Hello everyone, and welcome to another WIX tutorial video.
This is David A. Cox with Tech Talk America, and in this tutorial video, I want to show
all of you how to navigate the WIX platform.
As you can see here, I’ve opened up one of their templates.
Let’s say I want to start to make changes to some of these pages.
Well, the first thing I need to do is course go into them.
The way you do that is through the navigation menu that you’ll see here at the top left
of my screen.
Right now, we’re on the Home page.
If I want to switch over to the About page, I can just click.
Next, I want to go over the different menu options you see here on the left-hand side.
We’ll get to the items at the top later on.
Let’s start with the Menus and Pages option.
This is where you can go to do things like, for example, reorder pages.
For example, right now, Services comes before Gallery.
If I want to swap them, it’s as easy as dragging and dropping them.
You’ll also notice that to the right-hand side of all of these pages we have these three
little dots.
When you click on that, it gets you access to each page’s settings.
Now, some of these you’re going to find are actually repeated, but some of the options
you will find here listed below.
Let’s go right now into the main Settings tab.
Here we have the current name of this page.
If we want to change it, we can literally just type right over it.
You’ll also see here we have an option to hide any of these pages from the menu.
On the next tab, we can change the layout.
Of course, the standard web layout is to have a header and footer on every page, but sometimes
you don’t want that.
If you want to turn that off, this is where you can go for that option.
For some of you, this is going to be a good feature; for others of you, you may not need
it, but here we have access to permissions for each individual page.
The default of course is to make it public so that everyone can see it, but in some cases
you might want to password protect ta page.
If that’s the case, you can just go right here and then add in whatever password you
want.
If you want a page that’s maybe just available for employees, you can give them their own
separate password.
Members.
If you want to have members, well, yeah, you can do it.
It’s going to walk you through how to do that if you go here to Site Members, right
here, if you look at the bottom, it says Manage Site Members.
You can go through there and it’ll walk you through all those options.
Finally, the last tab we have here is SEO.
This is where you can basically start entering the information that’s going to get you
listed on Google.
Now, I’m going to do a whole separate video just on SEO tricks within WIX, but this is
where you can start to do it, of course.
You can put in the name of your page, location, site name, put in a little description.
If you scroll down here, you’ll see we also have options to do things like adding your
various keywords, and you’re going to separate all of those by commas.
Another option that you will notice that you have access here through this little dropdown
menu is the ability to duplicate a page.
If you’re graphically challenged like me, just find a page that you already like that’s
part of your template, duplicate it, and then just put different content on different pages
and then ultimately rename it.
You can also, of course, hide your page through here, and create a subpage.
Why would you need a subpage?
Well, sometimes, let’s say you have an About Us page and you want a separate page for your
Board of Directors.
You might, in that case, make that page a separate page, so it’s going to have a little
dropdown.
You’ll notice here when I do that, in this case now, Gallery becomes a subpage of About.
If you ever want to reverse it, just drag it to the left and you’ll see it snaps right
back.
Down here at the bottom you can see the option to add a blank page.
You can also add a linked page.
For example, if I want to send people directly to my YouTube channel, I can have it appear
in the navigation menu on my website, but it’s not an actual page, it’s just going
to take them over to YouTube.
Also you’ll see here we have the option to create a folder.
This is a great option for people who need dropdown menu options.
Let’s say for example you’re a spa, OK?.
The folder would ultimately be maybe your services, and then each page underneath it
would be one of the individual services with a description.
The next menu item you see here I’m going to show you, I just want to really quickly
switch away from the Gallery page to the Home page so I can better demo it.
The next menu option here is for your background.
You can either go with a solid color background, you can do an image or a video background
if you really want to mix things up.
Just to kind of give you a little bit of a taste of what a video background looks like,
let’s just choose one right here.
Obviously, you probably wouldn’t do dark text with a dark background.
That would probably not be the best design decision in the world.
Let’s go to Preview now so that you can see that.
When you are editing your website, you can’t actually see the animation.
Now, check it out.
Now you can see that little animation taking place.
Just kind of a nice little feature that makes your website look a little bit more modern.
Another little trick I want to show you right now, I know this is slightly out of order,
but for those of you out there that use a lot of hot key combinations, many of them
work.
One of them that does not work is Undo.
Normally, Undo would be Command Z for those of you on a Mac.
The Undo button, you’ll see, is up here towards the top center of my screen.
Now we go back, and we’re back to the plain, white background.
The next feature we have here is the ability to have anything you want into your website.
My advice here is, really more than anything, to play.
Of course, we have options like text and images.
I want to talk more about images in a moment.
Look at the giant list of options that you have here, everything from video, music, different
interactive strips, buttons.
Everything you need, you have access to right here.
Going back here to images, what I really want to talk about here is part of the value that
you get here within WIX.
Yes, you can upload, of course, whatever images you want.
