What’s the best WordPress builder?

A WordPress website is now within everyone’s reach. Yes, even for you, who hates the idea of ‘code’ and anything techie. Gone are the days where you need to pore over a book for hours in order to create one web page (yes, I’ve done that), because we now have amazing tools at our disposal to make your ‘ditch-the-webdesigner’ dreams a reality. Cue the WordPress builder – they’re the drag and drop tools which can create flexible layouts without you needing to dig into any kind of code. For most of the coaches and consultants I work with, coding is like a dirty word, so drag and drop WordPress builders are like a dream come true. No knowledge of HTML and CSS? It really doesn’t matter. With drag and drop builders now being amazingly user-friendly, it’s now a question of when, rather than if, you can build your own site. People often ask me about WordPress themes, and there are some great ones out there, but a lot of them have a lot more functionality than you’ll ever need, and with that in mind, they slow down your site. If you are at all familiar with Google, you’ll realise that a sluggish site will not only frustrate the visitors to your site, but it is likely to result in lower search rankings too. So instead of purchasing a premium WordPress theme which may be full of amazing features that you’ll never use, I recommend using a great WordPress builder, and creating your own site from scratch. Before you do so, you need to plan the objectives of your website, your site content, the journey you want your visitor to take through the site and your visuals. If you don’t have any background in marketing, touch base with a marketing expert who can help you with this stage, as it will provide you with the cornerstone of your website, and will pay dividends in the longrun, as they’ll be able to guide you about content, tools and resources, so will not only save you money, but oodles of time researching too. Honestly, it’s worth investing a little time and money in this part of the process.

So what’s the best WordPress Builder to use?

1. Divi

I confess to being somewhat biased in this area. And I’m cheating slightly. Divi is not strictly just a WordPress builder, as you have to purchase the theme to use it, but nevertheless, this hits my #1 spot. I love Divi by Elegant Themes (aff) and with the release of Divi 3.0, the experience has just sky rocketed. For a short time, you can receive 20% off the purchase price so head over there and take a look at their video which will walk you through, and try out the demo. What I love most about Divi:

• You don’t need any coding experience, so I use it on a lot of client websites, knowing that they will then be able to manage basic amendments on their own, as well as more complex layout changes.
• You can export and import layouts between pages and even websites if you need to.
• The support is terrific, so if you get stuck, you can post a question and have a response within 24 hours, and usually much faster.
• Any layout you create is fully responsive which means it adapts to the screen size it is being viewed on, and you can even opt to make certain elements invisible on mobiles which speeds up your mobile load time.
• There are pre-made layouts to get you started if you’re at a complete loss.
• With the release of Divi 3.0, you now have an editor which makes changes to the front-end. This means that you can actually see the changes taking effect as you’re making them, so you know exactly how they’re going to look before you put them live.

The downsides:

• You need to buy a subscription to access the builder. This gives you access to all the plugins and themes by Elegant Themes.

2. Visual Composer

If you’re purchasing a premium theme, this is probably the WordPress builder that it is most likely to ship with. While this is a really powerful builder, which will work with almost any theme, you need to be sure that it’s one that you’re going to stick with, as it the layouts may not be compatible if you switch to another builder further down the line. With that being said, it is priced affordably (currently $34) and because it’s so widely used, you’ll find good support for it.

3. Beaver Builder

People who use Beaver Builder are generally complete advocates and wouldn’t use anything else. It works with all themes, and is an incredibly flexible front-end editor. It also comes with really beautiful ready made templates. The downside is the price as it’s currently $99 for the most basic plan.

Summary

Any of these builders are likely to serve you well. And there are plenty of others which I haven’t covered in this artlce – these are just the main three that I’m familiar with. Keep in mind that building a website can be a really exciting process, but a lot of people skip the planning, and therefore they end up with something that they’re incredibly proud of, but which brings them few or no results. If you need help with the planning stages, book in for an hour planning session with me where I will map out your entire sitemap with you, direct you towards necessary resources and help you focus on attracting your ideal clients. Following the call, you’ll have a clear direction of the pages that should be on your website, the elements that your pages should include, the content that you should focus on. Book in for your Website Success Roadmap Call.