We're thrilled to introduce you to Ultimate Addons for Visual Composer, a game-changing addon that extends and enhances the functionality of the Visual Composer Website Builder. It gives you access to an impressive library of additional elements, templates, blocks, and more.

In this blog post, we'll explore its features, provide a step-by-step guide on getting started, and take you behind the scenes of the fascinating journey of bringing this remarkable add-on to life, directly from the creators themselves.

Discovering Ultimate Addons for Visual Composer

Let's start with what matters most — the features.

Elements and Extensions: Expanding Your Design Arsenal

One of the standout features of Ultimate Addons for Visual Composer is its extensive library of over 150 elements and extensions. From advanced post grids and captivating content elements to interactive containers and eye-catching e-commerce pricing tables, these additions open up a world of possibilities for enhancing your website's look and functionality.

And the best part? You can customize these elements to perfectly align with your brand's unique style, ensuring a seamless integration into your website's aesthetics.

Templates: Streamlining Your Design Process

It doesn't just stop at elements and extensions. Ultimate Addons for Visual Composer offers over 225 pre-designed templates. Crafted with expertise, these templates cater to a wide range of industries and niches. Whether you need a stunning landing page, an elegant portfolio showcase, or a simple blog layout, these templates have got you covered.

With just a few clicks, you can have a professional-looking page up and running. These templates save you time and ensure your website leaves a lasting impression.

Blocks: Elevating the Visual Experience

Creating an immersive web experience has never been easier. Thanks to Ultimate Addons' collection of over 390 professionally designed blocks, you can effortlessly captivate your website visitors.

These blocks are not just visually striking, they're built with responsiveness in mind. This means your design layouts will shine on any device, whether it's a desktop, tablet, or mobile phone.

Unmatched Value: Empowering Your Web Journey

Now, let's talk value. Ultimate Addons doesn't just provide you with an exceptional toolkit for website building and design, it offers a deal that's hard to beat.

For just $69, you get access to all the powerful features of Visual Composer (valued at $149), including the complete theme builder. But that's not all – you also receive a lifetime license for Ultimate Addons, along with hundreds of additional templates, blocks, and elements to supercharge your website's functionality.

Think of it as a comprehensive package that empowers you to unlock the full potential of your WordPress website without breaking the bank.

Getting Started with Ultimate Addons for Visual Composer

Getting started with Ultimate Addons for Visual Composer is easy. Simply follow these steps:

1. Purchase and download the addon from CodeCanyon.
2. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New.
3. Click "Upload Plugin," choose the addon file, and click "Install Now."
4. Once installed, click "Activate."

Once activated, you're all set! You can access the Ultimate Addons elements and templates right within the familiar Visual Composer interface and enjoy the enhanced capabilities and flexibility that Ultimate Addons offers for building and designing your WordPress website.

Ultimate Addons for Visual Composer: From Idea to Reality

Let's dive deeper into the journey of bringing the addon to life as we share insights from Lucas Selsek, the CEO of WPbuilders – the team behind well-known WordPress themes like TheFox and Cesis, operating under the name Tranmautritam.

Whether you're running a small agency or just starting to make a name for yourself as a solo web creator, it's not uncommon to feel like you're either not working enough, or working yourself dry. Even thinking of setting some growth goals or becoming more profitable might seem like a pipe dream. After all, you’re most likely usually stuck in the feast or famine cycle, solely focused on making ends meet.

But, with the right knowledge, and the help of the experience of others — boosting your earnings from website creation work consistently can become reality.

That is why we have gathered a few known and proven ways to land higher-paying clients and scale your web development or design business of creating websites to success. Many entrepreneurs, like yourself, have struggled in this space and found the perfect balance before. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself”. So, without further ado, let's get into it.

How To Value & Price Your Work Properly

Web developers are in high demand currently. The most important question right now is: How do you become a successful web developer? The answer to this is much simpler than one may think — all it takes is a few simple steps.

First off, get yourself the right tools and invest in filling the gaps in your knowledge by taking online courses or reading books on the subject matter. Next, make sure that you take up any networking opportunities that can help build relationships between other professionals with shared interests. And lastly, price yourself competitively and learn to qualify leads in a better way.

Earn More By Giving More Value

The most straightforward way to increase your average income as a web creator is by learning more complementary skills. The more value you can offer a client, the higher will be your earnings. You can prioritize your field of skills by advancing in designing, programming, or in a particular framework or language you want to master. It's always a good idea to look into which combinations of skills are in demand currently.

Experience is a strong indicator of competence. Oftentimes the size and the success of the projects you've worked on has a greater impact on potential clients choosing you than just a list of degrees and certificates alone.

However, there’s an even more powerful way to create value in the eyes of your prospects. And that is making sure your clients understand you’re not there to simply provide them a service but to help them achieve their own goals.

Think of it like this: you’re not simply creating a website, you’re helping another entrepreneur enable their full potential and build their own empire. Or simply just perform better at their job (e.g. an in-house marketer). In a nutshell, it means changing the focus from yourself to the needs of the client.

Instead of talking about YOUR accomplishments, ask them about their goals. Asking “Why?” 5 times is a great technique to come to a conclusion of why something is important to the client. Even when they approach you to rebuild their website, for example, they might be looking to not only increase sales but also better communicate their brand values.

