Showit vs. WordPress: Which Platform is Right for Your Business?

Welcome to the Inspired Brew, a podcast for small businesses crafted with intention for coaches and creatives alike. I’m Ingrid, your host and resident brand and web designer. In each episode, I’ll bring you insights, tips, and tricks to help you grow your business and achieve your goals. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re looking into taking your business to the next level.

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 Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of the Inspired Brew. I am Ingrid. I am the brand and web designer behind Penguin Designing. I am so excited for this episode because not just my ginger tea is here ready and hot, because yay, you know that I’m always going to be rocking some kind of tea. But this is such a hot topic for my particular industry as a Showit designer, it is so common that the questions arise for why Showit. What is the benefit of choosing Showit over something like WordPress or Squarespace or Wix? And in this particular episode, I’m going to focus on Showit in comparison with WordPress because my particular clients are going to be either picking WordPress or picking Showit. 

That is because I serve,businesses that have private member exclusive areas, aka something like a membership or a course or simply a private resource library or e-commerce. So it is that high level competition between the two because we actually use the WordPress database in Showit when we are using blogs or when we are doing those memberships or e-commerce. 

And for e-commerce, I’m gonna say only if there is a high complexity level or if WooCommerce is the best option for that particular client, then yeah, that’s what we’re gonna use. So we rely on the worker’s integration. 

So what is Showit?

It is a website builder, but they are also your. So it’s an all in one, and it is a visual platform. So it is a website builder that requires zero code knowledge and that it is basically no maintenance for you. 

You are going to simply build your site, launch it, and the support team is the one that will take care of those maintenance things like creating a copy of your site and having that backed up somewhere in their server.

And they actually do. I think every 24 hours, so it’s pretty impressive. With WordPress that same maintenance process is something that you would have to do on your own or hire a company to do that for you. 

WordPress is a very robust platform. It is not drag and drop. It is the industry standard for blogging, or at least that’s how it started, but now it has so much potential with visual builders like Elemetor being implemented into it, or just simply the new abilities with plugins and stacking other technology inside of it and embedding items. WordPress really is amazing if you have the patience and the knowledge to implement coding, or if you have a developer, which I highly recommend, if you’re gonna be going with something like WordPress, to just have a developer that is going to be in your back pocket, that you have a really good relationship with them and that they understand what you wanna do, so that your WordPress site is super effective, you can absolutely create it on your own.

You can do it with website builder plugins for WordPress. That’s absolutely possible. I’m not saying it’s not, but I will say it does require time. And from what I’ve seen with my clients, you don’t have time to be doing these things. You want to run your business and not be playing web designer. 

So with Showit it is a, what you see is what you get builder. The drag and drop feature that I mentioned and that everybody calls out for Showit, I don’t feel like it’s an actual drag and drop because there is nothing to drag and drop. This is a blank canvas for you where you can just move anything, put anything anywhere.

So it is more powerful than just a drag and drop, in my opinion. And it also provides the opportunity for you to design the user experience for your mobile site completely separate from the desktop site, which is pretty dang amazing. A lot of people might feel like, oh no, I need to design both. But actually this is a good thing.

Your users do not go through your website the same way on desktops than they do on your phone. So if you grab your phone and go into any website that you like and then you visit at the same site, on your computer, you’re gonna notice that things are there, but you are moving yourself differently and you’re consuming the content differently.

First of all, a website is going to be horizontal and a mobile device is going to be top to bottom, so it is very different, like it’s vertical versus horizontal, and you need to take that into account. It is not just a matter of let’s shrink everything and put it into the mobile side. That is not going to be a good user experience and you’re gonna create a lot of friction and a lot of confusion sometimes.

So to me it is an amazing feature that we can absolutely have control over every single detail of the mobile site as we have of the desktop. So that is something that is very unique to Showit. With WordPress depending on the plugin that you’re using for the website builder, you will have different options to really customize your mobile side.

To me, there is no cookie cutter solution. There is no, oh, this is the best you should go with X. Not everybody is going to be a good fit for Showit. for example, some of my clients that have had really complex setups with a ton of features that require a lot of developing and coding, instead of putting all of that coding in to Showit and having them lose the ability of using that what you see is what you get. Drag here, drop there. It’s just better to point them out and have a developer work with them in WordPress at the end of the day. That is it. 

