficulty setting up her site and needed someone with design experience. She hired me to make the site look better, and I did. Now with the new layout in place she can focus on content and expanding her brand.
My job here ended up being more of a design consultant than a web developer and I was okay with that, even if at times designing on Wix made me want to throw my computer out the window.
The Bottom Line
Wix is a good option for businesses that don’t want to hire a dedicated web development team. The browser-based drag-and-drop interface requires a little patience and acceptance of certain limitations, but anyone who’s ever played around with Microsoft Paint can figure out how to “draw” their site. If, however, you want cutting-edge, fully responsive pixel-perfect design, I recommend something coded by an experienced web developer, hopefully one who’s on the payroll.
Note: Between the time I wrote this draft and posted it, Editor X had already transformed into something else. Now it’s become Wix Studio. It can be hard to keep up with all these new tools in web development, but I still strongly encourage learning the new ones while still maintaining the old ones when needed. Had I pushed for Editor X, I would now be dealing with a brand new slew of configuration issues for Wix Studio’s new platform.