WordPress Design - Visual Composer Website Builder https://visualcomposer.com/blog/category/design/ Create Your WordPress Website Mon, 18 Dec 2023 09:37:13 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.0.3 https://visualcomposer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/cropped-vcwb-favico-32x32.png WordPress Design - Visual Composer Website Builder https://visualcomposer.com/blog/category/design/ 32 32 Wix Alternatives: 5 Website Builders You Can Use in 2023 https://visualcomposer.com/blog/5-wix-alternatives/ https://visualcomposer.com/blog/5-wix-alternatives/#respond Fri, 18 Aug 2023 10:50:45 +0000 https://visualcomposer.com/?p=35552 Wix is a website builder that many people use. Like all other software, it has its good and bad points which can affect your development efforts. Here are five alternative web building platforms you may want to consider in 2022, including a comparison of stand-alone and CMS-based builders.

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Wix Alternatives: 5 Website Builders You Can Use in 2022

Wix is a no-code website builder that allows you to create and customize websites and online stores without design or technical skills. While it provides helpful features, it also has some drawbacks that motivate users to look for the perfect Wix alternative.

Users are searching for the best website builder with features such as design templates, third-party app integrations, hosting options, and content management systems at an affordable price.

One such solution is Visual Composer, our WordPress website builder that lets you seamlessly create professional or personal websites. You can use our drag-and-drop editor to create your website or an online store in a hassle-free way. It is suitable for beginners and advanced users. Get started today and join thousands of web creators who already use Visual Composer.

If you need more ideas, in this article, we will evaluate the best alternatives to Wix to help you choose the most suitable option for your business. Let’s start with some basic information about the Wix website builder.

What is Wix?

Wix website builder interface
Wix website builder interface. Source: PCMag

Wix is a website builder that allows you to create, design, and manage HTML5 and mobile websites with drag-and-drop tools. Wix provides many features, templates, and integrations. However, users on popular review websites have made several complaints about:

  • Poor customer service
  • Overwhelming features and options
  • High learning curve
  • High cost for advanced features, and integrations with third-party apps

Due to these issues, users seek other website builders to meet the needs of their online businesses. We researched the best Wix alternatives, so let’s cover the most popular ones.

Wix Alternatives: The Evaluation Parameters

In this article, we will evaluate the best Wix alternatives using the following criteria:

  • User rating
  • Unique features
  • Integrations
  • Customer support
  • Pros
  • Cons
  • Pricing

Our goal is to guide you through making an informed decision for your business.

5 Best Wix Alternatives in 2023

The website builders we will highlight as alternatives to Wix in this article include

  • Visual Composer
  • Elementor
  • Brizy
  • Squarespace
  • Webflow

Let’s start with Visual Composer and explain why we consider it to be the best website builder and the best alternative to Wix. We believe that not just because it's our product but also because of the number of features Visual Composer offers compared to others.

1. Visual Composer

Visual Composer website builder editor interface with elements

Being one of the leading website builders, Visual Composer is ideal for creating responsive websites without coding. Our drag-and-drop editor makes it suitable for people without web development skills, but it’s also prevalent among experienced developers.

Visual Composer editor design options window

Visual Composer empowers you to create your custom website quickly, using the complete WordPress website builder, elements, extensions, blocks, and templates. Our built-in features help you create, edit and optimize your web pages to enhance the user experience.

Visual Composer gives you complete control over your website's appearance. It’s the go-to solution for:

Visual Composer helps you streamline your web development process. It has helped many web creators to scale their businesses successfully.

User Rating

Visual Composer scores 4.3/5 stars on Capterra, based on 55 reviews.

What Makes This Website Builder Unique

Visual Composer is not just your regular WordPress website builder.

It provides automatic SEO tools that boost your website performance and speed. Its eCommerce tools help you increase conversion rates and close more sales.

Visual Composer also offers stock images, 500+ content elements, pre-designed templates, powerful add-ons, and compatibility with all the top WordPress themes and plugins.

Compared with Wix, Visual Composer features are easy to use and are not overwhelming for beginners. It’s the perfect Wix alternative to make you stand out from other web creators.

Integrations

Visual Composer is compatible with the most popular third-party plugins and marketing tools, like

  • MailChimp
  • Yoast
  • Advanced Custom Fields
  • WP Forms
  • wpDataTables
  • WooCommerce
  • Gutenberg
  • Weglot
  • Google Fonts
  • Unsplash
  • YouTube
  • Google
  • Giphy

Customer Support

Visual Composer offers reliable support to customers via email, live chats, and tickets. In addition, our help center also has useful resources like blog posts, FAQs, tutorials, and a community of fellow creators to guide you through basic issues.

We have a 94% customer satisfaction rate and a fast response time considerably above the industry average.

Pros

  • Intuitive user interface
  • Built-in SEO features for high speed and performance
  • Responsive design
  • Numerous content elements, add-ons, and design templates
  • Supports live editing, with the option of undoing and redoing actions
  • High-class support and regular updates
  • Theme builder options for creating customized layouts

Cons

  • The website building tool has a slight learning curve for new users, but lower compared to other tools

Pricing

Visual Composer is not an entirely free tool. While we provide a free version with a free page builder, we also offer premium plans with advanced editing features.

We also provide the best price for developers with 1000 sites, with a friendly price for single and 3-site licenses.

The pricing plans include

  • Single — $49/year for one website
  • Plus — $99/year for five websites
  • Accelerate — $149/year for 20 websites
  • Growth — $349/year for 100 websites
  • Agency — $849/year for 1000 websites
  • Lifetime —  $149 for 1 website (onetime payment)

The first five plans are Annual subscription plans, while the Lifetime plan is for creators who don't want to manage subscriptions for their clients but want to charge them for the license per project.

Visual Composer doesn't offer a free trial, but it has a 30-day refund guarantee. To see how Visual Composer works, get started now for free.

2. Elementor

Elementor website builder interface
Elementor website builder interface. Source: WP Pagebuilders

The second Wix alternative on our list is Elementor. It’s another WordPress drag-and-drop page builder that allows you to build websites for your clients without coding knowledge.

Elementor offers templates, widgets, features, and integrations. You can check out our article about Elementor alternatives to learn more about the software.

User Rating

Elementor scored 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra, based on 590 reviews.

What Makes This Website Builder Unique

Elementor has an intuitive user interface that helps you create websites with attractive designs. Its animation and motion effects are also popular.

Elementor offers built-in web hosting and total control of your custom domain, which you can connect with your Elementor website.

Integrations

Elementor integrates well with popular marketing tools and third-party apps like

  • HubSpot
  • MailChimp
  • Zapier
  • Discord
  • ConvertKit
  • ActiveCampaign
  • Slack
  • MailerLite
  • Customer support

Customer Support

Elementor offers support through live chats, emails, FAQS, and other knowledge-based resources. It also has a community of interactive web creators from all over the world.

Pros

  • It has a responsive drag-and-drop editor
  • It creates aesthetically pleasing websites
  • Easy to use and integrates well with third-party apps

Cons

  • It creates bulky websites that load slowly
  • Sometimes requires plugins to help optimize the website performance
  • Lacks great pre-designed templates
  • Adjusting padding and margins can be difficult

Pricing

Elementor doesn't offer a free trial, but it has a free plan which allows you to build websites with basic features. The paid version has three plans:

  • Essential — $49/year (with one pro website activation)
  • Expert — $199/year (with 25 pro website activations)
  • Agency — $399 for the first year and $999/year subsequently (with 1000 pro website activations)

If you would like to build and host your website on Elementor, it offers a fixed price of $99/year/website, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

3. Brizy

Brizy website builder interface
Brizy website builder interface. Source: Bob The Web Builder

Brizy is a WordPress site builder that allows web creators to build no-code websites from scratch with its intuitive drag-and-drop editor.

User Rating

Brizy has a 4.5/5 rating on Capterra, based on four reviews.

What Makes This Website Builder Unique

Brizy allows you to include custom headers and footers on your clients' websites. Besides a theme builder, Brizy also has a WooCommerce builder, which is suitable for small businesses with eCommerce stores.

Integrations

Brizy integrates well with popular marketing and eCommerce tools like

  • WooCommerce
  • Yoast
  • Zapier
  • MailChimp
  • HubSpot

Customer Support

Brizy doesn't have a live chat feature, but it has a support forum where you can get solutions from other web developers and designers. It also has helpful articles and videos to guide you through potential issues you might encounter.

You can contact support via email for critical issues. Its limited customer support is one reason users seek other Brizy alternatives.

Pros

  • Easy to use
  • Affordable

Cons

  • Few design elements compared to other website builders
  • Some WooCommerce plugins might not be compatible
  • Poor customer support
  • Loading large files sometimes crashes the application

Pricing

Brizy has a free version with about 24 elements and contact form builders for lead generation. The paid version has three pricing plans with lifetime and yearly payment options.

Yearly plan pricing

  • Personal — $49/year (one PRO website)
  • Freelancer — $99/year (100 PRO websites)
  • Agency — $199/year (500 PRO websites)

Lifetime plan pricing (one-time payment)

  • Personal — $149 (one PRO website)
  • Freelancer — $299 (100 PRO websites)
  • Agency — $399 (500 PRO websites)

4. Squarespace

Squarespace website builder interface
Squarespace website builder interface. Source: PCMag

Like other Wix alternatives, Squarespace is a website builder that allows you to design and customize your clients' websites, online stores, or portfolios without a single line of code.

User Rating

Squarespace has a 4.6/5 rating on Capterra, based on 2517 reviews.

What Makes This Website Builder Unique

Unlike Wix, Squarespace has a structured editor with better features and design templates. Squarespace also has eCommerce features and SEO tools that make it easy for you to sell online and get found by potential customers.

This website builder is best suited for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Integrations

Below are some noteworthy integrations that Squarespace offers:

  • Stripe
  • Zapier
  • Unsplash
  • MailChimp
  • Weglot

Customer Support

While Squarespace doesn't offer phone support to users, it has other customer support channels like live chat, email support, social media support, video tutorials, knowledge-based resources, and an active online community.

