Elementor is a powerful tool that combines a competent page builder, intuitive widgets, and some exciting AI features. It plugs into WordPress – the de facto standard for professional business websites – and enables users to quickly build pages using a visual editor. But is it the right choice for your WordPress website, and does it need to be deployed sitewide?
Why Elementor?
Elementor’s wide variety of widgets and the long list of integrations and addons make it a perfect choice for building out website pages of any complexity. Starting with either a grid or container layout and dragging and dropping widgets into place is both intuitive and flexible.
Elementor templates
Once you’re happy with your widget and layout combination, you can easily save the page as a template and reuse it elsewhere on your website. This enables a faster build and saves countless hours recreating layouts. This feature comes into its own when building landing pages for marketing campaigns. You can quickly update content, images and forms to create a customised landing page.
Elementor addons
From libraries of widgets to image optimisation, Elementor is packed full of potential add-ons and the possibilities are near limitless. Most popular WordPress plugins with front-end facing options will now include some level of integration with Elementor. Even if there isn’t a built-in option, plugins that have a default WordPress widget can be enabled and positioned within the editor with ease.
Elementor AI
Elementor AI is the latest addition to the platform. Designed to enhance the website-building experience, this AI-driven feature can assist in creating, designing, and customising websites more efficiently and intuitively. With Elementor AI, you can generate text, images, design elements and even create code tailored to specific needs. The AI can also suggest layouts, optimise content for SEO, and even provide real-time editing assistance.
The page-building alternative
WordPress tools such as Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) offer a different approach to website build, and require custom-built templates and carefully thought-out fields, offering a less fluid approach for the editor. Website page templates must be hand-coded and fields slotted into place, rather than dragging and dropping widgets and free manoeuvring layouts.
These tools are used to create website templates which are built to specification but generally tend to incorporate less complex layouts and faster page performance. The perfect solution for websites that are mainly blog-based, or have a lot of pages which are based on a similar layout.
Websites can, of course, use both Elementor and ACF, with the former reserved for client-editable sections and latter for more complex parts of the site that seldom need to change.
Is Elementor always the right choice?
The answer to this question will largely come down to your website requirements, which may be varied and complex. If your website is going to house lots of pages that don’t need a huge variety of different layouts, it may be faster and more lightweight to use Advanced Custom fields and a custom layout. Overall this method will produce faster-loading pages, which are important for both SEO and user experience. However, if your website needs frequently changing pages, advanced editor customisation, and complex multi-column layouts, Elementor is the right choice.
Let us help you
Our recommendation is typically to use a combination of both Elementor and custom fields to create a site which is engaging, content-rich and packs great performance.
Here at Novagram, our main goal is to build websites that perform well and look great, while also offering a simple editing experience. Using the power of Elementor, alongside tools such as Advanced Custom Fields and bespoke layouts, Novagram can design and build exactly the right website to suit your needs.
Take a look at some of our work here.
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