Created a website builder for novice users

Wix ADI is a website builder by Wix.com, designed to empower novice users to create their own business websites by simplifying technology, design, and content creation.

As part of the UX team, I was involved in all research and UX decisions, with a primary focus on the overall stage structure and behavior, as well as specific features as needed.

The Challenge

Before Wix ADI, Wix products catered primarily to intermediate users—those with some design skills who could create and manage their own website content. Wix ADI was introduced to support a new audience: business owners with no technical knowledge who needed an effortless way to establish an online presence.

The concept behind ADI is straightforward: after answering a few questions about their business type and name, ADI gathers information from various social platforms and automatically generates a homepage with relevant text, images, and design.

Once inside the builder, users can easily customize their site in a simple and intuitive way. The design dynamically adapts to content changes, ensuring a seamless, no-fuss experience.

Behavior

We began with low-resolution mockups to outline the core mechanics of the builder. Our goal was to create a playful, almost game-like experience, ensuring that this feeling was embedded throughout every aspect of the UI.

The Builder

The design is minimalistic, keeping distractions to a minimum and placing the site preview at the center of the stage.

Content and design are managed through sidebars, with on-site elements remaining clickable and interactive, seamlessly connecting to the editing panels for a smooth user experience.

Onboarding

The goal of onboarding is to help users identify their business type or locate their existing business page on social networks (if available). This ensures that the initial version of their website is better tailored to their needs, with relevant images and copy.

Onboarding plays a crucial role in user satisfaction. Research showed that users who found their specific business type were more likely to upgrade to a paid account.

To improve their chances of finding the right category, we refined the search process by dynamically completing queries based on user selections and displaying relevant sub-types.

This small yet impactful tweak significantly reduced the number of users skipping this step, leading to more users selecting a specific business type—enhancing both their experience and conversion potential.

Reacting to users feedback (1)

Usability tests revealed that while some users edited content through the side panel, many instinctively interacted with the stage itself—clicking on images to change them and tapping on text elements to edit.

This insight led us to enable quick navigation directly from the stage to the corresponding editing areas.

As expected, this change increased user engagement with the builder. It also exposed users to advanced features—such as image linking and cropping—in a natural way, without compromising the experience for novice users.

Reacting to users feedback (2)

We continuously gathered user feedback through support tickets, online reviews, and usability testing to identify key pain points.

A key insight emerged: while many users wanted advanced customization options, they still preferred the simplicity of ADI over switching to the advanced editor.

This led us to redefine our product strategy—introducing more customization options while ensuring the experience remained intuitive for novice users. We added advanced settings to key features, allowing users to tweak preferences while maintaining ADI’s ease of use.

To uphold ADI’s core promise, we ensured that users could always revert to the default settings or choose from carefully designed presets.

Conclusion

After more than two years of working with a talented team on this project, I’ve moved on to new adventures. It was an honor to be part of it from the very beginning and to see how it continues to inspire new Wix products today.