Pros

  • Robust customer support channels
  • Offers a 14-day free trial
  • Provides eCommerce and SEO tools

Cons

  • Limited features, plugins, and templates
  • Limited customization options

Pricing

While Squarespace doesn't have a free version, it offers a free trial on its paid plans. It has four pricing plans:

  • Personal — $23/month ($16/month billed annually)
  • Business — $33/month ($23/month billed annually)
  • Basic Commerce — $36/month ($27/month billed annually)
  • Advanced Commerce — $65/month ($49/month billed annually)

Each plan comes with a free domain name for the first year (for the annual plan).

5. Webflow

Webflow website builder interface
Webflow website builder interface. Source: CMS Critic

Webflow is a website builder that allows you to design and launch your website without coding. It offers a CMS and advanced eCommerce features.

Unlike other Wix alternatives, suitable for non-techies, Webflow was made for advanced designers, developers, and marketers with developing skills.

User Rating

Webflow has a 4.6/5 stars rating on Capterra, based on 174 reviews.

What Makes This Website Builder Unique

Webflow offers drag-and-drop features and CMS, SEO, and eCommerce tools to help you promote your website and boost sales.

Integrations

Webflow integrates with

  • Zapier
  • Pixie
  • Weglot
  • MailChimp

Customer Support

Asides from a community of web creators, FAQs, and tons of tutorials, Webflow only offers email support to users.

Pros

  • Easily customizable
  • Simple pricing plans
  • Helpful tutorials

Cons

  • Created for advanced users
  • Limited customer support channels
  • High cost of maintenance
  • The UI could be better

Pricing

Webflow doesn't offer a free trial, but it allows you to build your site for free until you need to add more web pages and a custom domain.

Webflow has four paid plans:

  • Basic — $15/month ( $12/month billed annually)
  • CMS — $20/month ( $16/month billed annually)
  • Business — $45/month ( $36/month billed annually)
  • Enterprise — Contact support

Wix Alternatives: Features Comparison

The table below shows a brief comparison of the five best Wix alternatives.

Features

Visual Composer

Elementor

Brizy

Squarespace

Webflow

Drag-and-drop editor

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Fully responsive

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Works with any WordPress theme

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

SEO-friendly

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Cloud marketplace

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Theme builder

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

Popup builder

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Custom widgets

Yes

Yes

No

No

Yes

Premade templates

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes 

Free templates

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Premium templates

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Free stock images

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Advanced design customization

Yes

Yes

No

No

Yes

Mobile editing

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Integrations

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Translation-ready

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

WordPress CMS-Based Website Builders vs. Stand-Alone Website Builders

Woman typing on laptop computer

WordPress CMS-based Website Builders

Website builders that are WordPress CMS-based, allow you to create, store and manage your website and its content. They streamline your website creation process and give you complete control while offering various elements, templates, themes, plugins, and add-ons.

Popular examples of WordPress website builders are Visual Composer, Brizy, and Elementor. These website builders do not require you to code. They do not host your websites but give you access to various hosting platforms. They are more suited for large-scale websites.

WordPress is the most popular CMS platform, and it currently powers about 29.13% (291,329) of the top 1,000,000 websites, according to trends by Built With. Because building websites on the WordPress CMS requires more technical knowledge, no-code/low-code solutions like Visual Composer make it easier for non-techies and advanced users to build their websites with great customization options than stand-alone builders.

Pros

  • Suitable for building any website
  • Offer many themes, plugins, add-ons, and third-party integrations
  • Allow you to either create your layouts with a builder or use pre-made themes
  • Allow you to move your site to your hosting
  • Give you more creative control and flexibility
  • Faster and cheaper than stand-alone builders

Cons

  • You carry out website maintenance, backups, and updates on your own
  • Some CMS-based website builders have a high learning curve
  • Need to pay subscription fees for paid add-ons or plugins

Stand-Alone Website Builders

Man coding on a computer

Stand-alone website builders like Wix, Webflow, and Squarespace allow you to use their proprietary tools to create your website on their hosting platform. These websites do not help you store or manage your content like the WordPress CMS-based ones.

Some require basic coding knowledge, while many provide drag and drop editors to let you create layouts and content. Stand-alone website builders are suitable for simple websites without a lot of content.

Pros

  • Easy to use
  • Set up is easier
  • No need to bother about maintenance and updates
  • Offer web hosting services

Cons

  • Limited customization options
  • Not suited for all website needs
  • You can’t move your site to a new host
  • You don’t get complete control over your website
  • Only provides access to a predefined list of features
  • Some do not offer SEO features

In summary, CMS website builders offer more benefits and functionality than stand-alone builders. They give you complete creative control to edit your websites as you like and are also suitable for creating just about any website like online marketplaces, eCommerce stores, business websites, personal blogs, and more.

Wix Alternatives: The Final Verdict

Visual Composer tops our list as the best Wix alternative. Visual Composer is an all-in-solution that can help you create responsive, professional websites, manage content, sell online and increase your website performance.

Our tool has 500+ content elements and pre-designed templates to help you design your website without coding. Our drag-and-drop interface simplifies the website creation process, and our built-in SEO tools help your websites to rank well on top search engines.

We also have affordable pricing plans that suit your business demands so you can better control your budget. You can start using Visual Composer now to create websites that will distinguish your brand from competitors.

Created with Visual Composer
Discover the Powerful Drag & Drop Website Builder for Web Creators

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A Comprehensive Guide To Earning More As A Web Creator In 2023 And Beyond https://visualcomposer.com/blog/web-creator-guide-to-earn-more/ https://visualcomposer.com/blog/web-creator-guide-to-earn-more/#comments Wed, 16 Aug 2023 16:39:24 +0000 https://visualcomposer.com/?p=34429 This guide covers how to scale your web creator business, including tips on building a strong online presence and optimizing your workflow.

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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.

A Comprehensive Guide To Earning More As A Web Creator In 2022 And Beyond by Visual Composer

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.

Web developer and digital designer employment growth prognosis
Web Developer and Digital Designer Employment Growth Prognosis 2020-2030 (Source: U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS)

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.

Discover Website Builder used by Web Professionals to scale their business to success

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.

Lorem Picsum placeholder generator for pictures
Placeholder Generator For Pictures (Source: Lorem Picsum)

 

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.

Retainer agreement free template from SignWell
Retainer Agreement Template (Source: SignWell)

 

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.

Professional web creator in his work space

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.

Dribbble portfolio example search results
Portfolio Examples (Source: Dribbble)

 

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.

Hashnode web development tag results
Trending Tag: #web-development (Source: Hashnode)

 

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.

Meetup online web development event search results
Web Development Online Events (Source: Meetup)

 

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.

Discover the Website Builder used by Web Professionals to scale their business to success

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Visual Composer’s Key Features for Accessible Websites in 2023 https://visualcomposer.com/blog/key-features-for-accessible-websites/ https://visualcomposer.com/blog/key-features-for-accessible-websites/#comments Mon, 12 Jun 2023 12:14:31 +0000 https://visualcomposer.com/?p=36968 Discover the key Visual Composer features to create inclusive and accessible websites in 2023 while understanding the importance of web accessibility and how to test it on your website.

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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.

Visual Composer Insights contrast checker

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.

Visual Composer Custom Data Attributes for accessibility

​​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.

Visual Composer Font Manager for accessibility

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.

Visual Composer responsive design for accessibility

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! 

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Top 5 Brizy Alternatives to Consider in 2023 https://visualcomposer.com/blog/top-5-brizy-alternatives-to-consider/ https://visualcomposer.com/blog/top-5-brizy-alternatives-to-consider/#respond Fri, 09 Jun 2023 11:46:20 +0000 https://visualcomposer.com/?p=34936 Are you looking for an alternative to Brizy? There are several great visual website builders on the market, and we've compiled a list of the top five to consider in 2022. Each of them offers its own unique features and benefits, so you're sure to find one that's a perfect fit for your business.

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Brizy is a visual website builder that offers businesses extensive customization tools and templates to create a professional online presence. However, some users need more advanced features or website builders that align better with their budgets. In such cases, it makes sense to look for other alternatives.

You can start with Visual Composer, our intuitive, drag-and-drop website builder for WordPress that allows you to build and customize your website visually. It's created for web creators of all experience levels. It’s easy to use and has many features that help you create the best possible user experience. To start using Visual Composer, get started for free today.

In today's article, we will evaluate the five best Brizy alternatives to help you make an informed decision and choose the best website builder for your next project.

Let's start by explaining what Brizy is.

What is Brizy?

Brizy Website Builder Editor
Brizy Website Builder. Image source: Helpie WP

Brizy is a WordPress website builder that offers an intuitive drag-and-drop editor. It also gives web developers the flexibility to build a site from scratch with Brizy themes, pop-ups, and blocks.

While Brizy has shown promising potential to WordPress site builders, it is not a perfect tool. For example, it doesn’t leave a clean line of code after you uninstall the plugin. Brizy also offers fewer design elements compared to other page builders. These are some of the reasons why users search for alternatives.

Brizy alternatives: The evaluation parameters

We have evaluated the five Brizy alternatives based on the following parameters:

  1. User rating
  2. Unique features
  3. Integrations
  4. Customer support
  5. Pros
  6. Cons
  7. Pricing

In the following sections, we will discuss each solution and present our findings.

Top 5 Brizy alternatives in 2023

After researching available website builders on the market, the following solutions have the best results based on our evaluation parameters. Let's discuss each of them.

1. Visual Composer

Visual Composer Website Builder tutorial template
Visual Composer Website Builder. Image source: Visual Composer

Visual Composer is a user-friendly website creator that allows you to create professional sites via a simple drag-and-drop editing tool, premium templates, and design elements.

User rating

On Capterra, Visual Composer has a 4.4 score out of 5 based on 55 user reviews.

What makes this website builder unique

Visual Composer includes over 500 elements, ready-to-use templates, and premium features to help you build a professional website without writing a single line of code. It offers a theme builder and a simple interface in the frontend editor to bring your creative website ideas to life. We also have a unique add-on, our font manager, that lets you change WordPress fonts globally.

If you need some inspiration as you build your website, you can check out some stunning website examples built with Visual Composer.

Integrations

Visual Composer offers integration with numerous marketing tools and plugins like WooCommerce, Gravity Forms, Facebook, WPML, etc.

Customer support

Visual Composer provides support via live chat, tickets, and email, with an average first response time of less than an hour and a 96% customer satisfaction rate.

