Before we take a deep dive into the reasons why page builders are not suitable for high-performance websites, let’s first define what a page builder is. Page builders are plugins that allow you to create custom page layouts without having to code. They offer a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to add content and images to your pages.
While page builders can be a great way to quickly create a custom page layout, they come with several drawbacks. If you’re a business owner considering using a WordPress page builder to create your website, you may want to rethink this notion. In this post, we’ll take a deeper look into why page builders should be avoided and present some alternatives that will yield greater results.
Slow Speeds
Page builder websites are significantly slower than traditional WordPress websites. The reason for this is quite simple, page builders add a lot of unnecessary bloat to your site code. Such as embedded scripts, styling effects, broken links, and hidden elements. In addition, page builders require additional plugins and resources to support all of their features. This further increases loading times and hinders the overall user experience of your website.
If you’re interested in quicker loading speeds and faster performance, then it should be in your best interest to partner with a professional website builder and construct your site from scratch using HTML and CSS coding. You will need to allocate more time upfront, but this investment will deliver greater speeds, better site performance and enhance your website’s overall user experience.
Vulnerable to Hackers
Another concern with page builders is security. When it comes to website security, page builders are vulnerable to malicious acts. Page builders produce the perfect environment for potential vulnerabilities and entry points for hackers and other cybercriminals. Since page builders add extra code to your site, this act creates vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers. Hackers target popular WordPress plugins and try to get access to any website that utilizes said plugin. Page builders are some of the most widely used WordPress plugins and therefore an easy target for hackers. It is a good rule of thumb to use as few plugins as possible on WordPress sites in order to mitigate these threats and lower your risk of any harm.
Design Restriction
Many designers argue that page builders limit creativity by restraining their design elements. While page builders allow for simple page layouts, they often restrict design elements such as custom fonts, page backgrounds, or animation effects. Since page builders only work with templates and pre-built modules, there is less flexibility in terms of what kind of content can be displayed on a given page and prevents the development of more advanced web design. Page builders may be a useful tool for some users, but they’re not ideal for professional business websites designed to fit a brand.
Bad for SEO
One of the biggest problems with page builders is that they can generate pages that are not search engine friendly. Most page builders create a lot of code that is unnecessary for the page to function along with flashy and visually-stunning elements which distract users from the primary content on your webpage. This will undermine the website’s search rankings in the process. Additionally, many page builder plugins try to insert a large number of custom CSS and JavaScript combinations into the page, resulting in poor page load times. This extra code can create difficulties for Google and other search engines to index your pages correctly.
While slow pages are bad for user experience they also affect your search rankings. Search engines will have trouble crawling the messy code made by page builders and as a result, will penalize your search rankings. For these reasons, it is generally recommended that you avoid page builders if you are looking to maintain strong search engine performance for your website. Instead, opt for a more traditional approach like HTML where you can be sure that your site is as lean and efficient as possible. This will improve and boost its overall search ranking. While page builders might be a tempting option for quickly creating a website, in reality, they are not the best option. They create slow websites, support bad security, restrict design options and are not suitable for strong SEO performance by limiting search rankings.
If you need a fast and effective website, get help from the Topsites team of expert developers. We can build you a website that looks great and performs well without all the headaches caused by page builders.
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