In addition, be transparent about addressing expectations, deliverables, and due date(s) beforehand. Because these things give people hope for successful outcomes while also showing dedication towards earning a said paycheck.

Find Your Niche & Increase Fees

The benefits of specializing in just one field are numerous. You can satisfy the needs and wants of a more niche audience, as well as give your potential customers significant value. By solving more specific problems you satisfy those not-as-often addressed customer needs. Plus, they will more likely to choose you, because of the demonstrated understanding of where their type of business is and where they want to be.

This will also allow you to increase your fees, while also adding to your value as a web creator. You may choose not to raise prices for existing clients but only go higher with new ones to build and maintain a loyal client base. Interestingly enough, most freelancers are seriously underpricing their services and rates, so check for the signs telling you if you should be re-evaluating your prices.

​​Raising prices helps increase your earnings because it indicates a high-quality service. And therefore also attracts better quality clients (just make sure you can deliver). On the other hand, keeping prices low attracts customers who don't want to miss a good deal. Especially in a tight market like this one, with increasingly more competition among designers and developers. The best thing about increasing them though? It allows you to eliminate cheap customers — so do it now, to avoid unnecessary headaches further down the road.

One of the best tips here is to know your target customer, their wants, needs, and peculiarities, so you can adjust your prices and offers accordingly. And then think about what is your unique value proposition you can offer them, that differentiates and makes you more beneficial to them, than other creators.

Focus On High-Paying & Long-Term Clients

There are two basic ways that you can increase revenue as a freelancer in web development, or any other niche for that matter. You could either land more clients or increase the lifetime value of each client (or both, of course). And do so, not by over-charging them but simply — asking the fair price for the value you bring.

Identifying the high-paying customers is simple — they’re the type of customers who spend the most and purchase more of your offered products and services at once. If you don’t know who they are, it might be time to take stock. And having a system to track your business, like a CRM or marketing automation software, helps a lot in this case.

By focusing on clients who see you as a strategic expert, rather than someone doing ‘monkey work’ you will be able to command higher fees. This will also prevent yourself from too much scope creep where you’re constantly working on small tweaks here and there, that reduce your productivity. Plus, most web creators are solopreneurs, which means there’s also a limit to how many clients you are able to take on at the same time, so plan accordingly.

It's also much easier to work with existing clients and upsell or cross-sell your services to them than to target, attract and land new ones. So, acquiring new clients takes much more time and effort, and if you have to do it continuously, can be a bit soul-crushing. That's why you should be focusing on satisfying existing clients, and offering ongoing services so you can obtain recurring revenue.

Optimizing Your Workflow

Optimizing your day-to-day activities by figuring out which tasks you struggle with for longer than you'd like, can have a positive impact on your revenue. From hiring help to using streamlined tools, and automating processes — invest in tools and people that will save you time, and in return, help get to your desired results faster.

Using Streamlined Tools

It's easy to get overwhelmed with all the productivity advice out there. Even more so, because many tools make sweet promises that feel pretty tempting, but don't always deliver. That's why it's important not to overcomplicate things when you're first mastering this whole streamlining thing — keep things simple!

First and foremost, take advantage of all of the free tools available online. If you want something enough, you will make it happen. Just look at these 17 killer web applications to increase your productivity in no time.

Secondly, think about using tools that get you from point A to point B faster, while also delivering the same excellent quality to the end-user. Meaning, does it really matter if you used a CMS to build a website, or build it with “real code”? If it delivers basically the same result for a client visually and practically, opt to save your time. Despite it being more expensive, it doesn't really add any additional, visible value from websites built on WordPress, for example.

The greatest benefit of using tools like website builders is that they allow your customer to maintain their websites easily by themselves, without breaking them. Besides that, website builders have gotten so advanced that they allow web creators to create completely unique designs with close to zero code and reuse them for faster turnaround.

If you're a web creator, the work doesn’t stop when you launch a website. We highly recommend using Conversion Optimization Tools and building them into your maintenance package to create more sustained income. CRO tools record users' sessions on-site, generate heatmaps of which parts users linger on, and what CTAs convert them the best. This way you can improve client website design based on actual data — by magnifying what works, and changing what doesn't.

Transition From Single Project Work To Retainers

Aside from increasing your fees, generating a constant stream of revenue should also be your top concern. One way to achieve this is through retainers. Otherwise known as a contract between a client and a web creator to work together month to month over a longer period of time.

The benefits of working with retainer agreements which typically include a recurring flat fee are:

• Having a clear schedule and steady and guaranteed income for a set amount of time
• You can focus your energy on a single project at a time, making you more productive as studies show, and deliver better results to clients, in the long run
• You can budget your monthly expenses based on the agreement
• The client is guaranteed that their project will be given top priority and all of the web creator's focus for a certain amount of time (as agreed on) each month

Of course, there are benefits and disadvantages to each pricing strategy, but surely retainers are overall better if your goal is consistent revenue. In comparison to charging a fixed or hourly rate for short-term clients.