Pros

  • The Visual Composer Hub provides numerous content design elements and templates to build a professional website that your clients will love
  • It provides automatic optimization to boost your SEO efforts
  • It automatically adapts your website designs for mobile responsiveness and offers custom optimization for different device types

Cons

  • The website building tool has a slight learning curve

Pricing

Visual Composer offers a free version, that's free forever, and premium plans, each including all premium features of the plugin. It has the following six pricing plans:

  • Single – costs $49/year for one website
  • Plus – costs $99/year for five websites
  • Accelerate – costs $149/year for 20 websites
  • Growth – costs $349/year for 100 websites
  • Agency – costs $849/year for 1000 websites
  • Lifetime – costs $149 for 1 website (one-time purchase)

If you’re interested to see how Visual Composer works, get started for free today or explore how it can benefit your web creator business.

2. Elementor

Elementor Website Builder Interface
Elementor Website Builder. Image source: Epic Win

Elementor is a WordPress page builder that lets you create websites via a simple drag-and-drop visual builder.

User rating

Elementor has a 4.7 score out of 5 on Capterra based on 553 user reviews.

What makes this website builder unique

Elementor lets you create sticky headers and footers that display as your site visitors navigate your website.

Another unique feature you can get from Elementor is the ability to make your site visually appealing and interactive via animations and motion effects. Though this feature is present in Brizy, there are more animation effects in Elementor.

Integrations

Elementor integrates with marketing tools like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Zapier, MailerLite, Hubspot, Woocommerce, etc.

Customer support

Elementor provides support via email, FAQs, and knowledge base. This visual website builder also has an active community where you can interact with other developers and web designers. You can also use video tutorials to learn more about Elementor features.

Pros

  • Fully responsive page builder with a drop interface that lets you build websites without any coding skills
  • Integrates with many marketing tools and supports many WordPress plugins for improved functionality
  • It provides many widgets you can use on your web pages

Cons

  • Its drag and drop editor doesn't let you adjust padding and margins
  • It doesn't offer a lifetime payment option like Brizy and Visual Composer.

Pricing

Elementor provides a free version you can use if you don't need an advanced feature like the popup builder. With the Elementor free plan, you can access 50 widgets, live editing, and drag and drop editor. In terms of the paid version, Elementor offers four plans:

  • Essential – costs $49/year with one pro website activation
  • Expert – cost $199/year with 25 pro website activations
  • Studio – $499/year with 100 pro website activations
  • Agency  – $999/year with 1000 pro website activations

3. ThriveThemes

Thrive Themes Website Builder Interface
Thrive Themes Website Builder. Image source: Jussi Hyvarinen

This WordPress website builder helps you build marketing websites that convert users and drive revenue. It offers an intuitive interface and almost 300-page templates you can choose from.

User rating

ThriveThemes scores 4 out of 5 on G2 based on 25 user reviews.

What makes this website builder unique

ThriveThemes targets a specific niche - marketing and affiliate. It makes this WordPress website builder more conversion-focused. Marketers and business owners who sell products can use the ThriveThemes digital marketing tools to drive revenue.

Integrations

ThriveThemes offers API integrations with numerous marketing tools like MailChimp, DropBox, Google, ConvertKit, Facebook, HubSpot, etc.

Customer support

ThriveThemes offers free training via Thrive University, where you can find courses to learn how to use each tool. It also provides support via tickets.

Pros

  • This web page builder has unique features for building affiliate and marketing websites
  • It provides almost 300 templates to give you more flexibility when building your website
  • It is focused on conversion and lead generation

Cons

  • You might not fully benefit from ThriveThemes if your goal isn't to build a marketing site
  • It offers numerous products, which can result in a high learning curve
  • The customer support response time is quite slow, which can be annoying if you encounter an issue

Pricing

ThriveThemes doesn’t offer a free plan or a free trial. It provides two paid pricing plans with a 30-day money-back guarantee. The paid plans include:

  • Thrive Suite Quarterly – for up to five websites. It costs $99/quarter.
  • Thrive Suite Yearly – for up to five websites. It costs $299/year and provides access to all features at the lowest price.

4. Wix

Wix Website Builder Interface
Wix Website Builder. Image source: Compare Camp

Wix is a website builder that offers an intuitive drag-and-drop editor. It is beginner-friendly, and you can use it to build an e-commerce store, portfolio, freelance, and small business websites.

User rating

Wix has a 4.2-star rating of 5 on G2 based on 1,453 user reviews.

What makes this website builder unique

Wix provides over 800 templates that let you build marketing landing pages and professional websites.

Integrations

Wix integrates with over 200 marketing tools like MailChimp, ZenDesk, Hubspot CRM, SalesForce, etc.

Customer support

Wix offers support via live chat, tickets, knowledge base, email, and phone support.

Pros

  • Wix provides a simple drag and drop web page editor even if you have no coding skills
  • It has numerous e-commerce tools you can use to build an e-commerce site

Cons

  • You will have to start from scratch if you need to change your template after publishing your site
  • Its numerous web design options can be overwhelming

Pricing

Wix has many pricing plans that don't seem very clear at first. While it offers a free plan, it also provides paid plans you can use for professional sites, e-commerce, and business sites.

Professional pricing plans:

Connect domain – costs $4.50/month and includes 500MB of storage space
Combo – costs $8.50 and includes 3GB of storage space
Unlimited – costs $12.50 and includes 10GB of storage space
VIP – costs $24.50 and includes 35GB of storage space

The e-commerce and business pricing plans:

Business basic – costs $17/month and includes 20GB of storage space
Business unlimited – costs $25/month and includes 35GB of storage space
Business VIP – costs $35/month and includes 50GB of storage space

5. Oxygen Builder

Oxygen Website Builder Interface
Oxygen Website Builder. Image source: GitHub

Oxygen Builder combines all necessary features for building websites, blogs, portfolio websites, or any other type of website. It includes a drag and drop page builder, content builder and editor, and a single page builder.

User rating

Oxygen Builder has a 4.5 score out of 5 on G2 based on 24 user reviews.
What makes this website builder unique
Oxygen Builder includes analytics, hosting, increased security, and social media integration.

Integrations

This WordPress website page builder offers WooCommerce integration that gives you the ability to create an online store. It also integrates with other web page builders like Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, and Elementor.

Customer support

Oxygen Builder provides support via FAQs, video tutorials, manuals, and tickets.

Pros

  • Advanced features for developers and designers that prefer a more complex page builder
  • Flexible and easy-to-use design customization options

Cons

  • If your goal is to build a simple blogging site, then Oxygen might not be a suitable option
  • Its advanced functionalities lead to a steep learning curve

Pricing

Oxygen Builder offers a free plan and a lifetime payment option. It includes four pricing packages with a 60-day money-back guarantee:

  • Basic – costs $129 with a lifetime license
  • WooCommerce – costs $169 and includes a lifetime license and
  • WooCommerce integration
    Agency – costs $199 and has everything in WooCommerce plus Gutenberg block builder and simplified client UI
  • Ultimate – costs $229 and includes everything in Agency plus composite elements

Brizy alternatives: Features comparison

So far, we've highlighted key features of the notable Brizy alternatives. We've prepared a comparison table so you can easily spot critical differences between these solutions and make your decision faster.

 

Visual Composer 

Elementor 

ThriveThemes 

Wix

Oxygen builder 

Drag and drop editor

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Fully responsive 

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

SEO-friendly 

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Works with any WordPress theme 

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Cloud marketplace

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

Theme builder

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

Pop-up builder

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Custom widgets

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

Premade templates 

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Free templates 

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Premium templates 

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Free stock images

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

Advanced design customization

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Mobile editing

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Integrations 

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Translation ready

Yes

No

No

No

No

Developer-friendly 

Yes

Yes

No

No

Yes

Non-tech-savvy user-friendly

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Brizy alternatives: The final verdict

The five Brizy alternatives explained in this article undoubtedly include features that the Brizy page builder lacks.

Visual Composer stands as the best choice for your next project. It offers over 500 content elements and ready-to-use templates that give you the flexibility to create beautiful websites that your clients will love.

It also offers automatic optimization to boost SEO and your site's speed. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface eliminates the complexity of building a website. You can check our case study to learn how Visual Composer has helped web creators achieve success.

Get started with Visual Composer today and enjoy all the advanced features that will help you skyrocket your website.

Discover the Powerful Drag & Drop Website Builder for Web Creators

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Web Design Trends 2023 https://visualcomposer.com/blog/web-design-trends-2023/ https://visualcomposer.com/blog/web-design-trends-2023/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2022 11:30:24 +0000 https://visualcomposer.com/?p=36475 Can't wait to see what web design trends will dominate the market in 2023? Let's dive into the web design trends of 2023.

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Can't wait to see what web design trends will dominate the market in 2023?

We have analyzed web design technologies, practices, and patterns that are currently on the rise to give you a shortlist of web design trends.

Without further ado, let's dive into the web design trends of 2023:

Robots attack images

Today, AI copywriting is all over the place. People either talk about the power of AI or actively use it to produce written content.

The market of AI content creation is growing rapidly as one of the early birds, Jasper, managed to secure another round of investments and reach a value of $1.5B.

The WordPress industry is not that far behind with Bertha.ai and similar promising tools building a solid user base.

Ok, AI copywriting is nothing new anymore, but what about images?

Recently, plenty of AI companies have released early prototypes of AI images (Jasper and Bertha included). The results look astonishing.

While there are visual flaws and plenty of space for improvements, we believe that AI images will explode in 2023.

Designers? Calm down - it won't put you out of work any time soon.

Just like with the AI copywriting, AI images still require an expert to turn a good copy or image into an excellent one.

Should you adopt this trend? We highly recommend you try out some of the AI tools on the market.

For a business, this means speed and optimization. In the world of economical recession, these are magic words.

Cards and components

Another trend driven by the optimization of costs is the use of components.

This means reusability and fast content management.

While it may look like something already there, we see a strong movement toward adopting component-based frameworks, like Tailwind, and features like Global Templates.

Component-based frameworks allow you to quickly set up websites and reduce time-to-market.

Components example in web design

Managing components is fast and easy since you can modify multiple instances simultaneously.

Global templates serve the same purpose by having a single point of management.

Sketches and notes

If you were looking for graphic trends, this is where you should start.

As a designer, you want to focus visitors' attention on certain parts of the layout. Plus, giving a useful hint never hurts.

Sketches and notes in web design

We are used to highlighting things that we find important. Using circles, arrows, and underscores is a common practice for everyone making notes.

