building the capability
In this section we describe the elements of work that we go through to ensure you get the website and functionality that you need for your business.
Scoping Your Requirements
It's essential to understand what you require from a website project. You may not be sure at the start, so we suggest you do plenty of analysis of how you want your business to function, check out what your competitors are doing and so-on. Here are some things to consider:
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What about e-commerce? Small physical businesses can benefit significantly by improving their reach and diversity with online e-commerce such as bookings, online events and merchandise sales.
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Improving your business management. We set up the difficult bits, but you will be able to respond to clients, see and manage bookings, see payments coming in and so-on – all from your desktop or an app on your phone.
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Consider how you might build in a requirement for flexibility and growth – your website and your online presence always develops as your business grows, so site content and management functionality can be easily expanded in a modular fashion.
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And don't forget to think about the broader business benefits you are aiming for. This is a critical point, so we have dedicated a whole section to discuss it.
System Functionality
So as you start defining your functional requirements, you will want to go through all the types of functionality that is available to you. Here are some of the main ones.
Contact Management
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Gather and build-up contact lists through sales and bookings, contact forms and newsletter subscription forms.
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Setup of automated emails for a wide range of responses and follow-ups.
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Client chat with realtime or delayed response.
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Establish a members area with secure login for clients. Configure to retain payment card and shipping details, or membership details (for clubs), or maybe health and fitness details (for training programmes).
Marketing
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Centralise content creation and management of all your social media channels from your WIX platform if that better suits your business model.
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Blogs including category and comments management and integration with social media channels.
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Email campaigns with templates matched to your website design.
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Integration with third party review platforms (eg Trip Advisor, Trust Pilot) with repeater displays of reviews directly on your website.
Bookings
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Service management and booking for things like beauty treatments to plumbing call-outs.
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Bookings for online services such as courses and webinars.
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Events management and bookings (inc ticket sales) such as music and sporting events.
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Restaurant bookings with time limits, party size limits or exact numbers to your specific table plan.
Sales
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Shopping cart for physical and digital products, or products and printing from drop-shipping suppliers.
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Online food ordering for eat-in, takeaway or delivery.
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Sales of subscriptions for club memberships or monthly resupply such as home hair treatments or coffee beans.
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Sales of online programmes for anything from gym workouts to bookkeeping courses.
Functionality Level C
A larger, more complex site that requires more than six pages and more than three functional elements. You might require restaurant bookings, restaurant menus, events bookings, merch store, a ‘team’ gallery page and a blog. We will work closely with you to keep all these elements rolling effectively. You may need to delegate tasks to different members of your staff.
Functionality Level B
A small website with up to six pages that includes three functional elements such as events bookings, newsletter subscription and a blog. At this level we have to create and manage the functional processes and you will need to contribute to your functional requirements on a continual basis such as planning events and drafting blogs.
Functionality Level A
A single ‘landing’ page with an introduction to your business, a description of your services, and your contact details. This can include a contact form, which is a good way to generate leads. Then answer your contact submissions using chat or email, and send professional proposals and invoices too, all directly from WIX.
Functional Levels
We have to scope out what and how much functionality you need. This allows us to estimate the scale of the solution required and define how much behind-the-scenes management and admin you, and we, will need to do.
To help define the structure required, the size of the website and costs, we group functionality into three different levels.
Website Visual Types
So once we have an idea of what level of functionality you need, we then consider what level of visual complexity is best for you. It might be that a simple static look is right, or you might need something very high-tech. We discuss what level of look your website needs. To help us do this, we categorise the look into three visual types. Click the learn more buttons for plenty of ideas and examples at the three levels.
What About Apps?
There are three main ways we can include Apps into your WIX solution:
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WIX Management Apps – allow you (and your staff) to interact with your WIX functionality and business management tasks on the move, or perhaps on a tablet at your sales counter.
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Pre-designed Customer Apps – a range of pre-designed customer-facing Apps right in WIX that carry out certain functions. They are downloadable from App stores as a generic WIX app, but derive some of their information from your website. WIX FIT is one example where clients download the WIX FIT App but with a link or code from your website. The app is then on their phone but populated with your pages, news, pictures, blog and training courses (from your website). This route is a very cost effective solution and a suggested interim step before perhaps going for a branded App.
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A fully branded App – WIX provide a curated solution if you need a branded App on App Stores. We build your website in the usual way, and construct all the main services within the WIX management systems (eg your fitness courses). Then, as a WIX Agency, we apply on your behalf to WIX who have a dedicated team who then complete the branded app design and put it forward to the major app stores for approval and listing. There are, of course, additional costs for this.