Hiring Help To Do More Work

Although most of us like how we do things ourselves, choose to work smarter, not harder. Even if web development, design, and freelancing are just a side-hustle. Essentially, you should keep doing the things you're the best at and are your main income generators. All of the rest, you should consider handing over to others, who do it just as well, for lower rates.

As a direct result of the COVID-19 outbreak, the demand for web development has increased even more (2,5% in 2022). Because many businesses and entrepreneurs are pushed to build and expand their online presence. Take advantage of a negative situation and turn it into a positive, and help people launch their business online.

Also, by help, we don't mean only other freelancers, but also applications and tools, including AI. They are built to replace or facilitate mundane activities — so take those advantages.

Consider introducing online chats with auto-replies, implementing personalized contact forms, and automated customer scheduling applications for more efficiency. Those and other activities can be easily optimized with the help that many Customer Relationship Management softwares, like Hubspot, provide.

The secret to success is to optimize and automate as many processes in your work routine as possible. A great way to find some helping hands, to get the job done faster, is through freelancing platforms. The most popular ones are Upwork, Fiverr, PeoplePerHour, and Codeable.

Create a Stronger Online Presence

Web creators prefer to focus on creating designs and websites for their customers. So spending time on their own sales and digital marketing activities might come as a challenge. Still, even with a small time investment into basics, you can achieve a boost to your brand. Here are some tried and true fundamentals.

Build A Personal Portfolio

Creating a portfolio website is an effective way to showcase the work you're most proud of. Plus, it helps distinguish you from other web creators in today's competitive market. It's an excellent way to establish credibility, show off your style and personality. And most importantly — what your work ethic is all about.

When it comes to your online presence, the first thing that potential clients will look for is a professional-looking profile. It's a digital footprint that represents you as an individual or your company in this ever-growing world of business networking. So if you don’t have one or haven't updated it in a while, it should come as a top priority.

Portfolio websites can serve as displays of creative projects you have been involved with. As well as a springboard for attracting new opportunities. Potential clients are more likely to hire you having cold hard proof of your past successes in front of them. That's easiest done in the form of a portfolio or website.

You may want to include all the comprehensive details of your past web development or design work. But it's important to not go overboard and choose quality over quantity. List only your most-valuable accomplishments and do make sure your contact information is easily accessible.

Essentially treat your site like a product itself.

Aside from making your portfolio look pretty, it should also be practical and perform just as well. That includes applying the best practices that contribute to a good user experience. This means making sure you: 1) Apply the best SEO approach for attracting traffic on search engines like Google. 2) Adjust it for accessibility so it's usable for everyone. 3) Ensure high performance across all devices by using responsive design techniques.

In addition to owning a website, or sometimes using it as a ‘placeholder’ till they have one, web creators gravitate towards Dribbble and Behance. Both are great sources for inspiration and gaining more exposure for your work.

In conclusion, take good care of your website's usability and design as much as you would for a client's site. And start by taking some inspiration from the best web developer portfolio examples on the net.

Leverage Social Media Where Your Clients Are

Social media stopped being a sensation an eternity ago. And it seems an obvious thing to tick off when it comes to building your personal brand. But there is a difference between having a presence and approaching it strategically.

Prioritize making a consistent presence on the platforms your best type of client is most likely to be on. Having a LinkedIn profile is a good idea to have for entrepreneurs and experts of any industry. Since it's one of the world's largest and most frequently used professional networks on the internet, to search for jobs. Even more so, it's an avenue for personal brand and relationship building with prospects and clients.

If you're a web developer that doesn't shy away from code work, you might already have a profile on GitHub. It's one of the most popular code hosting sites that allows you to collaborate with others on projects from anywhere. Alongside GitHub, most established devs also use CodePen, DEV.to, and Hashnode to connect with other professionals around the world. This is a great way to grow your skills and authority in the field. As well as stay in the loop with the latest scoop.

If you want to be successful, choose a platform that you enjoy in your free time. Find inspiration in popular content creators on that platform, and start creating your own content. When creating content, think about the pain points that your customers have with websites. Typically - growing their own business, capturing more leads, and converting them into paying customers. Or even just launching a multi-lingual website to target different audiences. Whatever it may be, you should be able to provide valuable solutions to their problems. And creating content is a great way to show the expertise and services that you can bring to the table.

Networking, Networking, And Once Again Networking

Networking can be difficult. Especially in the era of COVID-19. But it's also incredibly beneficial for extending your career as a web developer or web designer. If in-person events are not possible, you can use apps like Meetup or Run The World to find online events.

Word-of-mouth can be an incredible asset when it comes to winning more work. When someone has heard good reviews about you, they are likely to consider you as their web creator of choice.

Working alone can be difficult, especially if you're a freelancer or independent creator. That why collaborating with others is a great way to expand your network. By building relationships with others who share similar interests and skillsets, that complement yours — you can help each other out.

Lastly, focus on building long-lasting and meaningful relationships with clients, prospects, and colleagues alike. As a business owner, you know that the key to success is customer loyalty and satisfaction. This means understanding what makes our clients tick so we can keep them happy in the long term. It also helps us generate more revenue over time. By building up repeat business from satisfied customers who refer others when they are pleased with their experience as well. This leads back into the importance of developing and nurturing strong relationships between yourself and your clients.

