Weebly isn’t as flexible as Wix and isn’t, as sophisticated as Squarespace but it’s easier to use than both. Now, it’s not that Weebly isn’t flexible or sophisticated at times, it can be both. Instead, it’s just that what sets me apart from its competitors is its simple, Clear interface. In this blog, I’m going to review everything you need to know about Weebly.
1. Ease Of Use
I’ve always been impressed with how Weebly manages to stay easy to use. Even as they add new features, the interface remains simple and Clean. Pages are built-in Weebly by dragging elements from the side drawer into your page, pretty simple right now. Let’s try something a bit more complicated. Let’s try editing that background image.
Notice how Weebly moves portions of the interface in and out and replaces them with the background image editor. This does two things; it opens things up so that we could see the background image unobstructed. It also keeps the interface from getting cluttered by only showing options related to background image editing. When we’re done, we click save and the normal interface moves back in. Weebly uses this trick again with the form builder when you begin editing a form Weebly neatly replaces the elements in the side drawer with the form Builder elements. You might not even notice this happening when you use Weebly. But it’s these details that make something easy to use.
Another trick Weebly uses is spotlighting. Basically, Weebly will focus your attention on the task at hand by dimming the rest of the website, for example, to edit the footer, you click into the footer and it dims the rest of the interface. Now, it’s clear that you can drag elements into the footer and not the rest of the website. When you’re done, you click save and the editor goes back to normal.
2. App Centre
Weebly provides a wide selection of four elements that you can add to your page. Text, photo galleries, products, forms, and more. But most website builders also offer these elements. The app centers let you add additional more unusual elements and features to your Weebly website. For example, the multi-language app, lets you add pages in different languages, that users can swap between. The paid members app, lets you create a paid subscription on the membership site. For example, if you’re selling an online course. The simple table app lets you add a table element for building a sophisticated table. Instead, the app center makes it easy for users to just add the features that they need. There is one thing that bothers me about the app Centre. There is no MailChimp or Constant Contact app. MailChimp and Constant Contact are popular email newsletter providers and I imagine many Weebly users would like to grow their mailing list on the website with MailChimp or Constant Contact. Unfortunately, I believe Weebly has not included these apps because they compete with Promote, Weebly’s own email newsletter software. So, in order to get users to use their own email newsletter software. It seems like they make it more difficult to integrate with competing companies. That’s disappointing.
3. Theme
Weebly offers around 70 themes, which is less than Wix and about the same as Squarespace, the Weebly themes are better than Wix and not quite as good as Squarespace. Here’s a couple of example themes. All themes are responsive, which means they work well on mobile devices.
4. Customizing the Color
Customizing the Color used in the themes is limited you only get to choose one color and that color is applied in several different places. For example, supply to the color buttons and the active navigation, which weird is that, you can’t set a different color for the button and the navigation. Instead, you’re stuck with one color applied in two places. I also wasn’t able to change the color of my footer without editing code, which feels like an unnecessary limitation.
5. E-commerce
Weebly has been aggressively building up its e-commerce features in recent years. Probably because they were recently acquired by Square, Squares are a payments provider company. Because this really offers far better e-commerce than most website builders. Weebly supports a long list of e-commerce features, you can sell gift cards, add customer accounts deal with abandoned shopping carts, set in-store pickup as a shipping option, and a bunch more. As usual, what’s sets Weebly apart is the way they make e-commerce easy to use.
6. Email Editor
The email editor is the easiest email editor I’ve seen on an e-commerce website, builder, anyone could use it.
7. Product Editor
The product editor is also clear and easy to understand. One downside to note is that you can’t customize the style of the checkout page as you could with something like Square Space.
8. Pricing
Weebly offers six plans, the free plan and the connect plan aren’t worth using because they include an ad that’s pretty intrusive. The Pro Plan is the plan we’re using for most websites. The reason to upgrade to the business plan is priority and phone support. You’ll want to use the business or performance plans. If you need e-commerce. Though the other plans do include Commerce. The business and performance plans are the only plan that doesn’t add a three percent transaction fee on top of sales. And they’re also the only plans, to host the checkout on your domain name.
9. Domain Names
Domain Names on Weebly are more expensive than you would find at a domain name provider such as Namecheap, Weebly charges $19.95 per year for a domain name. Well, Namecheap costs around $15 per year. On top of that, we charge $10 per year for domain privacy, and Namecheap includes domain privacy for free. Basically, domain privacy keeps your contact information private.
Conclusion
To conclude Weebly is easy to use and a sophisticated feature, it’s an impressive mix. If there’s a downside though, it’s the limited theme customization. Thanks for reading and best of luck building your website.