The same technique can be applied to web design.

In 2023, expect to see more websites using hand-drawn graphics to emphasize certain parts of their layout and catch visitors' attention.

App-like filters and menus

Sticky menus have become a common practice for a better user experience. Placed on top of the page, usually, they allow visitors to quickly navigate across the site to find information.

Recent studies show that more and more websites are adopting sticky menus but with placement at the bottom of the page, just like mobile apps.

App-like filters in web design

In addition to menus, filters are coming into the web allowing visitors to adjust website preferences.

From simple dark mode and light mode switches to product filters, additional options make usage of the website more personalized and visitors feel special.

Circles and cylinders

A circle is considered to be a perfect geometric figure to represent continuity and eternity.
Designers love circles. In web design, circles and similar elements are often used for the graphical part and branding.

Circle examples in web design

While there has always been a wide use of circles on the web, we see designers using circle-type shapes more in 2023.

Cylinders, half circles, and outlined circles are expected to appear more - as central and background elements.

But my branding does not contain circles.

No worries, you don't have to run for every trend out there.

A new Serif in town

In the last couple of years, sans-serif has been dominating the web with all major sites and apps using Roboto and similar font families.

Things are about to change in 2023.

Serif typography example in web design

While we already see more and more serif-type typography used for graphic design, we expect serif fonts to be adopted for textual content more often.

In fact, the latest reports on accessibility suggest that serif fonts are as good for readability as sans serif which opens a door for more wide usage.

Plus, taking into account the popularity of sans-serif, using serif fonts can help websites to stand out.

Back to the black

When was the last time you had your CSS stylesheet containing p { color: #000 }?

Black typography in web design

Most web designers avoid using black color for typography. Instead, the majority prefer using dark tones considering them to be more stylish.

Nevertheless, many award-winning sites are starting to bring back the trend of using black color.

Why so?

There are several reasons behind it.

All trends are following a cyclic path and we are at the point when pure black is back in business.

The growing trend of accessibility also has an impact on color schemas. Black color is considered to be better when it comes to contrast ratio and readability. We all know how picky people are when it comes to Google Lighthouse reports about the contrast ratio.

Is it a good idea to go all black? I would say that this is one of the trends that is easy to follow since all you have to do is change a few lines of CSS or adjust the settings of your Font Manager.

Sustainability

How do your website and development processes impact the global environment?

Modern web developers have started to ask this question more often.

We all see how COP conferences are getting more attention year to year. Large corporations are investing in sustainability and a green economy. Hosting companies are looking for a way to optimize resource usage.

WordPress hosting sustainability

It will take some time, but individuals and SME businesses are already looking for ways to improve things on a micro level.

New startups are coming live with ideas that support less resource usage for the development, deployment, and maintenance of websites and applications.

Businesses are talking to their customers to get feedback on how they can improve their products - not only features but sustainability.

Plus, smart resource usage comes with a business-friendly side-effect - reduced costs.

Conclusions

Without a doubt, it is crucial to understand what will dominate the web design market in 2023. Knowing the trends can help your business to move forward and win over your competitors.

You can become faster, smarter, and stronger by applying them to your business. But, as always, I see no reason to apply all trends at once as it will take lots of time and money.

Think about what really matters and makes a difference. What can be done for a quick win and what should be done for long-term goals?

Got anything to add to this story? Join the discussion in our Facebook community.

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Top Alternatives to Hubspot CMS to Try in 2023 https://visualcomposer.com/blog/alternatives-to-hubspot-cms/ https://visualcomposer.com/blog/alternatives-to-hubspot-cms/#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2022 17:03:11 +0000 https://visualcomposer.com/?p=36258 In today's article, we will look at the best alternatives to Hubspot CMS. Hubspot is definitely a wonderful tool, however, it's not particularly cheap. If you're looking for an alternative CMS and web development tool for a lower price, then this article is for you.

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Top Alternatives to Hubspot CMS to Try in 2023Looking for alternatives to Hubspot CMS?

There are many reasons why you might need them.

Luckily, there are CMS systems out there that allow you to build your site and manage your website content without any coding knowledge.

Depending on your needs, here are some of the most popular HubSpot CMS alternatives.

But first, let's see why you might want to look at HubSpot CMS alternatives.

Why Consider Hubspot CMS Alternatives?

HubSpot CMS interface
HubSpot CMS interface. Source: HubSpot

HubSpot is a popular marketing software solution that combines different aspects of marketing including CRM, inbound marketing, and sales automation.

It offers a website builder and content management system that allows you to build websites.

HubSpot CMS is used by many businesses, but it has its fair share of disadvantages. One of the biggest disadvantages of Hubspot is its cost. HubSpot is a paid platform, which means you need to budget for it as part of your overall marketing costs. For instance, the starter plan is priced at $23 per month, the Professional plan at $360 a month, and the Enterprise plan at $1200 per month.

While there is a free forever plan, it comes with HubSpot branding and offers basic SEO recommendations apart from allowing you to connect one custom domain.

Most other advanced features are hidden behind a paywall including:

  • A/B testing
  • Custom web applications
  • Partitioning
  • Advanced SEO recommendations
  • Dynamic content
  • Phone, email, and live chat support

In addition, HubSpot can be difficult to learn and use, especially if you're not familiar with other CMS platforms. And finally, HubSpot's support can be hit or miss, leaving you on your own if you run into problems.

The message is clear. To unlock tangible value from your marketing investment, you need to explore different Hubspot CMS alternatives.

Top Alternatives to HubSpot CMS in 2023

1. Visual Composer

Visual Composer Website Builder for WordPress

If you are looking for an affordable and intuitive HubSpot CMS alternative, you can't go wrong with Visual Composer.

The drag-and-drop WordPress website builder is ideal for web developers and web designers of all experience levels, who wish to decrease the coding needed in the web development process close to zero.

While it is not entirely free too, there is a free version that's free forever. The free version offers more than enough features to build a simple website, while the premium version allows you to create any kind of website imaginable, from portfolio to eCommerce sites. The premium plans are priced at affordable rates ranging from $49/year for one website to $349/year for 100 websites, making it one of the best alternatives to HubSpot CMS. Plus, all premium plans also include all premium features.

Pros

  • Visual Composer offers over 500 content elements and pre-designed templates to design a fully functional WordPress website
  • Supports the most popular plugins
    Compatible with any WordPress theme that complies with the coding standards set by WordPress Codex.
  • Optimal SEO to help you rank higher
  • Faster-loading pages
  • Easy to use
  • Offers powerful integrations with a range of marketing and design tools including Mailchimp, Yoast, Unsplash, Google, YouTube, WP Forms, WooCommerce, Giphy, Weglot, etc.

Cons

  • While Visual Composer offers a wide range of features in addition to an intuitive user interface, it can involve a learning curve for those new to the WordPress CMS platform or website design.

2. Wix

Wix website builder interface and navigation bar
Wix website builder. Source: Expert Reviews

Wix is a website-building platform that offers a wide range of features for designers and non-designers alike. The Wix CMS allows users to do everything from adding text and images to creating pages, menus, slideshows, galleries, and more.

Wix offers a limited free plan and paid plans that you can use to create more complex sites. Paid plans differentiate by the features each provides and vary from $5.50/month to $44/month depending on the storage space, which comes down to around $66 to $528 a year.

Pros

  • As one of the good HubSpot CMS alternatives, Wix provides a drag-and-drop interface for designing websites. It has features such as SEO, integrations with Google Drive and Dropbox, and more.

Cons

  • There are limitations in website structuring and creative design
  • Lack of flexibility when it comes to adding widgets or code
  • Not as customizable as other HubSpot CMS alternatives
  • Not the SEO-friendliest alternative to HubSpot CMS
  • Content-heavy Wix sites take a long time to load

Read more about the best Wix alternatives: 5 website builders you need to try in 2022.

3. Webflow

Webflow website builder interface
Webflow website builder interface. Source: CMS Critic

Webflow is a cloud-based platform that enables users to create responsive websites without having to write code. It is used by web designers and developers to create custom-designed websites. The platform combines content management, web design, e-commerce, and marketing tools to make it easy to build a website from scratch.

Webflow allows you to sign-up for free, but like most website building platforms, requires a hosting provider to get your site up and running. Webflow offers both general and eCommerce paid plans. Paid plans range from $18/month to $235 /month (up to 22% cheaper when choosing the option to get billed annually) and vary in features each of them offers.

Pros

  • Webflow uses a drag-and-drop interface, which makes it easy to create and edit website designs.
  • Webflow also has pre-built templates and themes that users can choose from to get started with their website design.

Cons

  • One of the biggest disadvantages of Webflow is that it can be more difficult to use than other website builders. The user interface is not optimal.
  • Additionally, Webflow does not offer as many features as some other website builders, so you may need to use other tools to supplement your website.
  • Another downside of Webflow is that it can be more expensive than other website builders. If you're on a tight budget, you may want to consider another platform that offers a more affordable option.

Discover the 5 best Wefblow alternatives you should be using in 2022

4. Drupal

Drupal CMS interface
Drupal CMS interface. Source: Drupal

Drupal is a content management system (CMS) that enables you to create a website or blog from scratch or improve an existing website. It is used as the backend system for many popular websites, including The Economist, Examiner.com, and Daily Kos.

On average website projects built on Drupal CMS are way more expensive than website projects built on WordPress CMS (including the use of website builders). The cost varies strongly on the type of website and features you wish to be added to a website (anywhere from $500 to $40 000+ per website project).

Pros

  • Drupal is free and open-source software, released under the GNU General Public License. This means that anyone can download, install, and use Drupal without having to pay for it. It also means that Drupal's code is available for anyone to study, modify, and redistribute.
  • In comparison with other alternatives to HubSpot CMS, websites built on Drupal have good SEO (search engine optimization) properties.

Cons

While it is a flexible CMS platform, there are certain cons that you need to be aware of:

  • Drupal is slow. For your site to work fast, you may need to set up a caching solution
  • There are limited options in terms of fewer plugins or modules as compared to WordPress or Joomla.
  • Most plugins on offer are paid ones.
  • Lacks a good user interface
  • Not an ideal HubSpot CMS alternative for a non-tech person
  • It can be time-consuming to build a website

5. Duda

Duda website builder interface
Duda website builder interface. Source: Digital

Duda is a website builder with client management and team collaboration tools that helps you craft efficient websites optimized for tablet, desktop, and mobile devices.