Conclusion

Now you know the 3 main concepts you should be paying attention to in order to scale your web creator business to success. Alongside plenty of actionable tips on how to implement them in your day-to-day activities.

If you keep on improving your craft and working more strategically, by hiring more help. Eventually, you will attract better-paying customers, earn more per client and improve your overall income. If building a team is your dream, these tips can also help you turn your freelance business into an agency. It doesn't matter if you're only just considering taking up web development as a side-hustle, or as a full-time carrier. Working on these 3 main areas is beneficial to any size business.

Looking for culinary-themed websites to draw inspiration from? Curious to witness how fellow restaurateurs are leveraging our builder's features for a competitive edge? Look no further – you're in the perfect spot.

We are thrilled to present our latest showcase: a collection of the best restaurant websites meticulously crafted using Visual Composer. Get ready to feast your eyes on these stunning creations that range from the elegance of fine dining to the cozy charm of bistros, and cafés.

Bon appétit!

The most anticipated Visual Composer release of the year (version 45.2), introduces some exciting new features and performance improvements that make it an even more powerful tool for web experts. One of the most significant changes are the element edit window improvements, which offer a more efficient web development experience.

If you're a WordPress developer, web designer, or agency that works with Visual Composer regularly, you'll want to learn about these new developments. In this blog post, we'll look at the features and discuss how they can make your life easier.

Enhanced Element Edit Window: Streamlined Editing and Easy Navigation

Enjoy a smoother web development process with the enhanced element edit window in Visual Composer 45.2. This update revolutionizes the way content managers, designers, and developers work by providing separate tabs for content, design, and advanced settings.

Content managers can now focus solely on managing content, while designers can effortlessly fine-tune the design elements, and developers have their advanced options neatly organized in one place.

With a simple click, you can easily navigate to the parent elements of any content element within the element edit window. This is a great feature if you're working with complex website layouts, as it allows you to quickly find the element you need to edit.

Managing Tab Access Based on User Roles

Additionally, in Visual Composer 45.3, website admins can also adjust the permissions to specific tabs in the Role Manager for each user role: General, Layout, Content, and Advanced.  

This separation of responsibilities ensures a streamlined workflow among team members, reduces human errors, and simplifies the interface for all users working on your site.

Advanced Settings for All Individual Rows, Columns, and Elements

Along with the element edit window update in Visual Composer 45.2, the advanced settings give you more control and precision over the styling and functionality of every separate element on your website.

This level of customization ensures that the website is tailored to your personal or your client's specific needs and preferences.

In the new advanced tab, you will find the option to add HTML attributes, custom attributes, and custom CSS to each row, column, and element.

Custom Attributes

Custom attributes in Visual Composer 45.2 can be used to store additional information or condition for any element on a page.

For instance, you can create a dynamic product grid where each item's data attributes contain information such as product name (data-name), price (data-price), or availability (data-availability), which can be automatically pulled from a database.

Additionally, the use of attributes can make your website more accessible, which is essential for screen readers and more importantly for people with disabilities. For example, role attributes describe a role of an element on a webpage (e.g. role=”button”) and aria-* attributes describe non-text elements (e.g. aria-label=”laptop image with hands”).

How to add custom attributes to rows, columns, and elements

1. In the editor, hover over the row, column, or element you wish to adjust, and click on the edit button
2. In the element edit window, navigate to the advanced tab
3. Click and expand 'Custom Attributes'
4. Add an extra data attribute

Note: You can add as many data attributes to an individual row, column, or element as necessary - just hit the space in between each attribute (e.g. aria-label=”...” aria-label=”...”).

Custom CSS

With the latest update, you can now add custom CSS to all individual elements more easily, and directly within the advanced settings of every single element, in addition to adding custom CSS both locally and globally in the general page options, the same way as before.

The [element-id] placeholder is a dynamic reference to the element you are adding custom CSS to. And, you can copy and paste it in the same window, if you want to add several CSS rules.

How to add custom CSS to rows, columns, and elements

1. In the editor, hover over the row, column, or element you wish to adjust, and click on the edit button
2. In the element edit window, navigate to the 'Advanced' tab
3. Click and expand 'Custom CSS'
4. Add custom CSS using the [element-id] placeholder

Introducing The New <div> Container Element (Premium)

The new container element provides enhanced flexibility to expand Visual Composer through custom code. This element is specifically designed for developers and is available with all Visual Composer Premium Plans.

The <div> container doesn't contain any additional attributes of the Visual Composer elements, allowing you to seamlessly expand it using custom CSS and JS.

Moreover, you can incorporate any desired element within the <div> container, and nest multiple <div> elements within each other to meet your specific needs.

Release Wrap-Up

With the release of Visual Composer 45.2, you can say goodbye to the headaches of complex website structure navigation and hello to an element edit window that streamlines the process.

With the integration of custom CSS, and data attributes for individual elements, as well as the <div> container element, content management, and design modifications become even easier. So, update now or grab your Premium Visual Composer license today!

Just like how WordPress embraces inclusivity, web accessibility is all about creating websites and content that is accessible to all, especially with new advancements in technology every day.

Whether you're a developer or a designer, it's your responsibility to ensure that your website is accessible for everyone, regardless of their physical abilities.

