So, you need to revamp your website. Maybe you’ve always wanted to be able to feature an employee on the home page or display a counter with the number of folks you’ve helped this year, but your older model website doesn’t support those nifty features.
Knowing your content requirements (and wishes) is a huge step in the right direction because that gets you closer to making the decision between an off-the-shelf Page Builder or customizing preset layouts just for you and your content.
A Page Builder offers a myriad of widgets that come pre-styled and with fancy functionality (e.g., an animated counter or a slider of recent posts), but you need to parse through the rows of potential widgets when you only want a simple text block or image. Making these choices each time you’re creating content compounds the mental energy needed, which is more expensive than one might think. ⏱ 💰 💰
Here are some examples of the different widgets offered by Page Builders:
The results of a Page Builder can also make your web designer (among other folks) cringe. Let’s say you’ve got a nice-looking website, but another team member got into the Page Builder and stuck a counter, a featured employee, and a blog post right on the home page.
These elements aren’t “bad” by themselves, but they don’t look great when juxtaposed with the rest of the page the way it was intended.
One way to prevent this haphazard design is to keep the playground’s sandbox to a manageable size. Earthling likes to do this using a combination of Advanced Custom Fields Flexible Content and templates.
Along with your team, we identify several layout options that will fit your content needs: an image over here, text over there; a featured blog post, and employee of the month; you can even display a count-up widget to showcase the number of happy customers you have this year. Your custom layouts will be designed for you, and have styles applied that match your brand.
Making these content decisions now means you will be set up for publishing success without inducing a headache each time you make a new page or post. If new ideas sprout or your needs change, we can work together to add to your array of layouts, making the sandbox a little bigger.
Contact us for your very own content-entry solution.