If you’re like me and you’re really kind of graphically challenged, there’s some
amazing tools here that can really help you out.
That’s where we get into their massive library of free images.
For example, let’s go here into just free from WIX, so I can show you here.
This stock photography, it’s not cheap-looking stock photography.
It looks clear, it looks professional, and you can mark these up however you want.
For example, let’s say you want to, let’s find a good example here, let’s say you
are going to go out on a little photo expedition with your friends, OK?
You maybe want to put together some sort of a little graphic.
I know it’s a terrible example, but go with me on this one.
Here we have like a nice image of a camera, OK?
You can use this image legally.
You don’t have to worry about getting sued for, you know, using someone else’s images.
Put some text on top of it, using the other tool I just showed you there, and boom, you’ve
got a custom-designed graphic.
It’s a really cool feature.
Another thing I want to mention here is that within WIX, one of the cool things that you
get access to is cloud storage.
As I go through and create my website, I’m going to be uploading things like head shots
and photos of products and all sorts of different stuff, right?
A lot of times, I may use those images more than once.
Maybe I use one image, you know, here in a bio, and I use another image as part of a
collage.
Anything you upload to WIX is stored in their cloud storage.
Anything you do, potentially on your desktop at home, you have access to on your laptop
at work.
Just know that you have plenty of space to store your stuff.
Part of that’s going to depend on which plan you go with, but one of the things you’ll
discover about the plans is they’re pretty reasonably priced.
OK, so that’s a little bit about images.
I just want to very quickly talk about some of these lists and grids.
You know, all sorts of different layouts, like this one right here you can see, like
a really simple bio, you know.
Get some nice head shots of your employees.
Get them their little moment to shine on your website.
Different products that you can feature.
All sorts of different things here.
One of the things I love, just as a creative person, is I find that a lot of the different
tools that WIX gives me access to inspires me creatively, you know.
I wouldn’t have thought of creating this kind of a graphic, not saying that one, but
in general, it just really is a great tool for giving you ideas.
Next we have Gallery images.
If you want to do kind of a little scatter pattern of different images.
You have all sorts of different options here.
Let’s just kind of go over just a few other little things here.
I want to show you Contact.
We have different Contact forms.
It’s a really good idea to not put your email address out there on your websites.
It’s just a very easy way to get on different mailing lists.
Not saying that this is junk mail proof, but it will certainly cut down on it.
Light box options.
This is a great feature if you’re trying to grow your mailing list.
Look at this one right here, OK?
Maybe I want it, after you’re on my website for 10 seconds, I want there to be a little
popup that says, “Hey!
Join our mailing list and get 10 percent off, here’s a coupon.”.
It’s a great way to capture business and also capture information from your clients.
That feature, there you go, just drag it and drop it right into your website.
It’s very, very easy.
The blog.
These are just blog layouts.
This is not the actual blog editor.
If you want to have maybe snippets from a few of your blogs, these are just different
layouts that you can go with.
Store.
OK.
The online store is not built into this particular template, but you of course can add it.
It is very, very easy to use.
I want to also just mention that if you already have a relationship with another company,
and I’ll give you an example.
For my website, for Tech Talk America, for anyone who goes to book a private lesson with
me, they are actually using Square.
The idea here that I want to point out is that you don’t have to use WIX for everything,
OK?
If you want to use their online store component, go for it.
If you already have that relationship with Square, it’s OK, you can work within WIX,
it’s fine.
Next is the Apps.
When you go into the App Market, you’ll see right here, we have just tons of different
options, and they categorize them.
Some websites might want the ability to have a live chat option.
If you want that, check it out, there are 17 different apps that offer that type of
service.
Scrolling down here, let’s, you know, let’s just go into one of them here.
Let’s say you’re a restaurant, OK?
Well, let’s go in and view what apps are available for you.
Different menu options, reservations, restaurant kit.
For those of you who use Open Table, boom, with one click you can add Open Table into
your website.
A whole bunch of different options here that you can choose from, OK?
My advice is that whatever business you’re in, if you’re a business, just go through
the App Market, explore, just know what your options are.
Next here we have your uploads.
These are anything that I upload to WIX, images, videos, fonts.
I’m going to give you a great little resource for fonts coming up soon.
Documents like PDFs.
Let’s say you have your menu that you want available, you can store that PDF in the cloud.
Single tracks, for those of you who are musically talented, I am not one of them.
The next feature that we’re going to be talking about here is the blogging app.
Now this is actually going to be an entire video coming up soon, but if you want to add
a blog feature into your website, their tools are extremely intuitive.
For those of you who blog on the go, you might want to also consider checking out the WIX
mobile app for your various devices.
Very good for just kind of starting to jot down your notes and start to get your ideas
organized.
I still recommend using an actual computer for your blogging but it’s nice to be able
to do it on the go if you need to.
