If you are looking to learn how to build a website on Wix, then you have just arrived at the right place.
Wiz is slowly becoming a popular website builder and many people are turning to it to create their website due to its ease of use and numerous features that are beginner-friendly.
I will be showing you step by step how you go about creating a website there and getting it in the best state possible and also offer you tips on how to keep it running properly.
Table of Contents
An Overview of Wix Site Builder
Wix is a website builder that allows you to build and run a website with all the customizations you want to fit your specific needs, without having to have any grasp of website programming languages or hiring any web development expert.
They provide you with a drag and drop ability to help you add, remove, and modify different features on your website as you build it and as you keep evolving it.
There are many features you get within Wix that help you to not only build a good website but also optimize it for good user experience and search engines too if you look forward to getting your website indexed and ranked in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Some of the features include advanced design features, app galleries, unlimited themes and fonts, website domains, and website editing tools, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools.
The features are created for people with all levels of technical knowledge from beginner to an experienced web developer, so anyone out there can use it.
There are also various subscription plans allowing you to start out with a free website or buy and register your domain name and get to use it on your Wix website.
The flexibility of the plans accommodate people who are just starting out online as individuals, to people who want to create their online store or website for their small business to people who are experienced with website design and development that have other complex goals for their website.
The Steps to Take to Build a Wix Website
Here are the steps you take to set up your website in Wix:
Step 1. Go to Wix official website (www.wix.com)
Step 2. Click on get started. Upon clicking the get started button, you will be taken to another page where you will be prompted to create your account.
Step 3. Fill out the registration form. Fill in your account details and confirm your email address to activate your account.
Step 4. Answer the questions to help Wix give you better results. When you create the account, you will be asked if you want to answer a few questions that will help Wix know you better and understand your needs so that it can help you develop the kind of website you have in mind.
Answering these questions will ease the work for you, and I strongly encourage you to answer them.
Some of the questions include who you want to create the website for (a personal website, a company you’re working for, a client or someone else), the type of website you want to build (a blog, a business website, a fitness website, photography website or others) and how much experience you have in website development.
Personally, I will say that I want to build a personal website, a blog website to be specific, and I have no experience at all with websites. This is for the sake of complete beginners.
You should answer the questions this based on the goals you have for the website you are creating.
Step 5. Get the website created for you or create it yourself. The next step will be to choose to either answer a few other questions about the details of your website and get it built for you by the Wix ADI tool or use the website editor to customize your own website.
For me, I would choose to use the website editor as it gives you the chance to learn how it is done and also get the opportunity to choose the features for yourself.
However, I will walk you through the 2 options so that you can decide what works best for you.
Option 1. Using the website editor
When you decide to go with the website editor, you will be asked to choose a template for your website. This is pretty much the theme of the site and it defines the look and design of your site. Browse through the themes you have there and choose the kind of design you will want to work with.
The good thing with the themes is that they have been named according to the kind of website they are best suited for. And if you look well at them, you are going to see a theme that is named personal blog, which means it is good for a personal blog.
There are also other options like a family blog, life blog, traveling blog, and marketing blog, to name a few.
I have chosen a personal blog theme since I am building a personal blog.
Step 6. Edit the theme of the website. Once you select your favorite theme, you should mouse over it and you will see two options, “View” and “Edit, Click in the edit option to continue with the website building process.
Step 7. Getting into the customization page. You will be taken to your website backend dashboard so that you can edit the website the way you want.
When the editing page loads, you might see a lot of overwhelming features and even a place to write your own code. This can be stressful if it is your first time. However, don’t fret.
I am here to walk you through everything about editing and customizing.
See the customization section to learn how you customize the website dashboard.
Option 2. Using the Wix ADI Tool
If you don’t want to do all the website building tasks given by the editor, you can choose the Wix ADI tool to do it for you. And all you have to do is to click on the “Start now” button on the side of WIX ADI on the page.
Step 6. Answering the questions related to your website. You will be led to a page where there are a lot of questions that better define the type of website you want with all the specific details of how you want it to be.
Here are the questions you should answer:
– Which type of website do you want?
* Fashion blog
* News blog
* Blogger
* Health blog
* Business blog
– What do you need on your website? You should choose the features you want to be added to your website. The options to choose from are:
* A subscription page for people to subscribe to your newsletter
* A chat page where you can chat live with your visitors
* An Instagram feed where you can display your latest Instagram posts
– What is the name of your blog? Here you write the name you want to be used to identify with your website. Choose a short, cool, and memorable name that is brandable and relates to the purpose of your website.