Combining the Two
For planning and pricing, we then talk about a solution being an 'A/1' or maybe a 'C/2' – a roughly defined size and capability of solution. Take a look at the costing section which lays out in table form all the options and a variety of other elements and add-ons that are relevant.
More About the Look
Your website can look any way you like. Here are the general principles:
WIX is not constrained to a few themes. It is infinitely variable in every aspect of design. We can start with a few suggested layouts for you to get some ideas, or you can refer to any other websites you like for inspiration. Then we can chop and change things about, changing colours and fonts, adding images and text to refine your look. Images can be stock, or your own.
You will have access through your WIX dashboard to see the site developing in preview mode (before the site is published). The mockup will have several variations of your ideas on different pages for you to down-select what you like best (with tablet and mobile views of course).
And it’s never too late to make changes. Once a site is published you might change your mind a bit down the line – no problem, we can change it. Over a longer period, clients websites almost always ‘morph’.
Planning
Planning is essential. We start by helping you define what you need. Then we formulate a plan (with you, as a team) and define a programme to roll that plan out.
The plan includes a list of your requirements, and the derived deliverables. We then detail a programme of work and timescales. We set various milestones such as design reviews and launch dates. The plan will also detail some of your responsibilities such as drafting copy and making training time available for you and your staff. The plan also includes a tailored fee structure.
Detailed planning pivots around functionality level and visual type.
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Establish the functionality level (A, B or C) and management tools that you require. This might include:
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The setup and population of major data elements such as store products, portfolio items or restaurant menus.
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Deciding who will manage and respond to things like client bookings, queries, client chat etc.
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Deciding who will write and post blogs.
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Deciding who has admin access to to business planning tools such as staff roster management.
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Deciding how you want to monitor business information such as statistics and revenue through the site.
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[Some of these tasks may require training and establishing the relevant permissions settings for different individuals through the WIX dashboard interface].
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Establish visual type (1, 2 or 3), and then build the following:
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Brand colours, logos and fonts.
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General style, tone, type of images and impact required.
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Pages required and the main website menu.
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What brand messaging and service descriptions you want on your homepage and other significant pages.
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What major client facing functionality do you need such as service bookings or training programmes (part of functionality level).
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The development of your site is a progressive process.
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You will need to consider what type of menu you want and how you want your pages organised. Sub-menus can be used but also it is worth adding buttons with links from a section on a page to relevant information lower down, or on another page.
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Good images are essential for the effectiveness of any website. We have access to a large range of stock images but your own images of your business is clearly a better option. We can advise you of how to take good pictures for your site (you don't need a fancy camera), and we can edit and enhance the pictures you send us right in WIX.
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Adding client interfaces such as newsletter signups and contact forms is always an important consideration. For more complex sites with major functionality elements such as a store or programmes, we will have to work together to build the content but also to design the way it is all presented on your site to achieve maximum effectiveness.
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Considerations and options for selling physical merchandise.
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A conventional business either manufactures stock or buys stock to then sell that stock through their physical store, or by mail order. This can tie up cash, require extensive storage space, require high levels of management effort and be wasteful with unsold stock. Proper e-commerce can really improve selling prospects:
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An online store provides another sales channel, more marketing scope (email shots and Black Friday sales say) and ways of instantly offering incentives such as bundled deals, two-for-one's, free shipping and so-on.
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WIX also provides full integration with large drop-shipping providers such as Modalyst and Printful. This offers significant scope for improved sales efficiency:
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Modalyst offers 10M+ products for sale right across the globe. With your WIX online store you can simply and transparently offer selected items (that suit your business) for sale alongside your own products. The beauty of this is that you hold no stock and don't do any physical management – WIX simply passes each individual order straight to the Modalyst supplier who packs and ships it out direct to your customer. We set all this functionality up for you, including what level of margin you want to add to each sale. The WIX and Modalyst integration then automatically splits the money and pays your preset profit into your bank.
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Printful offers a drop shipping solution for a huge range of printed items such as clothing, homeware, pictures, posters and a whole lot more. The drop shipping 'maths' works the same but we also set you up with a Printful account where you can build and manage a portfolio of your own bespoke printed designs. And again this is transparent in your website store and customer orders are funnelled straight through to be printed and dispatched direct on demand.