Next we have the Bookings Manager.
Now, if you decide to use the Bookings Manager, you’re definitely looking at one of the
more premium plans here, but frankly, it’s well worth it.
I’ve compared the prices to other websites, and it’s right on par.
If you want to be able to book clients right through your website, there are two different
ways that you can do it.
You can do it as individuals and you can do it as groups.
For example, individuals would be for someone who like is a consultant.
A group is going to be a great option for someone who is a yoga studio, something like
that.
To set this up, we just click here on Manage Bookings, OK, and you can see here.
It’s taking me to my calendar, sorry.
This is not take one of this, it’s taking me to where I left off.
OK, up here at the top left, we are currently under Services.
As you can see here, we can create a new appointment or new classes, whatever you want.
Of course, with any of these, like let’s just create a new service so you can see what
we have here.
You’re going to name your service, add it to a certain category, any kind of a little
tag line, description.
If you have multiple people who offer that particular service, you can add each staff
member so that someone can reserve a time with someone specifically.
You can set the duration of that particular service, including time in between appointments.
The type of service.
You can accept payments either on your website, in person, or both.
You can leave it up to them, whatever you like.
Of course, for those of you who do house calls, you should know that you don’t have to do
it just at the customer’s, or at your place, you can also do it on location.
If you are interested in doing mobile payments, this is where I would really strongly recommend
you do check out the WIX mobile app.
It lets you do several different things, so you can find it in your respective App Store.
That being said, I do want to take a moment to just kind of talk about some of their premium
plans before we actually go up here to the top menu.
Let’s just go here under Upgrade, just so you can kind of see the different options
that are here.
Now, for full disclosure, I believe the one that I am currently with is the one that you
see right here in the middle, which is costing me $19 a month.
When you consider everything that I get for that, it’s very much well worth it.
There are more advanced options for those of you who need, you know, extra storage and
a few extra services you can see down here.
I’d just encourage you to kind of go through these and check out, see what you need.
For most people, you really don’t need a lot of the storage part, because really, you’re
just uploading images.
It’s usually pretty minimal.
Again, if you do care about being able to book clients online, you’re most likely
looking at this one right here in the middle.
Check that out, and if you haven’t already signed up, you can use the link in the description
of this video.
Next, I want to show you a few different elements that you’re going to find up here in the
top menu.
Starting with here, under Site.
I want to mention the mobile editor.
This is one of the ways you can get here.
You can also, of course, just click the mobile button up at the top right.
Now it says desktop.
What I want to mention about the mobile editor, you can see here, we have, you know, very
similar tools.
You’ll see we have mobile tools.
We have a few different little features here when we’re in mobile mode.
What I want to mention is that you can have a completely different version of your website
that appears on mobile compared to the version that you will see on a desktop computer.
The reason why this is important is that a lot of times when folks are looking at your
website on mobile, they’re really just looking for the key elements, like a phone number,
OK?
You might not need everything that you would have on your normal desktop website available
on mobile.
Before you hit Publish, just make sure that your mobile website is looking good.
Another good tool to be aware of is that when you are in the mobile editor, you’ll notice
that over here we now have the Page Layout Optimizer.
Sounds very official, right?
This will just really help your website look it’s best on mobile.
Good thing to go through.
Now, let’s switch back over to desktop by just clicking here at the top right.
OK, go back to desktop version.
Next, let’s go over here under Tools.
You’ll see here, we have these four options.
I would recommend that all of you use all four of these.
My toolbar is currently hidden off-screen, let’s move that up here.
These are your basic tools that you’re going to find whenever you are dealing with things
like text or images.
It’s just the shortcuts that you can copy, duplicate, trash.
Although, if you know the hot keys, you may or may not actually need this particular toolbar.
I personally like using the Rulers feature, you’ll see here at the top of the website,
because one of the things that I can do is, check this out.
Let’s say I just want to just align everything, I can click in this area and it creates this
invisible line.
Now, when I want to drag text to make sure that it aligns correctly, I can just kind
of very easily visualize and see where it needs to go.
Any time you need to delete these little Rulers, check out, you just double-click, and you’ll
see a little trash icon up here, and that’s gone.
Keep in mind, those are invisible, so you can really do as many as you want.
Finally, up here at the top right, you’ll see we have the option to zoom out, which
can really just be, I find, very handy as far as getting a good idea of your layout.
For example, if you find that you have a space here that’s maybe a little bit too large,
you can kind of tighten it up a little bit.
As I already mentioned, here are your tools to Undo and Redo, followed by Switch to Mobile
and/or Desktop, depending on where you are, Save, Preview, and Publish.
Thank you for watching everyone.
Keep in mind, if you want to try out WIX, you can find a link in the description of
the video that’ll take you there and you can set up your free account today.
Thanks for watching everyone.
This is David A. Cox with Tech Talk America.
Class dismissed.