Conventional wisdom says that every creative content creator needs a website. A traditional website connected to a domain name you register, then point to a web host, and build into a customer friendly resource containing every bit of information about you and your work. It’s the way I had drilled into me since building my first website in 1996 when I was hand-coding the html and scanning images at a computer lab at the University of Iowa.
For most of these almost 30 years I have complied with that conventional wisdom, spending countless hours and dollars building websites that ultimately never gained the foot traffic to justify the expenses involved.
From November 2018 until mid October 2022, I used wix.com for my web hosting with domains using my full professional name that i keep registered at all times, even when they are parked and not pointing to a website (as is the case today).
Wix of course has a reputation for being easy to use. Certainly it was easier to use than my previous website host, intuit. Indeed, the basic tools for site building there are more or less straight forward. It’s understandable to me why so many people swear by it. I no longer do.
The reason why starts with how you get to your website editor. It’s not enough to sign into your account and then go to editor.wix.com. All that does right now is take you to a general admin screen that is mostly focused on web traffic statistics. My statistics showed fewer than 5 visitors in the average month – which wix constantly pointed out to me. To actually edit your site, you have to click on “edit site” in a space near the upper right corner. That in turn opens a new tab in your browser that then has to load separately.
Loading takes more than a minute, no matter how fast your internet service is. it’s very tedious.
Last week, the site editor decided not to load for me.
Thinking this was an update or odd error, I waited, attempting 2-10 times every morning for about a week. After 4 days of not being able to get in, i decided to contact customer service for help. What happened next, combined with my poor visitor stats, made me decide to take down my site and return to this blog on wordpress, a blog I’ve kept since 2013.
Wix doesn’t have live customer support. No chat. No email. No telephone. Their “customer support” is a series of web bots that are designed to replace real people and do it extremely poorly. Artificial intelligence has limits. Wix’s use of AI to completely replace people with absolutely no way of contacting a real person makes it almost hostile towards anyone who needs help.
Who wants to talk endlessly to a machine, especially a machine that only pops up the same non-solutions to your questions and problems?
Even in web design, people are not replaceable. We need people to creatively solve problems, to notice patterns and issues that computers miss.
While yes, there is a twitter account for wix and a “helpline” twitter where a person responds to you, I found that person no more helpful than the bloody machines.
My end result: my wix website editor wasn’t loading and was never going to load for me again.
If you cannot keep your website updated, there is no point in having it.
Just as important: because of the very slow loading speed of that editor, I had to pay for a 500 MBS home internet plan – at the premium price you might expect. My hosting plan was also up for renewal – at a cost of almost $300 per two year term (which gives a discounted rate over paying monthly). $300 to host a website that no one goes to and that I cannot keep updated that requires I pay over $100 per month for my home internet service. That’s a lot of money invested in something with absolutely no financial benefit.
And so I cancelled my wix hosting plan – I can’t delete it until the end of November when the term is completely up. But it won’t renew now. No more money to wix. I parked my two domains. Then I called my home internet provider and downgraded my service.
My home internet monthly fee is now less than half of what it was before. This is a huge and continuous savings.
By following conventional wisdom, I was spending money on much more internet service and speed than i wanted or needed. Having downgraded substantially, I find my day to day internet experience is undiminished. I am now only paying for what i genuinely need. In this time of massive cost of living increases, getting rid of wix and downgrading my internet service is one of the best things I’ve done for myself in a very long time.
My takeaway to authors from this: you do not need a branded website until you are a household name. Until people know about you so well that they organically type in your name to google and actively look for you on the internet, there is no point investing that much money.
That doesn’t mean you should not set up a blog or accounts on soundcloud, bookbub, or social media. But it does mean that your better investment is in going to where the readers and listeners are shopping rather than creating a storefront where they come to you.
I had a beautiful website. It was well designed and lavish in its useful content. But no one went there. No one saw that content. If no one stops into your store, it doesn’t matter how wonderful you make your store, how interactive or fun, or beautiful it is. People have to go there in order for it to count. I wasted $$$$ making that website, that online storefront before people knew me enough to go there.
Will I build another someday? Absolutely. But first you have to know me better and love my work enough to make that investment a good one.
Laurel A. Rockefeller 