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The combined printing/drop shipping solution offers really great benefits to businesses, clubs and charities who's primary activity is not selling products but want to offer clients or members some printed merchandise as part of their business experience without any downstream management commitment or risk of wasted stock. Cafes or clubs for example can offer clothing, pictures and mugs as signifying membership, or as mementos and gifts.
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Merchant systems make the money go round!
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Payments, ticketing, bookings and banking:
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Setup of all your banking details (inc money laundering checks) within WIX. Note that WIX banking and payment systems meet all international payment security requirements. This then enables your site to make revenue payments to your business bank account.
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Setup of merchant payment types to take payments from customers. Normally this is Debit Card, PayPal and Apple Pay.
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Setup of Cart and Secure Checkout functions on your website.
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Setup of Proposals and Invoicing direct from WIX. Depending on your type of business, you may require proposals and invoicing rather than an online checkout.
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Establishing automations such as for order or booking confirmations, event tickets, invoice emails and so-on.
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Shipping of physical products:
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By establishing a good shipping cost structure for your own physical products you can add accurate shipping costs at the checkout.
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Cost structures can include shipping weight, courier service integration, and national and international regions for correct pricing based on your location and customer destination.
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Sales Tax:
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WIX provides a comprehensive and configurable system for managing national and international sales taxes.
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There's always admin...
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When we start, you get an invite to log in to your new WIX portal. Once logged in, you will see your main WIX dashboard.
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From this dashboard we both jointly construct the general structure and add all the admin information required. This would be things like your general business details, bank integration and ID approval (money laundering checks) and so on.
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From your WIX dashboard you will be able to access all the systems you need to have a management role with. This would be things like contacts list, store products, course content, blogs and so on.
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From this panel you will also be able to preview the early stages of your website design. We will work on the design this end, and then every now and then we'll talk you through the site’s development whilst viewing the layout preview together.
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You can download the WIX Owners App onto your mobile devices. Using your WIX login you can then access all the main admin features that support your daily business. This App is extremely well developed, runs smoothly and once you’re up and running, enables you to do about 80% of your admin from wherever you are. It can be set up with lots of notifications too for things like messages and bookings, so you can react swiftly and keep your customers happy.
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You know what Search Engines are (Google), and you may have heard about Search Engine Optimisation. And of course, AI is coming fast. Here are some important points.
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How you write the text on your website has a big impact on how your website performs in search engines. If required, we can help you with copy writing.
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As well as good messaging to attract clients when they see your site, we have to make sure that messaging, layout, images and so-on are all done to certain conventions to make sure it can get found effectively. This is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – we optimise your site for 'the google bots'.
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AI is now integrated into WIX in three ways:
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WIX has embedded AI for text generation.
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WIX has embedded AI for image generation.
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WIX has embedded AI for layout optimisation.
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Google is about to introduce major changes into the Google search functionality called Search Generative Experience (SGE):
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This means google will work like Chat GPT where a searcher asks longer questions and Google sends back longer answers and then makes recommendations for websites that might be of interest. WIX are rolling out new systems to optimise this for WIX sites.
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As a WIX Partner, we design and build our websites on WIX Studio for Agencies.
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As a WIX Partner we have access to a higher level of WIX functionality than is available to individual users. This includes:
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Website building using WIX Studio Editor.
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The WIX Studio Editor is a far more comprehensive website design platform than the standard editor provided for individual users. It allows the use of a huge range of advanced design tools, has significant AI assistance built in and provides much better control over scaling and breakpoint layouts (desktop/tablet/mobile).
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A centralised client management system that enables us to manage SE Design, including all of our clients and all of their websites, from a single enterprise level WIX portal.
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Expanding on the Details
Below we are using an accordion (cool website stuff), to lay out more of the detail. Please take a look if you are very keen, but don't worry, we can go through it all with an online meeting, or in person over a nice coffee (on us).
Defining The Deliverables
Once you have a clear idea of what it is you require, we then jointly work towards a list of deliverables. The list of deliverables will be longer than your list of requirements, because there will be various 'enablers' needed, such as the setup of merchant services to deal with money, the setup of email and chat systems, integration with social media platforms – and many more.
But to help us scope out the scale of what's required, and price the work too, we break down the deliverables into two parts – system functionality and the visual type of website that you need.
Multilingual Websites
There are certain types of business where a multilingual capability is essential. This might be for an import/export company or perhaps a club that's based in a diverse community. And it's an important consideration in such situations because going multilingual changes the whole dynamic of your offering – giving your multinational clients a much stronger sense that you are inclusive and providing for their needs.