Duda offers four paid pricing plans, which vary in features. The basic plan costs $19/month, while the highest plan costs $99/month and offers an additional 14-day free trial. Duda pricing plans also cost 25% cheaper when choosing the option to get billed annually.

Pros

  • 100+ templates and a drag-and-drop editor
  • Traffic analysis
  • Useful e-commerce features

Cons

  • Duda limits your creative control
  • Expensive plans
  • SEO features are basic
  • Can be a bit clunky for those new to website building

Another big limitation of Duda is that it locks you into using the platform for running your website, unlike Visual Composer.

6. Breakdance

Breakdance website builder interface
Breakdance website builder interface. Source: Breakdance

Breakdance website builder is a relatively new platform from Soflyy, Oxygen's parent company, that comes with expected features such as templates and drag-and-drop builder.

Breakdance currently offers only one paid plan option, which costs $149/year currently for unlimited sites. The pricing page suggests, that the price will rise to $349/year, but it's unclear when the price will rise. The plan also includes a 30-day free trial and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

Pros

  • Full site editing
  • 100 + elements
  • SEO friendly
  • Gutenberg and WooCommerce integration

Cons

  • Steep learning curve
  • Lacks the themes, knowledge base, features, and support available with other HubSpot alternatives such as Visual Composer
  • Being a new platform, Breakdance may not be the most reliable platform in the market.

In Conclusion

As you can see, there is no shortage of options when it comes to building a website with CMS. These tools have made it possible for marketers to streamline their workflow and create websites without any technical knowledge. Choose the right one based on your budget, coding knowledge, and flexibility needs.

The post Top Alternatives to Hubspot CMS to Try in 2023 appeared first on Visual Composer Website Builder.

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How to Easily Add an Email Signup Form to Your WordPress Website https://visualcomposer.com/blog/add-signup-form-to-wordpress-website/ https://visualcomposer.com/blog/add-signup-form-to-wordpress-website/#respond Tue, 20 Sep 2022 10:53:12 +0000 https://visualcomposer.com/?p=35874 This article will guide you through the process of creating an effective email signup form according to the industry's best practices.

The post How to Easily Add an Email Signup Form to Your WordPress Website appeared first on Visual Composer Website Builder.

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Creating a form that converts visitors into leads is important for any company that uses its website for business and wants to get the most out of its marketing efforts. This is the case for B2B companies that aim to book the first meetings with potential buyers, but also for B2C companies that want to nurture their leads through email marketing.

According to Sumo, the average email sign-up rate ranges between 1.95% and 4.77%. While these percentages might seem low, email sign-up forms are still one of the most effective ways to generate leads to this day. With a healthy email sign-up rate considered to be above 2%, it's an attainable goal for any online business.

By following the industry best practices and avoiding common mistakes, you can get more users into your next stage of the funnel. This will help you apply a variety of email marketing strategies and ultimately boost your sales.

In this article, I will guide you on creating an effective email sign-up form that converts visitors to leads.

Get Visual Composer Popup Builder

What constitutes an email signup form?

The email sign-up form is a simple way to collect visitor information for marketing purposes. The design should be simple, clear, and straightforward so that people can drop their emails without difficulty or confusion when they visit your site.

Sign-up forms can be placed as a pop-up on the website, in the sidebar for blog posts, or as the main call-to-action on a landing page. But, for a pop-up version, the form should have a clearly visible close button so visitors can close it if they are not interested.

A must-have field for the form is email - you want to collect email addresses, right? Data such as name, age, etc. can be collected based on the marketing campaign. But as we said before, the simpler a signup form is - the better conversion rates you can expect.

Note: Statistics show that popups perform significantly better than passive sign-up forms, which you can find at the bottom of most pages.

Best Practices

Following are some best practices to be followed while creating a signup form:

  • A good signup form should have one or two fields and be easy enough to be filled in within seconds.
  • The form headline should clearly state the benefit that the user will avail in return. It can be a weekly newsletter, offers, free e-books, etc.
  • It’s best to stick to a one-column layout which makes it simple and less complicated.
  • The user experience can be enhanced by giving them instant field feedback. For eg: There can be an alert about an incorrectly entered email id while they are typing it.
  • The form colors must be in sync with site branding.
Example of a simple and clean email signup form
Example of a simple and clean email signup form. Source: WPStandard

Note: A report by WPForms, found that marketers who use lead magnets (webinars, free materials, etc.) report 50% higher email sign-up conversion rates.

Things to avoid

Here are a few things that can be avoided to have a higher conversion rate:

  • A signup form with more than two fields can result in fewer signups.
  • Too many fine prints and links to terms and conditions should be avoided.
  • Bad color scheme or fonts which are not clearly visible.
  • Incorrect placement of field validation errors.
Example of signup form with multiple fields
Example of a signup form with multiple fields

WordPress plugins for best email signup forms

WordPress repository has a lot of plugins that can be used for building an email signup form. We have curated a list of the following six plugins based on our experience:

  1. MailPoet – emails and newsletters in WordPress:
    It offers a complete email marketing solution from your WordPress dashboard. You can create a marketing campaign, newsletter, and signup form. All this can be done without having to go to a third-party site.

  2. MC4WP: Mailchimp for WordPress:
    This plugin offers seamless integration with Mailchimp. Using it, you can easily add a signup form created in a marketing campaign, to your WordPress site.

  3. Contact Form 7 and Mailchimp:
    This is an add-on plugin of Contact Form 7. It works on expanding the standard form functionality. Using it, Contact Form 7 can be used as a signup form for the Mailchimp campaign.

  4. Mailchimp addon of Gravity form:
    Similar to the above one, this is an add-on to the Gravity form plugin. It makes it possible to build a signup form using the Gravity form. This form can then be integrated easily with Mailchimp.

  5. HubSpot – CRM, Email Marketing, Live Chat, Forms & Analytics:
    It offers seamless integration with HubSpot to display a signup form. Apart from this, it also allows integration with other HubSpot features. These include features such as live chat, analytics, etc. in the WordPress dashboard.

  6. AWeber Signup Form:
    It integrates with AWeber's email marketing solution. The plugin provides a shortcode and a widget. These can be used to display the signup form from the email marketing campaign.
Discover the Responsive WordPress Website Builder & Build Sign-up Forms for All Devices

Step-by-step process of adding an email signup form

According to Datanyze, Mailchimp has a market share of just over 68% when it comes to email marketing softwares. I personally prefer using it due to its user-friendly interface and easy-to-use setup.

To add a signup form to your website, you will need to follow these steps:

  1. Signup for email marketing software. For this example, we will use Mailchimp. Its free plan allows you to send up to 10,000 emails per month.

  2. Install and activate the plugin “MC4WP: Mailchimp for WordPress” on your WordPress site.

  3. Navigate to: MC4WP - Settings and enter the API key after generating it.

    Mailchimp API status screen
    The status will display as connected once you enter the API key
  4. You can now create a signup form under MC4WP - Forms.

  5. In the form, you can add desired fields such as name, email, etc.

    Mailchimp for WordPress editor interface
    Interface of editor in Mailchimp for WordPress plugin
  6. Using the shortcode provided on the page, you can display the form. It also provides a widget feature that can be used to add the form to widget areas such as the sidebar.

Visual Composer integrations

Mailchimp & Hubspot elements in Visual Composer
The Visual Composer provides an easy way to display the form using its elements. The Mailchimp element, alongside other form integrations, can be downloaded from the Visual Composer Hub.

The above-mentioned steps can be followed to integrate Mailchimp with WordPress. The next step is to select the form that is created and available in the dropdown.

The form can also be added via Popup Builder. This ensures that the signup form can be displayed as a popup to the website visitor.

The Visual Composer also integrates with the HubSpot plugin. It uses the HubSpot form element for such integration.

The first step is to connect the site using the HubSpot plugin interface. Once done, the subscription form can be selected from the element settings.

Conclusion

Now that you are aware of how to build a sign-up form and what a good signup form can do, it is time to implement it on your website and increase the conversion rate. You can always experiment with form position on the website and see what gets you more conversions.

To recap, here are the key takeaways from this article:

  • Creating a form to collect emails from potential clients is an important step in email marketing and the start of the sales process
  • A good sign-up form should be located in a prominent place and should be easy to fill out within seconds
  • The form headline should clearly state the benefit that the user will receive in return for signing up, such as weekly newsletters, exclusive offers, or freebies
  • WordPress plugins such as Mailchimp and HubSpot make it easy to create and add a sign-up form to your website
  • Visual Composer website builder offers integrations with the most popular sign-up form plugins, allows you to create pop-ups, and makes sure your forms look good on all devices

By following these tips, you can create an email sign-up form that converts visitors into leads. Plus if you are using Mailchimp or HubSpot, you can check out the Premium version of Visual Composer. It makes it easy to add create a form that is both effective and easy-to-use, all within our drag-and-drop editor.

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Case Study: How CTS Agency Creates Custom Sites Using Less Code with Visual Composer https://visualcomposer.com/blog/how-cts-agency-creates-custom-sites-using-less-code/ Thu, 15 Sep 2022 07:42:19 +0000 https://visualcomposer.com/?p=35853 Visual Composer is the most powerful tool in a web agency's arsenal. For CTS Agency, it not only increases turnaround time but also replaces any need for full-fledged developers to build out custom elements, fonts, or themes because of its built-in features that are focused on customer feedback.

The post Case Study: How CTS Agency Creates Custom Sites Using Less Code with Visual Composer appeared first on Visual Composer Website Builder.

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​​CTS Agency is a digital marketing company of eight people and counting, with a strong sense of social responsibility and a focus on cause-based projects. They also have plans to expand their business in the near future.

Visual Composer has helped them to do this by saving them time and headaches when it comes to building websites for their clients. With Visual Composer, CTS Agency can create 100% of their clients' websites with close to zero code, which allows them to focus on their mission and grow their business.

In this interview, Greg Trujillo, co-founder, and co-owner of CTS Agency walks us through:

  • How he got into web development
  • How Visual Composer has made it easier for their senior developers to focus on more complex tasks while allowing junior developers to take on simpler tasks
  • And how they make the world a better place through their work.

Tell us more about what you do and how long you have been in the business?

Greg Trujillo:
We started a little over ten years ago and the idea was to create a social media company. So websites weren't something that even was of any interest to us. But as we started doing more in the social media marketing space, we found that websites were necessary.