But for those who crave to do it themselves or train a team member to do updates without needing a developer, without fear of am I gonna break something when I go to update, then Showit is definitely gonna be the better deal for them because they will get a little bit more confident quicker.

It’s just that nature of I see what I’m doing, I’m not coding it and I’m not touching anything else. So if I change my menu, I know that it’s just the menu and it will not affect the rest of the things. Or if I go to the back end, there’s nothing that I can touch that will break or disconnect my site.

And that just gives people a little bit more of a safety net and then the confidence to really start using their websites. So Showit versus WordPress really is a game of how much functionality do you need, how much creativity do you wanna have with your website design? How much do you wanna be involved in it?

And really who’s gonna be up keeping it? Because I have a lot of clients that keep me in the long run for just doing minor updates or additions, but that’s not out of fear, it’s out of delegation.

They don’t have time to be playing web designer. They just want to have a professional take care of it, which is gonna be faster and more effective than if you wanna do it yourself and you try and you’re playing with all the settings. If you’re running a business that requires you a hundred percent in there, you are just gonna be wasting time.

So, WordPress, Showit, totally amazing on both ends, depending on what you need and what is your ultimate goal. I particularly feel like Showit is a very flexible builder that can accommodate many opportunities in many different professions. Honestly many different needs. So I actually exclusively design didn’t Showit, in case you didn’t know.

It’s just that good for me and of course for my clients. I’ve actually been a user with them for 10 years. So yeah, I think I’ve been a design partner with them for I think around at least four. I need to keep better track of those things. But the point is it has served me amazingly, and it has served my clients in different professions, amazingly, for their memberships, for their shops, for their resources, for their courses, for having their services really put out there in the best way in front of their own audiences.

 Again, to me it’s just super flexible and it’s something that it’s easily trainable. I guess. After our projects, we go in and I record a video that’s gonna be the behind the scenes of that particular website so that my client sees exactly what they’re going to be seeing when they go into the back of their own show and account.

And most times it takes them like watching the video two times to really get the hang of it and how to do things. I see that people catch up super quickly to it, so I really like that. To me, it’s so important that mechanics feel confident using their own websites, that they feel empowered to actually use it because it’s their website.

You don’t wanna feel tied to a designer or a developer. You just wanna make sure that you can use it. At least in my opinion, that is going to give you always the best return on investment.

And it’s just going to allow you to use it to keep it updated because a website, it’s not a very expensive brochure online that you just put. Everything at once. I never touch it again or never look at it again. You should always be looking at how your users are literally using every single page of your website.

How are they consuming the content? What pages are they visiting? How are they moving through your website so that you can make improvements and get better conversions and better return on investment on your website? Also, you should always keep your content updated. First of all, search engines love fresh content, but second of all, this is for your users.

You don’t want old pricing in there. You don’t want an old photo of you that’s 10 years old.

You wanna keep things updated, you wanna make sure that you’re always providing the best when someone lands on your website, because your website is like your online home, right? So you wanna greet them with the best smile, and you wanna give them that tour through every single page, a k a, every single part of your online home, and have them feel welcome.

Make them feel heard, because remember, your website is your best seller. No matter what it is selling 24 7. So once you go live, it’s always on and it’s always receiving people listening to their problems and letting them know, I got you. This is what you’re dealing with right now. This is a problem that you’re facing.

You have this desire and I have this solution for you. It’s that simple. Your website is going to apply your brand foundation that we’ve been talking about so much and give that little sales spiel to your audience every single time that they land in there. If you want a better return on investment of your site, you have to feel confident using it.

So I will not say, oh, you need to go with Showit, because it’s the visual one or the one that I use. I don’t believe in cookie cutters. 

This is a matter of picking what is right for you. If that is a platform that will feel best to you, then go for it. If you need to have a developer and feel confident that you have a professional working with you at all times, go for it. So if you have experience with any of those and let me know, send me a message on Instagram.

Do you have a preference for those? I am always excited to hear other’s opinions because obviously I am so biased with using Showit. Uh, but that is it for today. I wanted to give you a birds eye view of the differences and what I’ve seen in my own experience by using Showit and also, as a designer with my clients and the fact that we actually use the best of both worlds and have Showit integrated with WordPress to do a lot of our memberships and a lot of our shops because we work primarily with Woocommerce, which is basically all WordPress.

 Hopefully this gives you a better idea to pick the best platform for yourself, and I’ll see you in the next episode.