Analysing Web Performance: A Look at the Wix Showcase Sites

This is the first in a series of articles I plan to write, based on our research at Sitevitals into platform-specific site health. In this first article i want to look at Wix websites and how they stack up, performance wise.

Rather than pick any old random Wix websites, we audited of the 85 websites currently featured in the Wix Showcase on their website.

The goal was to establish a baseline of “real-world” performance for sites built on the platform, specifically looking at how design choices impact technical health.

We analysed each site across five key pillars: SEO, Performance, Integrity, Security, and Content. This initial analysis looks at one important factor – page weight and performance of a few key metrics.

From the 85 sites analysed, we found the following averages:

The TTFB (47ms) is notably strong, suggesting that Wix’s infrastructure handles the initial server response efficiently. However, the 10.74s LCP and 10.26MB page weight indicate that the bottleneck occurs during the rendering and downloading of assets.

Why Page Weight Matters

It is easy to view these numbers as abstract metrics, but they have a direct impact on a site’s commercial performance and visibility.

• Search visibility: Google’s Core Web Vitals are a confirmed ranking factor. A 10.74s LCP falls firmly within the “poor” range, and heavier pages require more crawl resources to index.
• Mobile behaviour: A 10MB page may load quickly on an office fibre connection, but performance can degrade significantly on mobile networks with weaker signal strength.
• Paid traffic efficiency: When load times increase, the likelihood of early exits rises, reducing the effectiveness of paid acquisition campaigns.

Case Study: Bestie Hugs

While large video files are an obvious contributor, cumulative weight often comes from a high volume of unoptimised images.

We ran a PageSpeed analysis on Bestie Hugs, another featured site. The report identified 18 image assets that could be improved, many of which were delivered at dimensions larger than their display size.

To simplify remediation, the Sitevitals report includes a Download Fix feature that generates optimised versions of flagged assets, reducing the need for manual resizing and exporting.

For the Bestie Hugs audit, implementing the recommended srcset strategy for mobile screens using the optimised images would reduce the combined payload of those assets by more than 50% on average, while retaining full-resolution versions for larger displays.

If you are managing a site with similar metrics, several immediate areas are worth reviewing:

• Asset auditing: Identify images where the natural size significantly exceeds the rendered size.
• Responsive images: Use srcset to deliver appropriately scaled files based on device characteristics.
• Video compression: Compress background video where possible, aiming to keep the initial payload below 3MB.
• Lazy loading: Ensure below-the-fold assets are deferred until needed.

Summary

The showcase sites generally look great, demonstrate strong visual design and fast server responsiveness, but the data suggests that final page weight frequently exceeds recommended thresholds. For agencies and site owners, ongoing measurement and asset optimisation remain key to balancing aesthetics with performance – and it’s generally quite an easy win to fix.

Test Your Own Website

You can benchmark your site’s performance, SEO, and technical health using the free Sitevitals audit tool. Run a test here: Free Website Performance Test.