
UX Lessons from Weebly - steve-benjamins
http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/blog/ux-lessons-from-weebly
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mbesto
Steve - general comment about your website. Good site and great reviews. I
refer people to website builders all of the time (I know the HN crowd will
probably frown on that comment). Good to see someone has taken the time to do
a thorough review of all of them.

One thing you might want to add to your reviews is "ease of sharing". For the
non-technically inclined (your audience) being able to share content is pretty
big and is one of the major reasons I tell people to stay far far away from
Wix. Example: [http://imgur.com/TS1Z2Vq](http://imgur.com/TS1Z2Vq) No images,
no content, etc. Not to mention, from a technical perspective Wix is a
nightmare.

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steve-benjamins
Thanks, I appreciate the comment :)

Interesting point- ease of sharing is not something I had investigated too
closely before. Thanks for sharing.

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franciscop
It actually looks quite nice. Does it allow for further html edition? If so,
is the html output _semantic_? While most editors' html is gibberish, so is
the interface, so maybe Weebly also got this right

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steve-benjamins
Yup, Weebly allows you edit HTML. Some (outdated) documentation showing the
HTML editor is available here:
[http://themedocs.weebly.com/index.html](http://themedocs.weebly.com/index.html).

Weebly's markup is good- especially compared to most website builders markup
with poor markup (as you pointed out). Wix probably has some of the worst
markup among website builders.

For reference, here's an example Wix website:
[http://s99433.wix.com/stevebenjamins](http://s99433.wix.com/stevebenjamins)
and here's an example Weebly website:
[http://weeblyreviewed.weebly.com/](http://weeblyreviewed.weebly.com/). You
can check out the markup using your console.

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buckbova
Do you do okay with click throughs via share-a-sale?

[http://www.shareasale.com/](http://www.shareasale.com/)

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deedubaya
If you don't know how web pages work, what pixels and padding and color values
mean, all of these solutions suck. Small business owners, students, and even
"computer savy" people have a hard time with this.

> Look how easy Weebly is to use compared to these other implementations!

Weebly isn't a joy to use. It's just easier to use than most of it's
competitors, which is what this article focuses on.

There is room for improvement here...

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steve-benjamins
I don't understand your comment?

To be clear: not all website builders suck. Weebly and Squarespace are two
examples of very good website builders.

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zomgbbq
You left out Squarespace - whose site editor is amazing. Was this on purpose
or just an accidental ommission?

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steve-benjamins
Not sure I understand?

The article is an in-depth look at Weebly. The bad examples are meant to show
how easily a website builder's interface can get ugly. Squarespace wasn't
included as a bad example because it has an excellent interface. In fact
Squarespace and Weebly are the only website builders I've given a perfect
score to in my website builders guide.

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kipple
How do you feel about Webflow? I haven't used it personally but from what I've
seen (watching over shoulders) it is more technical than most builders but
very solid. The interface actually reminds me of Weebly, like expert-mode
Weebly.

~~~
steve-benjamins
Unfortunately I haven't spent enough time in Webflow yet to say. But it seems
thoughtfully designed. I'll have to do a review of it soon!

~~~
kipple
That's very fair. I look forward to it! I enjoy your reviews so far, the trend
of legitimately useful sitebuilders is interesting. I yearn for a return of
the geocities days, when everyone was pumping out lame websites instead of
social network profiles.