A lot of people were thinking of social media as a website replacement. But we found that you still need to drive people to a website and an experience that you control, for overall marketing effectiveness. So we started to dive into websites.

I'm a computer engineer by training, so I didn't know a lot about the web world, but many coding languages, whether it's C++ or JavaScript, have a lot of similarities to them. So that was kind of easy for me to pick up and start learning about web development.

Ten years ago, we were just two people. And now fast forward ten years, we're eight people and growing and we serve a multitude of different clients from non-profits to romance authors, lawyers, and service industries.

But really what we like to focus on is cause-based organizations. So whether it's a for-profit company or a non-profit, somebody with a social cause that they want to put forward and how they're trying to make the world a better place, not just by selling sneakers or something, but through their mission. So those are our ideal clients - people that are trying to change the world.

Can you tell us what CTS stands for?

Greg Trujillo:
Our agency is called CTS Agency. The CTS is an acronym for Creative, Technical, and Social. Those are the avenues that we focus on when we're putting together marketing campaigns for our clients.

Filip Galetic:
What do each of those parts mean to you personally?

Greg Trujillo:
So when creating a strategy for marketing campaigns, it takes strategic technical knowledge on how to apply certain parts of the strategy and also a sense of creativity to captivate the people that you're trying to market to.

CTS Agency website
CTS Agency website built in Visual Composer. Source: CTS Agency

And additionally, because of the way that Web 2.0 is right now, there is a vast social layer to that. So you need to make sure that we're not just broadcasting out to people, but we're creating a conversation and a dialog.

On your LinkedIn profile, you mention that you built your first computer when you were just ten years old. What's the backstory behind that?

Greg Trujillo:
So when I was ten years old, my father worked a technology job in the military. They called that microwave satellite repair. And he worked a lot with computers and different technologies. And so he brought some of that home, not his work specifically, but some of that knowledge.

So he would buy computer components and we would work together on building a computer, installing the operating system, and just overall learning about technology. I probably was the first kid on my block to have access to the Internet.

Do you have a strong passion for social responsibility? And if so, what do you enjoy most about it?

Greg Trujillo:
I like helping people that help people. So really, when it comes to social responsibility, I have been involved personally and adjacent to a lot of people who have had bad situations because of a lack of social responsibility in the world in general. Because of the situations that I and people that I know have been through, I like working with organizations that try to alleviate those conditions.

For example, I have personally experienced homelessness and that makes our work with several different homelessness organizations in the region especially meaningful. Additionally, I've had friends who have gone through a divorce due to domestic violence. And so we help domestic violence organizations as well. Really, we love to work with anyone trying to help people who are experiencing a negative situation, which is a common experience across the world.

We just want to help those kinds of organizations because they don't have the funding usually to work with a really big marketing company. And we like to be able to give them the kind of attention that they deserve, but on a budget that they can afford.

Filip Galetic:
That's wonderful. And I mean, those issues you've mentioned, they can often come in a package, right? Homelessness, domestic violence…

Greg Trujillo:
Yes. They spiderweb out and a lot of them touch each other.

Filip Galetic:
Yeah. It's great that you have this niching.  Obviously, this is a good way to help your business grow in general but then when it also helps others, you're the winner here. So congrats. Well done.

Do you have any kind of plans to grow further? How long did it take to reach the current point you're at?

Greg Trujillo:
Yeah, absolutely. So when we started ten years ago, we were just two people and we remained two people for a few years, working with contractors to fulfill needs because neither of us could design. We’d need a designer, so we were able to do that for a while. And as our clients had expanded needs, we realized that we just don't have the time and contractors aren't fulfilling it.

So we needed to bring on people and once we started bringing on employees and having people working full-time, we found that our two original people were able to go out and sell more projects. And so more projects meant that we needed more people. And it's kind of been in an ebb and flow growth trajectory where we have eight employees and then it'll come down to six employees and then go back up a little bit.

And so now we have a really solid employee base. They're excited to continue to work on these projects. They've been working with us for anywhere from 2 to 3 years. We brought them in as junior employees and now they're ready to move up and gain management experience by supervising junior employees themselves.

Filip Galetic:
Sounds great.

Greg Trujillo:
Yeah. We plan to keep expanding. One of the parts specifically is web development, and that's changed immensely because of things like Visual Composer. Before we were manually building everything. Not only the custom frontend with custom functionality, but also we would modify the admin area of WordPress. So that way it was more user-friendly for our clients.

Created with Visual Composer

Now with Visual Composer, it's very easy for our clients in the admin area because we can save a lot of the custom things that we make with Visual Composer. Our clients can easily drag-and-drop the buttons or anything else that we've styled specifically for them. So that makes the admin area a non-issue.

And then also, with all the updates that Visual Composer has had over the last couple of years, it's made it very easy for us to style things that before would have taken a lot longer and would have been a little more of a headache having to do it custom in the PHP & CSS files.

Could you give a rough estimate of how much faster you can get things done with Visual Composer?

Greg Trujillo:
Yeah. So before Visual Composer, we were making a full custom page that had been created by our designer. Developing it for both mobile and desktop would take approximately a day. And that's on a good day with a low functionality page. In Visual Composer that's a couple of hours with the functionality and styling options being built-in.

The same page could be done within 2 hours on Visual Composer where it would previously take a developer all day.

And when reviewing the work that a developer does with Visual Composer, even if I have ten changes they need to make, those changes are done within 30 minutes. Where, if I requested those changes from the developer who had hand-coded it, everything we're talking about would take another 3 hours, and maybe it's delivered to me tomorrow.

Visual Composer has immensely sped up our production because now we don't need a full-fledged developer to build out the pages, we can use a junior developer who has a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.

Do you follow strict processes when it comes to your agency workflows?

Greg Trujillo:
So basically when it comes to our processes, especially with web development, we do have processes in place, which we are documenting. But when it comes to web development, what we usually do, after we understand the goals of the client, is wireframe based on Visual Composer at that point.

So with what we know Visual Composers' capabilities and designs to be, we wireframe based off of that, making sure to keep our client's goals in mind, and then we start to design and beautify it once they've approved those designs. So yeah, we fully incorporate Visual Composers from the beginning and make sure that our designers have gone in and played with the different functionalities of Visual Composers and looked at the styling of it.

That way they can understand what's going to be easy to modify and what is a little more complex to modify. So when creating a website for a client based on what their needs are, it’s amazing to see how far we can go on the modifications with Visual Composer.

Visual Composer makes it so easy to do those sorts of modifications with CSS. Half of the modifications that I need are available within the Visual Composer elements anyways.

A lot of those are great and it just makes it so easy that we pretty much have gone to 100% incorporating Visual Composer. Before it was only for certain features and now it's full-fledged across the website.

How do you structure your business model? 

Greg Trujillo:
Since we are a marketing agency, which is the way that we approach a lot of our services, we have a lot of agency-of-record clients. So they buy a retainer, usually an amount of our time for the entire year. And then we try to section out how many hours we can work per month. And of course, since they bought our time for the year, that's a little more fluid. If they need more hours this month, we can put those in. If they need fewer hours, we can save them for another month.

We do have a lot of clients who prefer to work on that basis. But we also have one-off clients, and these are my favorite kind of projects, the one-offs that are wildly out there.

We had a client who had a real-world physical device to measure fluid inside of a container and wanted us to program a way to get the information from that device onto an analytics dashboard that we were also supposed to design and create. So we were working on that project – their whole thing is fluid inside of barrels for car washes.

So the way that they measure the fluid in car wash barrels is with a Sharpie, they just mark it with a Sharpie and put the date next to it. This person was creating a new piece of technology for that purpose. And we were able to build the web component that displayed in real time what the fluid levels were, gave them alerts on fluid usage, and also the ability to reorder products directly from their analytics tool.

What's next for your agency?

Greg Trujillo:
We do have a few clients that are outside of Florida and outside of the United States, international clients as well. What we're focusing on are cause-based clients that are interested in social causes and those branding campaigns and efforts that they may be putting forward. We found that we're really good at creating brand taglines and then being able to promote those directly to an audience.

For example, we're working on a Florida-wide youth drug prevention campaign which might make people, at least in America, think of the abstinence-focused DARE campaign, but this takes a different approach.

Better Without It website
A cause-based website built by CTS Agency in Visual Composer. Source: Better Without It.

Instead of just saying no, what we're doing is talking about positive reinforcement for healthy habits rather than telling people that if you do drugs, you'll ruin your life. Instead, if you focus on your passions, that opens a lot of doors for your future. We encourage people to focus on healthy habits and things that are going to help them now and throughout their lives.

Fillip Galetic:
Right? That's such a huge topic. And the whole 'just say no' has this inherent 'you're bad' undertone that doesn't work very successfully at all, does it?

Greg Trujillo:
Those abstinence-only ideas just don't work. And nowadays with advertising, it doesn't matter who you're advertising to. Gen Z has the Internet. They can Google things for themselves – you can't B.S. anybody anymore. So you’ve got to find different ways to communicate messages that they want to hear.

Orlando Science Center website
A cause-based website built by CTS Agency in Visual Composer. Source: Orlando Science Center.

Have you used any other website builder apart from Visual Composer and how would you compare them?

Greg Trujillo:
Oh yeah. We inherit a lot of website maintenance contracts and they already have their previous web development company put in a website builder.

So we've used a multitude of different website builders and none of them really compares to Visual Composer in terms of the capabilities and ease of use for the features.

A lot of them kind of get there a little bit, but there are little quirks that make it more difficult and less adjustable for those that have the inclination to do it.

With Visual Composer, especially the admin area updates for the Font Manager and things like that, they make it so amazing now to just create an entire site from scratch that would have taken days, weeks, and even months. I see some of these websites that we've sold that would have taken me an entire week to build as a weekend project now.

What are some of the other features that stand out to you in Visual Composer, and that you use regularly?

Greg Trujillo:
Some of the features that I use and love the most are the templating features and the layout features – being able to create templates and layouts and apply them across different sections of the website. And then we're able to select that template to apply. So I love that aspect of it. It brings that original layer of creation that WordPress had.

Visual Composer Theme Builder addon

It’s exactly like creating a template for your WordPress theme, but Visual Composer makes it much easier.

