Are you considering moving your website from Wix to Showit?

This post is going to walk you through why that could be a great move for your business and how to make it happen.

We’ll use a client that I recently helped move from Wix to Showit, Life By Design Coaching as a case study throughout this post. 

Like a lot of entrepreneurs, Brandy – the founder of Life By Design – started out with a Wix website. She explains:

“I created a Wix website from scratch at the start of my business, but I’d outgrown it and needed a more sophisticated platform to share my offerings.”

Do you feel the same about your current website?

Psst: This post contains some affiliate links, which means you save money and I might get a small commission. So we both win!

Signs You’ve Outgrown Your Wix Website

• You’re embarrassed to give out your web address (and send people to your Instagram account instead)

• You need a more sophisticated platform to present your brand and offerings

• You want a site that’s easier to navigate so visitors can more easily find what they’re looking for

• You’re ready to provide visitors with a better mobile experience (after all more than 50% of all web traffic is on mobile devices these days!)

Why Move Away From Wix?

Ok, so like Brandy, you know you’re ready for a new and improved website that better suits your business and serves your customers. 

You could opt for a Wix makeover, but here are some reasons to consider leaving the platform:

• Wix provides a very poor mobile experience and there’s no getting around it

• Although it’s a lot easier to use than WordPress, it still locks you into an inflexible grid-style design

• Wix relies on “apps” to do basic things – like adding popups to your website – this costs you more money and weighs down your website

• If you don’t want to use apps, you need to use code and who the heck has time to learn and wrestle with that?

If Wix isn’t the best option for leveling up your website, what is? Well I’m so glad you asked!

Why Switch from Wix to Showit?

In my opinion (after working with Wix, WordPress and Squarespace as a designer), Showit is the absolute best website platform for entrepreneurs. Here’s why:

• Showit is very easy to use – especially if you’re familiar with Canva or Adobe’s products. It’s truly drag and drop (unlike Wix) so you have complete design freedom

• You don’t need code, apps or plugins to create a beautiful, powerful website. You can add a drop shadow, create a popup or build a form with the native builder in just a couple of clicks.

• You can completely customize (and optimize) the mobile version of your website, which creates a way better user experience than is possible with Wix (and that’s good for SEO)

• There are hundreds (maybe even thousands) of free and paid templates to suit your brand and business. Check out the Wild Rose template shop for example! Or, grab the template we used for Life By Design’s website from Tonic (it’s called Paloma).

• Great on page SEO with helpful guides for writing your page titles and meta descriptions. You can also add SEO titles and alt text for images, which helps your SEO and user experience.

• Showit integrates with WordPress if you want to have a blog or membership, which again is great for SEO.

• The Showit help desk is at your fingertips with an in-app chat. Plus there’s a Facebook community of Showit users and designers to help (and cheer) you along.

Have I convinced you yet? If you want to see for yourself, you can play around with Showit’s website builder here. No need to sign up, login or anything. Just pick a template and explore the possibilities!

How to Switch from Wix to Showit

If you’ve decided Showit is the right alternative to Wix for you and your business then hooray and congratulations!! 

To start the process of switching from Wix to Showit, you first need to decide if you want to go with custom design or DIY your site with a template.

If you work with a designer, they’ll build out your website and take care of moving you over from Wix. You can see the details of my custom design packages, for example, here.

But if you want to go the DIY route, here’s what you’ll need to do:

Keep your Wix website up as you create your new site on Showit.

Find the right template for your business – they range from totally free to pricey. They’re also going to require an investment of time from you, depending how much customization you want and need to do. I offer a template customization package that includes helping you find the perfect template for your business – this is how Brandy and I worked together. You can learn more here.

Once you’ve found (and purchased) the perfect template, create a Showit account. Showit offers a free 2-week trial, but you can use this link to get a whole month for free so you have plenty of time to get your website up and running.

Load your Showit template into your account and start customizing it with your text and images. You can also change the template’s colours and fonts (if you want to) and do custom design if you’re keen.

When your new Showit website is ready to publish, it’s time to choose your Showit subscription and pay for your first month.

Then you need to connect your domain. You can find the instructions here. And if you want a blog, you’ll need to get in touch with the Showit help desk so they can set it up for you. This can take a few days so factor that into your launch plans!

Once that’s done it’s time to change your DNS settings and point your domain away from Wix and to your new Showit website. Contrary to what you might hear, you DO NOT have to move your domain away from Wix. (But of course you can if you want to). You just have to change the DNS settings and Wix doesn’t make it difficult, which I’ve seen some designers say. This just isn’t true.

DNS changes can take a few hours to take effect so keep that in mind.

When you’ve made these changes, ask Showit to set up an SSL certificate for your domain (this is free!) through the chat. This can also take a few hours to take effect.

Once that’s all done your new Showit website should be live – yippee! It’s almost time to celebrate. But first…

If you have a business email account with Google set up through your Wix subscription, you need to ask Wix to transfer hosting completely to Google. This is because it’s tied to your Wix subscription which you need to cancel (this is separate from your domain, if you have it with Wix). 

You also need to set up Google Analytics and add the tag to your Showit website (instructions here). To help prevent a dip in SEO and your site ranking, you should submit a new sitemap to Google Search Console (and you’ll need to submit 2 separate maps if you have a WordPress blog – learn more here).

Showit can migrate blog posts from WordPress and Squarespace, but not Wix. So after your WordPress blog is set up, you’ll need to move your posts over manually (i.e. copy from Wix and paste in WordPress).

Wow, that was a lot of work! But I promise, it’s worth it. Here’s why…

What to Expect When You Move From Wix to Showit

After moving her website to Showit, one of Brandy’s favorite things is that “it’s easier to navigate and presents content in an easy-to-use format, it’ll be easier for potential clients to learn about my services and get excited about coaching.” This is amazing for building a thriving business!

Other things you can expect when you move over from Wix to Showit:

• You’re going to have a website that better showcases your brand and your offerings. And that means you can more easily connect with and book clients
• This means you’ll be excited about sharing your website with the world
• You’ll have an easier to navigate website, which will help visitors quickly find what they’re looking for 
• The mobile version of your website will offer a superb user experience that makes it easy to see your expertise and how you can help (so you’ll book more clients)
• It’s normal to see a temporary drop in ranking when you change website platforms. But submitting a new sitemap will help with this!

I hope this helps if you’re considering moving from Wix to Showit. If you have any questions, pop them into the comments or send me an email – I’m here to help!

And if you’d like to work together on moving your site to Showit, please get in touch. As Brandy said about working together:

“Michele is a fantastic ally and asset! Work with her!”

Happy designing,

Michele xo