With Visual Composer, you can easily make your websites accessible and user-friendly for everyone, ensuring equal access to information and services online. Let's explore the key features that can help you create inclusive and accessible websites in 2023.

Importance of Web Accessibility For Your Website

Web accessibility is not just the right thing to do, it is also becoming increasingly more important in terms of legal requirements. Approximately 15% of the world's population faces limitations in accessing websites due to disabilities, yet only around 10% of the web is currently accessible.

Various countries have laws mandating website accessibility for people with disabilities. For instance, in the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires all websites that offer goods or services intended for the general public, to be accessible.

More recently, web developer communities have been raising discussions about the first cases of website accessibility lawsuits. So, even if you think this doesn't currently affect you, consider how you or your clients would feel if faced with a letter regarding website accessibility flaws.

With Visual Composer, you can ensure that your WordPress websites are compliant with all of the following web accessibility standards and best practices:

• Optimal contrast between text and background, ensuring it is possible for people with visual impairments to read the content.
• Readable fonts with adjustable font size, which allow users to increase or decrease the text size according to their preferences.
• Alternative text and ARIA attributes for images, that provide a textual description of the image and help individuals with visual impairments who use screen readers to understand the content.
• Keyboard accessibility, ensuring that all functionality and interactive elements on the website can be accessed and operated using a keyboard alone for individuals who have difficulty using a mouse.
• Responsive design, that adapts to different screen sizes and devices, ensuring that users can access the website and its content easily regardless of the device they are using.

Implementing these practices ensures that your website is inclusive and can be accessed by a wide range of users, including those with disabilities.

Visual Composer Features To Make Your Website Accessible

Visual Composer offers powerful features that help create accessible websites. Let's explore these four key features and how they can enhance the accessibility of your website.

Contrast Checker and Insights

One of the most important aspects of web accessibility is readability.

The built-in Contrast Checker in Visual Composer Insights checks your website's text and background colors, identifies colors with insufficient contrast, and allows you to change them easily.

This is important for people with visual impairments or color blindness, as it improves readability and ensures the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2 AA contrast ratio standards of 4.5:1 are met.

Insights also checks your content for missing image descriptions, ALT attributes, headings, and other attributes, that help describe images. This helps people who use screen readers to understand and be able to interact with your website.

Custom Data Attributes

Custom data attributes are another useful feature for accessible websites, as they provide more context.

Visual Composer allows you to add extra data attributes, such as the aria-label, to images, buttons, or any other element on your website that doesn't have a visible label.

​​These attributes are used by screen readers and other assistive technologies to ensure accurate interpretation and help people using them understand the purpose of each element.

Font Sizes

Optimal font sizes are essential for readability, as they ensure a consistent and pleasant reading experience for your visitors.

Visual Composer allows you to adjust font sizes to fit your design and for each device, ensuring optimal readability across different screens and devices. All of this is possible through the Font Manager.

In addition, Visual Composer allows you to use REMs instead of pixels as a unit of measurement. Using REMs allows users to zoom in or increase their font sizes without disrupting the layout, while pixels do not. Therefore, using REMs is highly recommended to enhance accessibility.

Responsive Design

Lastly, let's talk about responsive design, a crucial aspect for everyone who browses the web using various devices.

Responsive design ensures that content remains accessible and readable, regardless of the screen size.

With Visual Composer, you benefit from automatic responsiveness, meaning your designs will adapt to different devices seamlessly. However, the editor also provides additional options for custom responsiveness, allowing you to fine-tune your layout according to your preferences.

Additionally, all Visual Composer pre-built templates are also made responsive with accessibility in mind.

Responsive websites play a vital role in promoting inclusivity, expanding audience reach, and showcasing a strong commitment to accessibility for all users. It's a crucial step that should not be overlooked.

How to Check if Your Website Is Accessible

There are several tools available that can help you check if your website is accessible. One popular tool is the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool, which checks your website for accessibility issues and provides suggestions for improvement.

Another tool is the Web Accessibility Checker, which checks your website's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

In addition to using these tools, there are plenty of other web accessibility testing tools and audits available. These can give you a better understanding of how people with disabilities use your website and where improvements can be made.

Create Inclusive Websites Accessible to Everyone

In conclusion, Visual Composer is the perfect tool for creating user-friendly and inclusive websites for everyone. Its built-in contrast checker, advanced settings for custom data attributes, customizable font sizes, and responsive design features make it easy to create accessible websites.

Whether you're a web expert, WordPress developer, or web designer, you should seriously consider using Visual Composer if you want to design and build accessible websites in 2023.

So, start building accessible websites today! 

Vito Peleg – the founder & CEO at Atarim – started building WordPress sites for clients from the back of a van while touring the world as a member of a rock band. He later founded a successful WordPress agency in London before launching Atarim, a top visual collaboration tool for WordPress and digital agencies. Today, Atarim serves leading brands such as Disney and Starbucks and is poised for continued growth under Vito's leadership. In this Q&A, we'll explore Vito's background, Atarim's current focus, and the Visual Composer and Atarim partnership.

The Story Behind Atarim

Can you tell us about your background and how it led you to create Atarim?