You can use your first name or the name of your business and then add another name for the purpose of your website.
Some good examples of names are Dave’s Diary if it is a personal blog (I’ve used my first name, Dave. Use yours too) or Health Junkies for a health blog or use the name of the business whose website you are creating so that it matches with the business’ name.
– Do you want to import images and text? This allows you to add images or texts that you have in mind so that they are included on the website. You can choose them from a website that you may already have or from Google places.
If you don’t have any, just skip this step.
– Review and edit your information. You will also be asked to add your personal details for people to know you better. The things you will add are a logo and name for the website, your phone number, email address, fax number, and address of the website that you want your website visitors to reach you through. You can also add links to your social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
– Pick a theme for your website. You will be given some theme options for your website and you should choose the design that you feel best fits the website. But you shouldn’t worry too much about this as you can change it later on when the website has already been set up.
– Pick your favorite homepage design. You will also be asked to choose a homepage layout that best matches your website. What you will do here is to look through all the homepage designs and choose the one that has the features you want for your site or one that has most of the features. You can add the rest later on.
Once you have answered all the questions and gone through the steps above, your website will be created with the customizations options that you gave.
And you will get to view the website in a few seconds.
Customizing Your New Website
Now that we have the website set up, we are going to look at how you can make initial customizations to make it more personal and have the kind of features you had planned for.
Since the website created using the Wix ADI tool did more customizations for you compared to the one by the Wix editor, we will be taking a look at how you can customize a website that is made by both options.
Customizing a website built using the Wix editor
As I had mentioned in the previous section, you will be taken to your website’s administration dashboard that you will be using to manage the website.
The dashboard might be a little intimidating on arrival but it is actually easy to navigate than it looks.
1. Removing the homepage code page from your view
The first thing you will see is the homepage code that lets you add code to make changes to the website.
If you know to write code, you can go ahead and write the code for the changes you want. But if you don’t know anything about it, you should seek to remove that section from your view so that you can work with the other provisions that are for beginners.
And to do that, you go to the top of the homepage code page and go to the frame of the page. When you mouse over that page like you are almost going beyond the frame, a symbol like a plus sign (+) will pop up to allow you to move the page however you want.
When that symbol appears, use it to drag the homepage code page down to the bottom-most part of the screen to make it disappear from your immediate view.
2. Increasing the homepage view on the screen
When you bring the homepage down, you should see your homepage much better now, although the view is still small.
To increase the view so that you have enough space to work on, go to your left and you will see a borderline that divides the homepage and the dashboard features.
When you mouse over this line, a plus symbol, just like the other one, will appear and you can drag the line to the far left to increase the homepage view.
Doing this will help you have plenty of space to see your homepage well as you edit it.
3. Customizing areas of your website
If you created your website using the website editor where you did most of the work, here are the remaining aspects of customizations you should work on:
1st customization. The homepage – The first place you want to make sure looks good on your website is the homepage as it makes the first impression when a visitor searches the name of your website.
The idea behind customizing the homepage is to make it more personal and design it in a way that gives the summary of the website and links to almost all the pages and posts on your website.
Change the name of the website to the name you had planned for the website and then look through the whole page and see which features need to be added and which ones should be removed.
Once you have identified them, start by removing the unwanted features and then add the ones you want.
To delete a section of the website, just click on it and it will be highlighted. Then hit the delete button on your keyboard and it will be removed.
To add features, you will click the fat + button on the left, which is between the dashboard features and the homepage and you will open a screen full of features you can add to the homepage.
Select the one you want and add it.
The good thing about Wix is that when you mouse over any feature, you see an image of how it is going to be on your left and the options you have as well as their images so it is easy to get the feature you want and add it.
When you are done customizing it, click on “Save” and your changes will be updated.
2nd customization. Other pages – When you are done with the homepage, you should head over to your about page, contact page, and other pages you have on the website and do the same thing.
When you complete the basic customizations, click on “Save” and then click on “Publish” to make your website go live and get it seen by other people.
Customizing a website built using the Wix ADI took
If you used the ADI tool where your site was made for you based on the answers you gave, you should not have a lot of work to do as far as customizations are concerned.
Here is how you should go about this step:
1st customization. Adding more pages to your website – You should add other essential pages to your website such as the about page, contact page, online store (if you need it), and blog page where you will have all your posts.
To add pages, you only need to go to the top menu and click on it. A site menu editor will appear. Click on the pencil and then choose “Manage pages” to make the edits.
On the left, where the dashboard is, a new dashboard for pages will appear. Go to the bottom and click the “Add a page” button.
