WIX Competitors
pageBuzz.com is a direct
competitor of WIX.com although we are very different companies
and offer very different services.
I think WIX offers a much more
flashy product and much easier to build a website with more
animation and pizazz. While pageBuzz.com is more structural and
we concentrate of functionality, ecommerce and advanced
programming.
When I was younger I was
obsessed with fishing and would spend all my money on fishing
tackle and the latest fishing lures.
My dad always said, "fishing
lures catch fishermen not fish".
And for the most part he, as
always, was right. I would spend all my money buying flashy lures
because I liked them not that I ever caught fish with them.
And that is the problem with
WIX built website it is all about impressing the website owner
and not about actually doing something for them or their business.
WIX lures people in with fancy
graphics and animations but provide very little in the form of
website programming.
In fact, in many cases, they
don't even provide DNS services asking customers to use outside
name servers to direct websites to IP addresses rather than to
their network.
To me, when a technology
company avoids having technology that is a good reason to avoid
them.
Another inherent problem with
WIX is the fact that they are so FLASH based for the simple
reason the FLASH website are invisible t other search engines.
I demonstrated this to several
customers moving from WIX. I showed them that they had 1 page
indexed in Google, Yahoo and Bing and that was the home page only
and the only data in the searches was a text blurb at the bottom
that mentioned it was hosted at WIX.com.
Search engines don't
read FLASH, so when they crawl the website, they see blank pages.
That is also a problem with
users since not all browsers support the current flash versions.
When I tried to do research to
with this page I found all the pages on the WIX website and on my
computer a 3 years old browser running windows XP the pages came
up blank.
This has been my gripe with
WIX from day one, their sites just don't work on too many users
computers and people don't understand how that is problem.
If 99% of your market
speaks English, you would not build your website in Spanish
because your customers wont understand it.
So not only will you NOT get
some natural search engine traffic, people wont be able to search
and find you, and if they do get to your website, 30% of them
might see a blank page.
Now, that has worked for WIX's
free website hosting model since free users are not really
worried about how many people can actually see the website.
But for businesses this is
about the worst scenario you could have. It completely defeats
the reason for having a website in the first place.
WIX has been very Successful
to date raising $65 million in venture capital funding and
earning $60 million a year and that is a place I would certainly
like to be.
But they fill a market segment
that I don't want to be in. One where 3.5 million users don't
need their websites, don't have much business and wont be around
very long. Of course they can mitigate their massive customer
attrition rates with heavy radio and TV advertising and stay
strong.
But just because
Disney is a great successful popular company does not mean you
should use them for your website hosting.
WIX just does not
offer what most businesses need.
Companies like Yahoo acquire
websites like GeoCities because of their popularity. But in 2009
Yahoo closed the website with over 38 million user built websites
because it was costing them money.
Now, that is considerably
larger than WIX and it was shut down because in the long run,
those entertainment personal pages just don't pay the bills.
Now WIX seems to have fond a
formula that is working at least I have to surmise that from the
$60 million a year in earnings. But if it is costing more than
that to run it, it does not matter if you earn a billion.
Like the saying goes:
"I
will show you how to make a million dollars. It is very
simple, start with two million."
Unfortunately for WIX when I
mentioned that many of my customers left to use WIX it was always
for one reason, they had FREE hosting at WIX, something we do not
offer.
Now, that is not really the
way to make money when people are leaving something they pay $10
a month for to save money. Any real business rebuilding a website
on a new host would never waste the time to save $120 a year and
give up the ability to sell, live phone support ad all the
programming we offer.
On the flip side, people
moving from WIX wanted more than WIX offered. They wanted
ecommerce and help working on their websites. They wanted pages
that search engines would read.
Now, I do understand
WIX does have some HTML based websites as well, but on my 3
year old browser, I can't find them because I cant view the
main WIX pages. But I know there are there someplace, so I
can't say all of their websites are invisible to the searches.
But they are at last invisible to me or very well hidden.
I think WIX is a
great success story and I have to respect the people involved.
But we really are two very different companies.
They are more about popularity
and flash while we are more about functionality, ecommerce and
business.
Their customers want to
impress people with fancy graphics, our customers what to sell
people stuff.
Their customers are mostly
freeloaders with personal pages while our customers will gladly
pay $20 a month for a professional business website with live
phone support and all the tools they need to keep their business
online.
I don't think we have much
customer overlap because our products and philosophies are so
different. They are an entertainment company and we are a
business services company.
Sure, if I
wanted to get $65 million in venture capital and turn
pageBuzz.com into a Godaddy or WIX.com I could. The
difference is, I don't have to because we are profitable,
successful and enjoy what we do.
There is no
value to me in having a $100 million dollar gross with $100
million dollar liability and make the same money I make now
as a net profit while doing 10 times the work.
I think for businesses
considering using pageBuzz.com as a WIX Competitor
they have to consider what they need from their website. If they
want a fancy graphic based website that only a fraction of their
market will ever see, WIX is a great option.
If they want a website that
can deliver customers, advertise and run programs then pageBuzz.com
is the better option.
If someone wants a free
website, WIX is better.
But is someone needs
support, ecommerce, and plans on the website being part of their
business, there really is no comparison between WIX and pageBuzz.
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