Any business owner with an online presence knows that website performance is critical to the development of their customer base. And every aspiring blogger knows that fast website load speeds are necessary to keep new viewers on their page. Indeed, if a page lasts more than three seconds to load, more than half of users will just leave.
But loading speed is only the beginning of the user experience. Users also demand consistency, ease of use, and high functionality from all websites, whether they are e-commerce sites, blogs, or general information pages. Websites that use a mix of colors, fonts, and other elements will drive customers away almost as quickly as slow loading speeds. The same goes for functionality. Unless users find what they’re looking for easily (such as through effective search tools, useful site menus, and efficient layouts), they won’t stay long on a site.
However, there is often a discrepancy between knowing what a website should look and feel like and creating a high performing website. A wide range of Website design tools exists to help everyone from first-time website builders to very seasoned professional designers, especially when it comes to WordPress sites. However, these tools can be cumbersome and difficult to use for many designers.
In this review we look at the features of Elementor, a website builder designed for high-end design professionals with toolsets that even the most inexperienced designers can quickly and easily use to improve the overall user experience.
WordPress themes vs. website template kits
Before diving into Elementor’s features, it is helpful to understand the various design tools available, especially WordPress themes and website template kits. We focus on WordPress because WordPress is still the predominant website content management system. Control of almost 40% of all websites.
Many designers, especially first-time designers, want to start with pre-built structures as it makes the whole design process easier. This is where themes and template kits come in. And although they share many functions, Subjects and kits have notable differences. While each template helps maintain design consistency across all pages of a site, templates focus on one page at a time. In fact, a single page can contain more than one template.
Themes make it easy to get a consistently designed website up and running quickly. However, they often lack configurability – adding or changing existing features can be quite difficult. Templates and template kits, on the other hand, provide a more granular way of changing or adding certain features and functionality to a site.
The choice between themes and templates depends on what you need from a website and how quickly you need it. Elementor has tools that allow designers to easily follow either of two design paths.
In addition, professional and freelance designers need to apply consistent design principles to their own work, and templates can help with that. All of the hassle you put into the front end may be in vain if your billing and payment systems don’t have the same ease of use and functionality that you requested on the customer’s website. Just as there are specific WordPress design tools, there are accounting systems that keep the web developer in mind and include key features like invoice design templates.
The high performance features of Elementor
The design process in Elementor begins with its extensive library of site kits. With more than three hundred templates, Elementor has a ready-made and pre-optimized starting point for every project. Elementor kits cover everything from e-commerce sites to travel and tourism sites to blogs and community and non-governmental organizations. They ensure design consistency across pages and optimize loading speed.
Designers looking to start from scratch have access to Elementor’s easy-to-use drag-and-drop live site editor. No programming skills are required (although those with programming experience can access even more advanced features) and designers can see what the website will actually look like as they build it.
Elementor’s live editor also makes it easy to see how the site will look on different devices. In today’s mobile world Optimize page ads and functionality for mobile devices is essential. Nothing is worse than a page designed for a desktop that doesn’t convert well to mobile screen formats.
The editor also allows designers to make global settings for colors and typography to ensure compliance with brand guidelines. Essentially, designers create branding kits from within the editor.
For advanced designers, Elementor offers additional functions that extend the functionality on site. For example, dynamic layouts make it easy to create multiple pages with common purposes and functions (think product pages or blog posts). Plus, if you decide to change the layout, it’s quick and easy to update the layout across all existing pages. And with Elementor’s dynamic content capabilities, designers can deliver personalized user experiences.
For designers who love to code, Elementor offers custom CSS and custom code capabilities that allow designers to further extend the functionality of their websites. Code-loving designers can also use Elementor’s Designer API to create custom widgets and more for their websites.
These are just a few of Elementor’s advanced features. A full list of features can be found on the Elementor website.
New features in Elementors version 3.4
Recent performance improvements in Elementor include conditional asset and light box loading, inline loading, smaller e-icon files, and collapsed unused Javascript and CSS code. The just released version 3.4 extends these improvements and reduces the Javascript file size in order to improve the loading speed.
The latest versions of Elementor further improve performance with features such as “Load only what you need” to improve page loading speed. Elementor further optimizes loading speed by minimizing the use of Javascript and CSS libraries and optimizing internal Javascript and CSS processing.
Performance counters published by Elementor for version 3.4:
- Server response time improved by up to 23%
- Memory consumption reduced by approx. 5%
- About 30% less data traffic to the editor load saved
Version 3.4 also enables six custom breakpoints that focus on seven different platform and screen sizes, as well as new site security enhancement features that are of paramount importance to any site designer.
Elementor prices
Elementor offers extremely competitive pricing for any design need. Pro plans range from a base plan for a single site for $ 49 / year to a high volume plan that covers 1000 sites for $ 999 / year (that’s $ 1 per site). Each package includes the standard drag-and-drop live site editor, plus a variety of widgets, templates, and kits. There is also a free version, but it lacks the most important premium features that most websites need.
The Elementor packages, aimed at professional website designers, also include the Elementor Expert Profile. Expert is a marketplace for web designers looking for their next client. Profiles enable designers to create and display portfolios of their work, an essential marketing tool in the highly competitive design space.
summary
Elementor offers both beginners and professionals a comprehensive set of design features to help them create websites that maximize the user experience. Combining the ease of use of a drag-and-drop site editor with advanced tools like custom CSS and advanced animation in a number of affordable packages, Elementor is worth considering for any designer.
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