Ask HN: What in wix/square space do dislike most?

[mebr]

If you have have built a website or tried to with Wix or Squarespace what did you find most annoying?

I've been working on a new product to build websites, and I'm going to start the second iteration of development. Your answer can help a lot.

I'm mostly interested in targeting the market for simple website builders for the non-tech-savvy. Hence the mention of these two services that I think own a large part of this market.

[trcollinson]

The problem I have with it, and I would imagine a good percentage of people who frequent Hacker News, is that I know how to build websites, and Wix, Squarespace, etc. just slow me down more than speed me up. Some of this may be psychological. But I feel like no matter what was built, this would be the case.

For example, my son was required to use one of these builders to make a site for his English class over the weekend. He wanted to connect up a simple link in the homepage to an about me page. Simple, in a static website this would be an <a> with appropriate href and such. But with a site builder you had to know which box to go to. You had to have already made the about me page so that the site builder knew how to link up. Etc etc etc. A task that takes me 3 seconds took 10 minutes.

Additionally, as someone who works for companies for a living, I get calls from potential clients that say "I want my Squarespace to do X, Y, and Z, and Squarespace doesn't let me do it. Can you make it do it?" Well, no. I can build you a site that does that, but I can't make Squarespace do something it doesn't do.

These site builders aren't bad at all. Non-technical people use them successfully all of the time. But I am definitely not your target audience.

[mebr]

Thank you for the insightful comment. I'm not sure you're not my target audience. In summary I gather you find the extremely rigid system of these builder inconvenient. I guess you had to consult the docs to figure our how to create that link for your son, and a good chunk of that 10 minutes was spent on this. Am I correct?

I'm thinking if my builder can make a software engineer build website quicker with a high level of abstraction that's exclusively mutual with others being able to do so. I've been researching intuitive interfaces, as my hypothesis is that the interface is the bottleneck. Thank you again for your comment, it is helpful!

[urlaunched]

Both are good if you want a quick start & temporary solution or as a landing page for your all. But in a long run it is better to have a custom website.

[mebr]

I have heard this opinion from some other people as well. I'm wondering what are the particular needs that call for a custom website vs. staying with wix/squarespace or another similar service?

[urlaunched]

I would say custom design, branding, and also heard that wix/squarespace are ranked lower in terms of SEO.

[mebr]

This definitely resonates with some people who have left such services and hired a web designer.