I built my first website at 14 years old, using GeoCities, for my skateboarding crew with my friends from school. And I’ll never forget the exciting feeling of going online - which back then would take over the landline for the entire family so I was only allowed to use it for one hour a day.

So I spent much of my time fiddling with Front Page, just waiting for my 1 hour to upload the code and share the updates with my MIRC friends (kinda like a Stone Age version of Slack). This is also around the same time I picked up a guitar. Quickly becoming obsessed with music, I went on to form a band and become a rock musician!

After a few years of doing this, I realized that running a successful band is much like running a business.

This led me down what seemed like the natural path of entrepreneurship, marketing, and design. Learning everything I could, I quickly became a member of the WordPress community, all while attending music college and on weekends performing in venues across the country.

Eventually, I decided to pursue the path of freelancing in web design and development full-time. Within the first year, I reached my 6-figure goal and we kept on growing.

But as the agency grew, profit margins shrank.

We started taking on bigger projects with a bigger scope of work, which meant that projects dragged on longer than we could have imagined.

As we looked to improve our internal workflow, we kept coming back to three core problems:

• Clients take way too long to give us the content. No matter what we do.
• Clients don’t know how and take too long to approve designs and request revisions. No matter what we do!
• Clients keep reaching out for support in all kinds of creative ways, instead of sticking to the systems we put in place.

And the byproduct of these, I wasn’t able to truly manage my agency as instead, I was head down, focusing on each individual project. Everything was fragmented.

We had clients contacting us through every imaginable channel – Facebook, LinkedIn, emails, text messages, Skype, Hangouts, phone calls, calls at the office, and my least favorite … WhatsApp voice messages.

This is when Atarim was born.

We needed one tool that would be the main hub for all requests and tasks that were related to the design and development of websites, and ongoing work for websites on care plans with us.

In your opinion, what are the key factors that contribute to a successful collaboration between agencies and clients?

A good engagement with a client can be boiled down to three things:

1. Good communication. Through good times and bad.
   Most agencies are good at communicating when things are all going according to plan but they don’t have processes to deal with situations that haven’t come up before, or to handle requests that go beyond the original scope of work.
2. Clear expectations. Alignment on deliverables.
   Beyond just having an end product that you and your team define as good by some arbitrary measure – you need to work with your clients to achieve full alignment on what they should expect, what they are going to get, and ultimately what they are paying you for.
3. A good process that makes their part easy.
   Clients hire agencies to take work off of their plate but they like to be involved to varying degrees. Find out how involved your clients want to be in the process, making sure that works for you and how your team is able to work, and deliver an enjoyable customer experience so they keep coming back for more (and refer more work your way).

How does Atarim help agencies and freelancers reduce the time it takes to deliver projects?

Atarim tackles the collaboration stage, which – as you know – should be there from day 1. Without true client collaboration, clients struggle to give you what you need to do your best work. Using Atarim, agencies are able to bring collaboration directly to what their clients are reviewing, so they can leave better feedback with less effort and your team spends less time deciphering what they want.

The end result: you’re able to work more efficiently and get to that final approval stage with clients faster!

What are the main features of Atarim and how do they help users collaborate with clients?

Everything in Atarim is centered around 1-click collaboration. Drop in a URL to any website in the world, wait a few moments and click to leave a comment & collaborate.

But that’s not all. Beyond this, behind the scenes – Atarim also has a project management layer to triage, manage and address the tickets your customers, users or team create and work through them faster with features like:

• Time tracking - making it easier to keep a close eye on project profitability.
• Automated screenshots, to see exactly what the person who left a comment saw.
• Easily notify clients when tickets are updated: no more emailing or pinging people elsewhere to keep them in the loop. Let Atarim handle that for you!

What Makes Atarim Stand Out

How does Atarim differentiate itself from other project management and collaboration platforms?

The core difference is our visual feedback tooling and 1-click collaboration that works by simply dropping in any website URL. We find it difficult to associate ourselves with project management solutions because we don’t consider ourselves competing in the same category as tools like Jira, Trello, Basecamp, etc – in fact, we integrate with them.

We’re not a project management system - we’re a visual collaboration platform that incorporates project and task management functionality, and integrates with leading solutions. Atarim is designed specifically to help teams unlock a superior collaboration workflow.

Can you share a specific example of how Atarim has helped a client to deliver a project more efficiently and effectively, that you are proud of?

The most memorable stories we hear from our users at conferences time and time again are that they used Atarim to revive what they considered “dead projects” or “lost causes”. Projects that involved clients they tried to get approval from so many times but couldn’t get things to move forward, until they tried Atarim and thought that these projects would be the best ones to start with – thinking, what’s the worst that could happen?

The project had already gone cold. The client had stopped engaging with them. And so these agencies had already written off the projects in their mind and no longer expected to receive the final payments they initially expected on completion of the project.
Atarim enters the picture. They get these projects set up there, send clients an invite to collaborate, and they finally start to get feedback from their clients! They can move things forward and get to that sweet final payment.

And, perhaps more importantly, their client gets the end result they were hoping for, because they’ve made it easy for them to get involved.

Making their agency the hero!

We also have tons more case studies and reviews, which I’d recommend checking out.

How has user feedback and input influenced the development of Atarim's features and functionality over time?

