But who cares? I don’t think their users do, and Wix is growing.
Everyone here is disgusted by it because, it is in fact disgusting from the perspective of a developer.
I spent a few hours with with wix earlier this year while needing help a family quickly get a funeral site up they could hopefully have some chance of maintaining themselves. Getting started is actually pretty slick. The designer software is easy to use and gets a basic decent looking site up extremely fast.
Towards the end of the few hours I was hitting roadblocks left and right. Artificial limitations, edge cases not supported, things that could have been fixed on a real site trivially.
Still, what they’ve built, what it in turn allows pretty nontechnical people to build quickly, is impressive. I think it may have been possible to do better on performance and flexibility without compromising for other users. My guess is it’s not mostly because they are just not obsessing on that part much.
> But who cares? I don’t think their users do, and Wix is growing.
Do Wix users even realize? If they're building their own website then they probably have enough of the javascript cached that they don't realize the performance issues.
For other end users though, they care, they just don't know what's wrong or they can't articulate the problem. They think their computer is getting to slow, or the networks bad, or they have a virus. They'll use vague terms like that because they don't know there's 20MB of javascript running. If a wix site is slow then they're more likely to blame MS or dell or their ISP than to realize wix is the problem.
I've found that many users of Wix and (shitty) Wordpress themes don't care, and are very happy to get a site for a fraction of the cost to get it made 'professionally' (or free, if they just do everything themselves).
I've also found that there's been a steady uptick in clients who are having some success with/through their site, and who suddenly do start caring, for all the reason that we are all aware of (performance affecting SEO, bad mobile experience, the 'visual page builder' not being able to do what they want, etc.).
While it's not always fun work, I do think there's a huge market there for 'people like us'.
I'm not sure what a good analogy would be in other businesses, but perhaps it's a bit like someone with a limited budget starting a cafe with IKEA furniture, finding success, and now having both the need and (some) means to actually buy furniture that can handle the demands of cafe use.
And that's not even considering the huge number of potential customers whose Wordpress site got hacked and who need a solution NOW.
What I like most about this situation is that it's not even entirely bad. Perhaps sometimes it does make sense to start a bar with IKEA furniture because the chance of success is so small. I honestly tell many potential clients to not bother paying me for a good, fast site because all they really need at this point is a decent-ish Wordpress theme or Wix/SquareSpace site.
EDIT: I'm not saying Wix specifically would be an option I would suggest to clients. My experience with it hasn't been too good, and I'm sure there's similar and better options.
Since this is at a beta testing stage, I would like believe that they will address the performance issues.
In the past, it's been said that Wix has shitty SEO, so they tackled it head on and improved it several levels of magnitude.
Putting aside the performance issues for a moment, I think WixCode introduces a lot of potential for web designers and coders alike. There are a lot of benefits, including cloud hosting, DDoS protection, impressive applications market, etc... All with zero code and no headache. I would love that peace of mind back in the days.
Now, they're taking on the developer market, which is a very demanding crowd. I hope they can live up to the high standards.
Bottom line, I wouldn't rush to decide on the fate of this product just yet.
On the other hand, I've been known to be overoptimistic, so...
I have learned that when I load a site on my mobile and it pauses like this, it is going to be as fat as fuck and eat my data cap. I cancel that shit immediately.
Everyone here is disgusted by it because, it is in fact disgusting from the perspective of a developer.
I spent a few hours with with wix earlier this year while needing help a family quickly get a funeral site up they could hopefully have some chance of maintaining themselves. Getting started is actually pretty slick. The designer software is easy to use and gets a basic decent looking site up extremely fast.
Towards the end of the few hours I was hitting roadblocks left and right. Artificial limitations, edge cases not supported, things that could have been fixed on a real site trivially.
Still, what they’ve built, what it in turn allows pretty nontechnical people to build quickly, is impressive. I think it may have been possible to do better on performance and flexibility without compromising for other users. My guess is it’s not mostly because they are just not obsessing on that part much.