You will get options for the kind of pages you can add to your site, and if you click on any, you will also see the various versions of the page, as images, you can use, on your immediate right-hand side from the dashboard.
Go through the pages and then click on the one you love and it will be added for you.
After that, click on “Save” and then “Publish” on your top right corner to make the site live on the web for anyone to view it.
Note: These are not all the customizations that are needed for your site. You may need to further customize it based on your own plan for the website and what you want it to have. What I have shown you is the basic customization that is general.
I encourage you to get familiar with the admin dashboard by clicking around or getting a free tutorial on it on YouTube or Google to help you know your way around Wix so that you make deeper customizations.
What Next After Creating The Website?
When you have gotten the basic foundation of your website established, you should then focus on the growth and taking it to the next level.
The main factors that will help your website grow in a huge way are:
1. Quality – When it comes to the business world, quality speaks volumes for your business. And in the case of your website, you should ensure everything is on top quality. Now for the website to look good and perform at its best, you should consider investing in a good domain name, web hosting, and other quality features that will improve the look and feel of your website.
This is the best time to look through the packages that Wix offers in the subscription plan and see what best fits you. Although a free website is still good to work with, you have very limited abilities with it and you can’t do much of value on it especially if you look forward to profiting from it.
To unlock all the features and capabilities of your site, you should get yourself a package that offers the features you need for your website. Wix gives many pricing plans with different provisions for people with diverse goals. Check out their premium plans based on the type of website you have and want to develop it into and choose a favorable package for yourself.
2. Content creation – Another important element of website success is great content. If you will be running a blog or a website that will need lots of fresh content, you will want to be seriously invested in great content. That means you will need to learn how to write articles for your website type or hire a skilled freelance writer. Also, you should make sure that you are publishing new content every so often. Having new content is not only good for showing your visitors that your website is active but also search engines, which also plays a key role in good rankings in the search engines.
3. Website optimization for users and search engines – The last yet equally important factor as the rest is website optimization. Optimization is all about making sure that your website is playing at its best game and everything in it is as perfect as you can get it. Some of the things you want to optimize on your website are user experience and search engine optimization (SEO).
For users, you should work on having a good theme that is attractive and simple to use as well. Make sure it is easy for any user with any knowledge level to navigate through your website. Offer guidance if you have to. Having an easy to use interface will add you point and people will prefer coming to your site over your competitors who have complicated interfaces.
For search engines, you will need to work on a number of factors like optimizing your posts and pages, optimizing the backend of your website for search engines to crawl your website easily, and rank your content, not to mention working on the authority of the site.
Wiz offers you provisions for good search engine optimization, so pick a plan that has the kind of SEO features you feel are good for your website.
Tips to Make a One-of-a-kind Website
Here are some tips to take your website to the next level:
* Keep improving and evolving the website – For your website dreams to become a reality and an accurate translation of your vision, you need to keep working on it. Keep increasing content, improving the website design, and user experience. By making changes that you feel add some crucial value to your website, you will be able to evolve constantly into something better, something your visitors will love and it will increase their trust in your brand.
* Offer what you are offering on the website in the best way possible – The only way you are going to succeed with your website goals is by doing the best job possible. If you will be running a personal website that you hope to make money with someday, you should be running it better than any other personal website out there. If it is a store, you should also be offering services and products in the best possible way you can think of. Doing it better than anyone else will give you the kind of edge that puts you on top.
* Optimize your website for mobile users – Many people are now accessing the web using their phones more than they do using their computers. Actually, research reports show that mobile users are more than desktop users, that is why even Google is also prioritizing mobile searches. You should also consider making your website mobile-friendly. There are different ways to do that and Wix gives you the tools to do that in the easiest way possible.
* Build a huge brand that is trusted and loved – No matter the type of website you just built and look to develop, you should have the perception of the website as a brand. It will help you take good care of the kind of content you are posting and how you develop the website. And this will result to trust from your visitors and respect for it as a brand. A brand will, later on, pay you big if you build it well.
* Add apps to your site – Consider adding apps to your website for easy user experience and more functionality for your website. Wix allows you to add really useful and cool apps to your site with relative ease, so take advantage of it. Just look through the apps page and figure out which apps would make a great addition to your website and then add them.
And that’s it.
Creating a website with Wix is as easy as that. You don’t need to know how to code or design websites to come up with a good-looking and well-functioning website.
You only need to follow the steps I have provided here and you will be good to go.
I wish you the very best with your website and if at any point you need help with anything related to the website, don’t hesitate to let me know and I will be more than happy to give you a hand. 🙂
Cheers to your new website!