The majority of the features we’ve built since our initial launch have been based on user feedback. We had the pleasure of being well-received in the community at the time, but as Visual Composer will be all too familiar with, we’re an honest bunch when we like or dislike something!

This was good in the sense that it meant we had to hold ourselves to a higher standard and really deliver beyond the problems that we solved by building Atarim for our own agency. And now we have a public feedback and roadmap site as well.

What do you think has been the biggest contributor to the success of Atarim in such a short period of time?

If there’s one thing I would point to, it would have to be the WordPress community. Both users and makers alike. It’s where we started and remains a crucial part of our journey.

About Atarim's First Integration with a Website Builder

How do you see the integration between Atarim and Visual Composer solving the problems that agencies face in collaboration with clients and teams?

The Visual Composer integration for Atarim is designed to address the build stage. The phase where people are busy designing, building, and perfecting their sites.

The core of this work tends to happen in the WordPress admin area and, of course, page builders like Visual Composer. Prior to this integration, this meant that users would have to jump back and forth between tabs to leave feedback, locate tickets and resolve them as they go. Now, you can say goodbye to switching tabs constantly – just dive into your visual editor, head to the new collaboration tab and let the magic happen.

What tips do you have for Visual Composer users who are looking to maximize the benefits of using Atarim in their workflow?

Take advantage of the native integration. Nothing to install or configure! Just create a free account with us and take it for a spin on your sites that use Visual Composer.

If you have any questions, make sure to reach out to one of our support teams - we will continue to work together to make this integration as useful as possible for our users.

How do you envision the future of website building and collaboration with tools like Atarim and Visual Composer?

Our vision is to turn Atarim into the visual collaboration layer for the web. From designs to websites to developing products, we want to make it easy for teams to collaborate visually.

And native integrations like the ones with Visual Composer are a big part of making this possible, so that people who build with their favorite page builders can stay in the flow of getting work done where they actually already work instead of switching back & forth between tabs to see the feedback for the pages they’re working on.

What Can We Expect From Vito & Atarim In The Future

What is your vision for the future of Atarim, and where do you see the company headed in the next five to ten years?

Our vision is to make the web collaborative & become the centralized, visual collaboration layer of the internet.

That is, bringing everything into Atarim.

Consider: Figma, Google Docs, websites (the one we already do better than anyone else with 1-click collaboration) and graphic designs (we already do this too).

Conversely, we are also bringing Atarim into the existing workflow that developers have. Visual Composer integration is a great example of this in practice. We have brought collaboration to where people already work, if they build with Visual Composer - and there’s more of that to come!

How do you balance your responsibilities as a new parent with your work at Atarim, and what strategies have you found to be most effective in managing your time?

It’s certainly an ongoing challenge, but I’m very lucky to have the family support system we have in place -babysitters when we need them, and the team at Atarim to support me so that I can also enjoy the responsibilities of being a father.

It’s not always perfect, especially in recent times with the amount of things going on at Atarim right now, so usually the thing that gets cut to accommodate for the rest is sleep, which I’m sure many of us can relate to.

Can you share some advice for someone looking to start their own business?

1. Solve a real problem. Focus on solving a problem that you're passionate about and people need a solution for.
2. Start small and move fast. Begin with a minimum viable product (MVP) and iterate quickly based on user feedback. We did this by launching as a simpler WordPress plugin first, before transitioning to a SaaS model.
3. Have a strong founding team. A diverse and complementary team of founders is the backbone of a successful startup. Founders should have a mix of technical, business, and domain expertise.
4. Build a strong network. Engage with other entrepreneurs, investors, and mentors in your industry. This network can provide valuable insights, connections, and support along your journey.
5. Learn to sell. As a founder, you'll need to sell your product, your vision, and yourself. Develop strong communication and persuasion skills to effectively convey your ideas to customers, investors, and employees.

And don’t forget that every startup’s journey is different. At the end of the day, we’re all trying to figure it out – it’s important to build, learn and live from your own experiences.

Lastly, we recently saw your performance at CloudFest, can we expect to see you live at WordCamp Europe?

I will be attending WordCamp Europe along with a number of others on the team - we look forward to seeing the Visual Composer team there, as well as lots of our users in-person. I’m not sure if there will be a performance but if there will be, I would suggest we form a band there as well!

Collaboration is key to a successful web development project, but it can also be one of the biggest downfalls, as it accounts for 52% of the main challenges that web development companies face.

That's why we're excited to introduce the Atarim integration in our latest release, version 45.1.3 - the ultimate solution for web developers and agencies to make website development and client collaboration a more enjoyable experience.

No more dealing with multiple programs for project management, endless feedback loops, and back-and-forth emails. Create complete sites and collaborate with clients and teams in the same space. Read on to discover how it can transform the way you work.

Why Atarim is a Must-Have Tool

The Atarim integration with Visual Composer brings a range of useful features and benefits to web developers and agencies.

Firstly, you can receive feedback and respond to client requests in real-time, by seeing exactly what the client is referring to, without leaving the editor. This feature is especially helpful to eliminate any misunderstandings, since clients may not be familiar with the technical terms.

In addition, the Atarim integration simplifies project management by providing a centralized platform where you can access all your project files, deadlines, and client communications in one place.

