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Wix vs Web Developers
Since anyone can build websites with services like Wix or Squarespace, the question is whether we still need web developers. Here's why we DO!
Recently, I was approached by a student who asked me the following question:
With services like Wix - do we still need web developers and is learning web development still useful?
That's a very interesting question in my opinion!
Because it's true - with services like Wix or Squarespace it's very easy to build a website for your business. You don't need to know HTML, CSS or JavaScript and you certainly also don't need any advanced knowledge on frameworks or anything like that.
Hence you can build web sites with little effort (or at least with little to no web dev knowledge) and grow your business.
Sounds promising, right?
And it's true! At least for some businesses and some kinds of websites.
What Wix Is Really Good At
Wix is awesome if you need a landing page or if you need a "porfolio-like" web page.
You'll find dozens of official Wix Templates that are pretty much all built for such kind of websites.
And of course for a good reason!
Because for a lot of businesses, you just need such a website. You just need a page where your customers can find you, can learn more about you and your services and where your customers then can reach out to you.
Most "offline businesses" probably just need this kind of web page (e.g. car shops, offline retailers, doctor's offices). And some remote/ online companies also might not need anything beyond that (e.g. consultancies, peer-to-peer coaching sites).
With Wix and similar services, it's then very easy to build a great website for your business and share all the information you want to pass to your customers.
It's actually even possible to build a web shop! At least a basic one.
Things Wix Is Not As Good At
But Wix can't be used for everything.
Whenever you need more than just such a portfolio-like webpage, whenever you need a very high degree of customization and especially in cases where your main business and product is a web service, you won't be able to build this just with services like Wix.
Consider "products" like YouTube, Facebook, Udemy or web apps like Google Docs.
You won't be able to build this with Wix, Squarespace etc. You need a web developer for this.
Because here, the website is not just a site to share some information with your visitors. It's instead a complete service, a complete application running in the browser.
That's simply not what Wix etc. are built for. You can't just "drag and drop" such a service. You need tons of complex logic behind the scenes and you also typically have non-trivial user interfaces. Both requires actual code to be written.
In addition, you of course also might want to build a website on your own (or hire a web developer) if you want complete control over the site. If you, for example, want to be able to customize and optimize everything. Or if you want a very specific design.
Summary
Long story short, Wix (and Squarespace etc) is great for this kind of websites:
Landing pages
Porfolio pages where you present yourself and or your product
Basic online shops
Info pages where you want to share information with your customers
You need a web developer for pages like this:
Web applications (e.g. Udemy, Google Docs)
Digital products which are "embedded" in your Website (e.g. YouTube, Facebook)
Specific designs or optimizations
And last but not least, it's also simply fun to build web pages. And you can save money if you are able to build any kind of page on your own :).