Plus the Font Manager, I can't even say how amazing it is because being able to not only set the fonts but set the font sizes and styles per screen size is an absolute godsend because before, we'd have to code in via CSS and have the font file in the website itself. Not only that but then coded for each breakpoint of what size it was going to be.

Visual Composer Font Manager addon

Do you find any benefits to using Dynamic Content, such as time savings or better reactions from clients?

Greg Trujillo:
When it comes to dynamic content for Visual Composer, that's something we use a lot because we create custom post types for our clients. Right now we're still using the old way where we’ll go into the functions using? PHP, and create a custom post type, but then with the dynamic content in Visual Composer - when we've created, for example, a custom post type to spotlight their members – we're able to grab the content dynamically from these. Which I find amazing because it's not just the built-in stuff that comes with WordPress.

When we create different post types manually Visual Composers can detect that and pull the content in dynamically. So that way, if we just want the highlighted posts that we've assigned, for example, the category of 'featured,' Visual Composer can grab that even from a non-native custom post type, which I find amazing and works well.

...because then again we can create the post type and Visual Composer can handle all the heavy lifting of displaying it.

Apart from running the agency you also teach marketing courses and do public speaking. Tell us more about that.

Greg Trujillo:
We teach non-profit marketing courses here locally. And additionally, we've been brought out to different cities to teach marketing classes and also help to put on a marketing conference every year.

Filip Galetic:
When is the next conference and is it maybe niche for the cause marketing?

Greg Trujillo:
Yeah. Well, it's social media focused and the conference is called Social Fresh. It should be next year in June. That one has some cause-based content in it, but a lot of it is big brand social media.

Social Fresh website
A conference for Social Media Managers, co-hosted by Greg Trujillo. Source: Social Fresh

If you were starting today in building CTS, what advice would you give yourself?

Greg Trujillo:
Especially when it comes to web development, understanding enough about CSS and HTML will help build about 80% of websites that clients will ever ask for.

If I were starting my company today instead of ten years ago, I would tell myself that while it's nice to know how to build things from scratch, it's not necessary, especially with tools like Visual Composer.

It's when clients are looking for those really custom features that just don't exist anywhere else that you might need to lean on somebody with more development knowledge. But when it comes down to the ease of being able to template and design with Visual Composer, you can create custom solutions for clients without having to have extensive web development knowledge.

Filip Galetic:
That means a lot coming from an experienced web agency owner and expert developer like yourself. Thanks a lot and we'll keep in touch.

The post Case Study: How CTS Agency Creates Custom Sites Using Less Code with Visual Composer appeared first on Visual Composer Website Builder.

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5 Best Webflow Alternatives You Should Be Using in 2022 https://visualcomposer.com/blog/best-webflow-alternatives/ https://visualcomposer.com/blog/best-webflow-alternatives/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2022 11:24:19 +0000 https://visualcomposer.com/?p=35663 No-code/low-code website builders have become the latest trends for most small businesses and web creators. This article highlights the five best Webflow alternatives to help you create responsive websites for your clients.

The post 5 Best Webflow Alternatives You Should Be Using in 2022 appeared first on Visual Composer Website Builder.

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5 Best Webflow Alternatives You Should Be Using in 2022

Webflow is a stand-alone website builder that allows you to create websites without coding. While this drag-and-drop builder offers CMS, SEO, and eCommerce features, it is unsuitable for non-techies and has a high maintenance cost. It makes users seek other website builders for their businesses.

Statistics by User Guiding reveal that no-code/low-code solutions will account for over 65% of software development activities by 2024 and gross $187 billion in revenue by 2030. So it’s essential to choose the right solution to help you set up and maintain your site without having to learn or use too much additional HTML and CSS.

One of the best alternatives to Webflow is Visual Composer, our WordPress website builder. It’s an all-in-one solution that provides a drag-and-drop editor, advanced SEO features, numerous website templates, and web elements. It helps you build responsive websites and online stores easily. It's suitable for beginners and advanced users. Get started today and join thousands of web creators using Visual Composer.

In this article, we will review the best Webflow alternatives to help you decide the best option for your business or clients. First, we'll introduce Webflow.

What Is a Webflow Website Building Platform?

Webflow website builder interface and feature visualisation
Webflow website builder. Source: CMS Critic

Webflow is a drag-and-drop website builder that enables you to design responsive websites. It is suitable for professional designers and advanced developers.

Users seek the best alternative to Webflow for the following reasons

  • No mobile apps for site editing
  • High maintenance cost
  • Limited customer support
  • Steep learning curve
  • Poor UI

Therefore, we researched the five best Webflow alternatives for you. Let's see what they offer.

Webflow Alternatives: The Evaluation Parameters

Our article evaluates these Webflow alternatives with the following criteria:

  • User rating
  • Unique features
  • Integrations
  • Customer support
  • Pros
  • Cons
  • Pricing

Let’s see how well other website builders perform in these categories.

The Best 5 Webflow Alternatives for Building a Professional Website

Here are the best Webflow alternatives you need to know about in 2022.

  • Visual Composer
  • Wix
  • HubSpot CMS Hub
  • Duda
  • Zyro

We will start with Visual Composer and explain why it's the best Webflow alternative.

1. Visual Composer

Visual Composer website builder editor interface with elements
Visual Composer Website Builder

Visual Composer is a free WordPress website builder. You can create dynamic websites and online stores without coding. Our all-in-one platform provides content elements, website templates, pop-ups, plugins, free stock images, and third-party integrations to help you create the best websites for your clients.

User Rating

Visual Composer scores 4.3/5 stars on Capterra based on 55 reviews.

What Makes This Website Builder Unique

Visual Composer is great for non-tech-savvy users. It is also the go-to choice for most experienced web creators because it allows you to add custom CSS, JS, and HTML to specific web pages.

Our WordPress website builder also comes with the best features every web creator needs, including SEO and advanced marketing tools to help optimize your website and close sales.

With Visual Composer, you can edit your website content on the go from your mobile devices and tablets, unlike Webflow. It gives you the creative freedom to design the beautiful website, online portfolio, or online store you deserve.

These are just a few of the ways how Visual Composer makes you a better web creator than your competitors.

Integrations

Visual Composer offers robust options of popular third-party plugins and marketing tools, including

  • WooCommerce
  • wpDataTables
  • MailChimp
  • Gutenberg
  • Yoast
  • Weglot
  • Advanced Custom Fields
  • Unsplash
  • WP Forms
  • HubSpot Forms
  • Google
  • Giphy

Customer Support

Around 30% of all Visual Composer customers are motivated to go premium because of access to premium support rather than features. Our help center has several free resources, like tutorials, blog posts, FAQs, and an active online community.

You can also contact our reliable support team via email, live chat, and tickets.

Pros

  • Intuitive drag-and-drop editor with an easy interface
  • Compatible with different devices
  • It gives the best price for web creators with 1000 sites
  • Great platform with numerous website elements, add-ons, pre-built templates, and other features
  • Regular updates and reliable support
  • Automatic SEO features for high speed and performance
  • Theme builder options for creating customized layouts
  • It offers both mobile and desktop editing for website building

Cons

  • A slight learning curve for new users, but lower than other Webflow alternatives

Pricing

Asides from the forever free plan with a free page builder, we also offer five premium pricing plans with advanced features.

  • Single — $49/year for one website
  • Plus — $99/year for five websites
  • Accelerate — $149/year for 20 websites
  • Growth — $349/year for 100 websites
  • Agency — $849/year for 1000 websites
  • Lifetime — $149 for one website (onetime payment)

Our Lifetime Plan is for creators who want to charge their clients for the license per project without managing their subscriptions.

All plans come with a 30-day refund guarantee and include all Premium features. To experience Visual Composer Premium with no strings attached, you can get started with a 3-day free trial. Plus, you can always get started with the free version to see how Visual Composer works.

2. Wix

Wix website builder interface and navigation bar
Wix website builder. Source: Expert Reviews

Wix is a website builder that allows you to create personalized websites through its Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) software with drag-and-drop tools.

User Rating

Wix scores 4.4/5 stars on Capterra, based on 8894 reviews.

What Makes This Website Builder Unique

Wix achieves its level of personalization through questionnaires generated by its ADI software, helping you create a precise picture of what you want to build.

The stand-alone cloud platform offers free, reliable hosting with a custom domain name, logo maker, templates, and third-party integrations. Still, it also has some drawbacks that make users seek other Wix alternatives.

Integrations

Wix integrates with

  • MailChimp
  • HubSpot
  • Google Ads
  • Google Analytics

Customer Support

Wix offers limited support to users. Asides from its knowledge base of FAQs and helpful articles, there is not much for users to get by.

Pros

  • Helpful integrations and templates
  • SEO tools
  • Supports email marketing
  • Builds personalized websites

Cons

  • Poor customer service
  • Overwhelming features and options
  • Transferring your site to a different platform is difficult
  • Not suitable for beginners
  • High cost for advanced functionality and third-party apps

Pricing

Wix offers a limited free plan, and it gives you a 14-day free trial for their premium plans. Wix groups its premium plans into two major categories:

Websites Plans

  • Connect Domain — $5.50/month
  • Combo — $10/month
  • Unlimited — $17/month
  • VIP — $29/month

Business and eCommerce Plans

  • Business Basic Plan — $20/month
  • Business Unlimited Plan — $30/month
  • Business VIP Plan — $44/month

Wix also has a 14-day money-back guarantee on all its paid plans.

3. HubSpot CMS Hub

HubSpot CMS website builder interface
HubSpot CMS website builder. Source: HubSpot

HubSpot Content Management System (CMS) Hub is a cloud-based platform that offers developers and marketers the tools they need to create websites and manage content without coding.

User Rating

HubSpot CMS Hub has a 4.4/5 stars rating on Capterra, based on 50 reviews.

What Makes This Website Builder Unique

HubSpot combines website creation with CRM, streamlining marketing processes to give customers a better experience when they visit your website or online store.

Integrations

HubSpot CMS Hub is compatible with notable third-party plugins and marketing tools, like

  • Canva
  • Google
  • JotForm
  • Wistia

Customer Support

HubSpot offers robust support channels for users on their paid plans. You can contact their support reps via email, live chat, or phone.

They also provide how-to articles, video tutorials, and an active online community.