The Atarim Dashboard allows you to easily track the progress of your projects and stay on top of your deadlines with the various built-in features including auto-updating Kanban boards, time tracking, and more. This is particularly useful, when it comes to team collaboration, as it helps increase accountability and gain valuable insights into project workloads, to better justify the costs to clients.

Read on to learn how to start using all of the Atarim features in Visual Composer.

Launching Atarim in Visual Composer

To start collaborating with your team and clients from inside on any page or post, make sure you have updated or installed the latest version of Visual Composer. Then, simply follow these steps:

1. Navigate to 'Insights & Notifications' in the navigation bar
2. Open the tab 'Collaborate' and click on 'Start Collaborating For Free'
3. Install and activate the Atarim plugin
4. Create a free account by filling in your details, assigning a WordPress account, and adding contributors
5. You will be automatically redirected to the editor, where you can start using Atarim.

Both free and premium Visual Composer users have access to the Atarim integration, which allows them to easily collaborate with clients and team members.

Developers can share the link with clients and invite contributors to add comments, assign tasks, and set priority and status levels. Clients can even attach files, take screenshots directly within the preview page and attach comments on specific device types, all of which you can manage from within the editor.

In addition, you are also able to see details about the issuer's browser, and screen resolution, as well as share a link to the specific task and add private messages that only team members can see, which are all extremely handy features. Overall, with the Atarim integration, you can ensure that everyone involved in the project has access to the same information, making it easier to manage projects and deliver results on time.

If you are a solo developer, the free version of Atarim offers a handful of useful features for you to work individually with clients. But if you're looking to work with a team, the premium version is the way to go.

Start Collaborating Efficiently

We couldn't be more excited that Atarim's very first integration with a WordPress website builder is with Visual Composer. It is a game-changer for web developers and agencies, as it solves the common challenges of unclear communication and project management, by providing a streamlined and visual way for clients and teams to collaborate.

By following the simple steps to start using Atarim, you can transform the way you work and unlock your team's full potential. If you're interested in learning more about our partnership, be sure to check out Atarim's announcement.

Try the powerful free version of Atarim in both Visual Composer Free and Premium, and see the difference it can make in your web development projects.

Looking to add some visual flair and consistency to your WordPress website? Button groups can be an effective way to achieve both.

By combining multiple buttons together, you can create a design element that enhances usability and aesthetics, while providing clear options for users to navigate, sort, filter, and take action.

Fortunately, with Visual Composer, adding multiple buttons in the same line in WordPress is quick and easy. In this guide, we'll show you how to do it with just a few simple steps.

Creating a Button Group in Visual Composer

This tutorial requires the premium version of Visual Composer. So, to begin, make sure you have Visual Composer installed and activated on your WordPress website.

If you are just getting started with Visual Composer, we recommend you follow our guide for articles and video tutorials to help you get familiar with creating a new page, navigating the interface, as well as adding and editing elements with Visual Composer.

First, you will need to select any page or post where you wish to place the button group. Or if you’re creating a new one, click on “Add New with Visual Composer” from your WordPress Dashboard. Once you're in the editor, follow the instructions below.

1. Add the “Button Group” element. Click on “Add Content” or “Visual Composer Hub” from the left sidebar. Select “Button Group” from the list of available elements, and drag it into your row.
2. Delete the extra outlined button. The “Button Group” element includes two differently styled buttons - select the filled button and delete the other for consistency.
3. Clone the button. To do so, hover over the button and click on the “Clone Basic Button” until you have 2 separate buttons within the button group element.
4. Adjust the text for each button. Hover the first button and click on 'Edit', and change the button text. Repeat for each button. In this case, we're changing the button text to “Sign in” and “Register”.
5. Remove the gap between the buttons. Open the “Button Group” element edit window and change the button gap to 0. By default, it is 20 px.
6. Add a border between the buttons. Click on 'Edit' on any button and add a 1px border (for the left side button the right border, or vice versa) in the “Design Options”. These lines will help us separate the buttons from each other visually.
7. Change the border color to your desired shade. In the same place where we adjusted the border, you need to change the border color to a lighter or darker shade, than the button ifself. This will help us achieve contrast.
8. Change the shape of your button group. To give our button group a round shape, we will need to click on 'Edit” for each button and add a radius for each outer corner (for the left side button, the left side radiuses, and vice versa). In our case - 50px to achieve a fully rounded shape.
9. Adjust the button size. To do so, click on 'Edit' for each button and use either the sizing options (this will also affect the button text font size) or use paddings in the Design Options.
10. Add functionality to your buttons. Click on 'Edit' for each button in the group, and with the help of the link selector, add a destination URL, display dynamic content, or trigger a popup - the choice is yours.

In this quick tutorial, we'll show you how to set up and add SVG masks to images using Visual Composer (and custom CSS) for your WordPress website.

Plus, we have created a set of trendy SVG shapes you can download for free and use on your own site. Scroll down to discover.

SVG masking allows you to customize the appearance of elements by applying shapes from SVG files as masks and avoiding adjusting every single image.

Adding Custom SVG Mask To Image in Visual Composer

To give you an idea of what we'll be creating using an SVG mask from our free kit, look at the image before and after below.