Pros

  • Robust customer support channels
  • Helpful third-party integrations
  • User-friendly
  • Simple visual interface

Cons

  • Its web design tools can be overwhelming for new users
  • Designs templates could be better
  • Full customization may require you to have coding knowledge

Pricing

HubSpot CMS has a free forever plan with limited features and support. It also has three paid plans:

  • Starter — $23/month
  • Professional — $360/month
  • Enterprise — $1200/month

Each plan comes with a free trial.

4. Duda

Duda website builder interface
Duda website builder. Source: Digital

Duda is a tool that helps agencies and professional designers to create custom websites, landing pages, or online stores for small businesses.

User Rating

Duda scores 4.6/5 stars on Capterra, based on 175 reviews.

What Makes This Website Builder Unique

Duda helps you streamline your workflow, automation, and web development processes with the help of AI tools to create beautiful websites for your clients.

Integrations

Duda is compatible with notable third-party plugins like

  • Zapier
  • MailChimp
  • Stripe
  • Airtable
  • Google sheets

Customer Support

Duda offers support via live chat, web form, email, and phone. It also has an active community and a knowledge base of helpful resources and tutorials.

Pros

  • Offers multi-language support (English, Portuguese and Spanish)
  • Good for agencies
  • Pre-designed templates
  • Simple drag-and-drop editor

Cons

  • Limited customization
  • Not the best choice for non-techies
  • No built-in email marketing and project management integration

Pricing

Duda has four pricing plans with a free 14-day trial.

  • Basic — $14/month billed annually (one website)
  • Team — $22/month billed annually (one website)
  • Agency — $44/month billed annually (four websites)
  • Custom — Contact support

5. Zyro

Zyro website builder interface
Zyro website builder. Source: Cybernews

Zyro is a web design tool that allows you to create your business website or online store without coding skills.

User Rating

Zyro has a 4.7/5 star rating on Capterra, based on 300 reviews.

What Makes This Website Builder Unique

Building websites with Zyro is simple because of its unique AI tools and features like logo maker, AI content generator, AI business name generator, and more.

Integrations

Zyro integrates well with

  • Google Analytics
  • Google Tag Manager
  • Facebook Pixel
  • Hotjar

Customer Support

Asides from resources like FAQs, Zyro offers email and 24/7 live chat support.

Pros

  • Easy drag-and-drop editor
  • Reliable web hosting
  • Responsive, lightweight websites

Cons

  • Not a free website builder and has no free trial
  • Room for more features

Pricing

Zyro offers two pricing plans

  • Website — $11.99/month/website
  • Business — $14.99/month/website

All plans come with a 30-day refund guarantee.

Webflow Alternatives: Features Comparison

We compared the features of all five alternatives to Webflow with the table below.

Feature

Visual Composer

Wix

HubSpot CMS Hub

Duda

Zyro

Drag-and-drop editor

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Fully responsive

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Works with any WordPress theme

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

SEO-friendly

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Cloud marketplace

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Theme builder

Yes

No

No

No

No

Popup builder

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Custom widgets

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

Premade templates

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Free templates

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

Premium templates

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Free stock images

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Advanced design customization

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Mobile editing

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Integrations

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Translation-ready

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Developer-friendly

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Non-tech-savvy users friendly

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Why Use WordPress CMS-Based Website Builders?

WordPress website dashboard
What is: Content Management System (CMS). Source: WPBeginner

WordPress is not just a blogging platform; it is the best CMS software we have today. According to statistics, WordPress is the leading CMS platform, used by 64.3% of all the websites which have known content management systems.

Building websites on WordPress software is complex for non-techies as it may require advanced coding skills. Therefore, no-code/low-code WordPress CMS-based website builders like Visual Composer are the best options for eCommerce business owners, freelancers, and agencies.

Below are a few reasons you should go for WordPress CMS-based website builders:

  • Allow you to create websites and manage their content
  • Offers more power and scalability for web creators and agencies
  • Give you complete control over the customization and functionality of your website
  • Provides access to many website hosts
  • Allow you to create any kind of website, no matter the complexity
  • Offer many templates, themes, add-ons, third-party integrations, and plugins

Webflow Alternatives: FAQ

Is There a Free Alternative to Webflow?

Yes, there is. Visual Composer is a free WordPress website builder that allows you to design the best website or online store for your business. You can get started now and join thousands of web creators building with Visual Composer.

Do Professional Web Creators Use Webflow?

Yes, they do. Webflow created its platform with professional web designers and advanced developers in mind. But the alternatives mentioned in this article, allow advanced developers to use less coding and save more time than by using Webflow.

Is Webflow the Best CMS?

Webflow has some drawbacks that make it difficult for us to name it the best CMS platform. WordPress website builders like Visual Composer have shown more potential, and we consider it a better CMS platform than other WordPress website builders like Elementor and Brizy.

Webflow Alternatives: The Final Verdict

While there are other known website builders like WordPress software, Google Sites, Shopify, Adobe Dreamweaver, and more, the Webflow alternatives listed above offer helpful features for small businesses and web creators.

Visual Composer stands out as the top Webflow alternative on our list. It is an affordable, all-in-one solution that will help you optimize your websites and increase sales with its SEO and eCommerce tools.

Visual Composer is the fourth most popular WordPress plugin in the Top 100K sites category, and it can help you stand out from other web creators.

Get started with Visual Composer and create cutting-edge websites for you and your clients.

Discover the Best Webflow Alternative & Create Websites with No Coding

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How to Create a Bio Link in WordPress for Free https://visualcomposer.com/blog/bio-link-in-wordpress/ Wed, 24 Aug 2022 11:00:30 +0000 https://visualcomposer.com/?p=35616 You can store many links in bio by creating your own bio link in your WordPress website for free using Visual Composer Website Builder

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Creating a bio link for business needs or personal branding is quite essential nowadays. It can help you to boost your social media presence and support your marketing efforts.

In this article, we will talk about all you need to know about a bio link.

Create One Bio Link for Everything

What is a Bio Link

A bio link is a website page that contains your links from social media such as websites, WhatsApp contacts, Instagram pages, Spotify links, and so on. This tool simplifies your profile, helps your followers find you on other platforms, and navigate between one link to another more easily.

Most social media platforms give you the opportunity to add a link in your profile in order to take your followers to either your website, products, content, other social media, or some other important link.

Why You Should Have a Bio Link

If you wonder if bio link is for you, here are some reasons why you should think about it:

  1. A mini version of your website
    Sometimes the main website has extensive information that is actually harder to navigate. Some users are already familiar with your website, but for the most part, for new visitors, it is a bit harder to find relative information. This is when we, as web creators, can provide the most important information on our bio link.

    Apart from that, because bio links only provide important information, bio links also have better speed compared to your main website. Studies have found that speed is vitally important to improve conversions – Walmart famously found that for every 1 second a page loads faster, conversions increased by 2%.

  2. Content marketers' best friends
    Web creators who do content marketing most likely will constantly push new content for their blog posts. It is a very good opportunity to promote new content in your bio link, so you can drive your followers to your latest content and increase your traffic.

  3. Some social media sites only allow you to input 1 link in bio
    On platforms like Facebook and Twitter, adding a link to the homepage of your website may be more than enough since you can share clickable links to individual pages, products, or content in your posts.

    But it’s a little bit different with Instagram or Tik Tok. You will need accounts with 10,000+ followers to have the option to share links through stories, however, those who are still building their profile only have the option to put the link in their bio. It’s quite challenging to insert many links in the Instagram bio because they only provide a single link option on the profile.

That’s where many people like web creators, influencers, and freelancers, use a bio link tool to store all their important links in one place.

Why You Should Stop Using the Free Bio Link Tools (Linktree, etc.)

There are quite a few popular bio link tools such as Linktree, Mona, Campsite, etc. Regardless of how easy those tools are, I don't recommend using them if you have your own website and are building your own business. Here’s why:

  1. You lose your branding
    The free version of those bio link tools like Linktree provides very limited branding options such as a limited handful of colors and fonts. Even on the paid version, you can’t easily match it to your own brand identity.

  2. Another brands logo is visible
    Still issue in the free version, they will insert their logo on your page whether it’s on the bottom of your page or elsewhere. It will make your bio link looks unprofessional and can take the attention of your audience away from your links.

  3. Bad for SEO
    Remember that not all of your visitors that visit your bio link will visit your website. Each time they visit your bio link, it can increase their domain authority. But it does not guarantee that your website will get the same benefit.

Based on those reasons, you should start considering creating your own bio link on your website. If you are using WordPress, you can create it easily using Visual Composer - Drag-and-Drop Website Builder.

Discover 300+ Content Elements To Create One Bio Link for Everything

How to Create Bio Link in WordPress Step By Step

You can create a bio link in WordPress easily using Visual Composer. Visual Composer is a website builder plugin that allows you to create a website without code. Here are the steps to create a bio link in WordPress using Visual Composer:

  1. Install Visual Composer on your website
  2. Create a new page using Visual Composer
  3. Choose a blank page layout
    Visual Composer Setup page
  4. Add three columns
    3 column layout
  5. Set the middle column to fill 50% of the whole row
    Visual Composer row setting
  6. Add your logo to the middle column using a Single Image element
    add logo on image
  7. Add some text below your logo with a Text Block element - like a short description of your company, product, mission statement, etc.
    description on bio link
  8. Add your most important links below using the Button elements and customize them as you want - such as add your preferred color, stretch, or shape and set the alignment
  9. Don’t forget to add your link inside the button within the element settings
    link in bio
  10. Repeat the steps above until you cover all of your most important links
  11. Once you have completed these steps you should have something like this on your screen:
    preview of bio link using visual composer
  12. Next, you can add a background, whether it's an image or just a color. You can do that in Page Settings (Gear Icon) > Design Options
    Set background in visual composer
  13. You can adjust the design to your preference like adding a margin, padding, border, or radius. You can read this article to learn more about the Visual Composer Interface
  14. Don't forget to check the device preview and adjust the responsiveness settings, so that your link in bio page looks good on mobile devices
    Check responsive setting on visual composer
  15. After you have done all of the steps above, you should have something like this:
    free links in bio

Conclusions

With all the SEO advantages and user experience in mind, bio links can become a good tool at your agencies' fingertips.

Plus, you can always extend your bio link page with social icons or buttons if you look towards a premium version of Visual Composer. We have various options and styles of buttons that can make your bio links more beautiful.

The post How to Create a Bio Link in WordPress for Free appeared first on Visual Composer Website Builder.

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