Should I Use a Page Builder for Amazon Affiliate Sites

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In general, I say,

“No, you don’t need to use a page builder. It’s overkill.”

The page builders aren’t inherently bad or anything, but I suffer from decision fatigue since those themes have so many options. It usually takes a long time to configure or create a page using all the sexy, rich formatting available to you.

Check out the video below to hear me talk about my opinion.

Page builders are plugins or full-on themes that help you essentially build your own custom website without any coding knowledge.

Many people that push for these page builders are associated with their affiliate program, so of course, they are incentivized to promote that product.

I’m going to dig in deeper on if these page builders are worth it or not for your WordPress site.

There are a few on the market such as Thrive Architect, Beaver Builder, Divi, Visual Composer, & Elementor.

Many of these sites have great design examples and have a lot of potential.

But once you start trying to edit it, it’s just overwhelming.

The reason why is because there are so many choices and decisions within the page building application.

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When to Use a Page Builder

They are useful for certain things. If you find the right tool for the right job, then you can look at the choices that you need to make and not have to make choices about everything.

I love to use these page builders on my home page to really customize your site.

Additionally, any landing page or sales page (like Multi Profit Site) that uses more elements can be a great way to use page builders.

And when should you not use a page builder?

When I started using these applications for blog posts, they took up a lot of time and did not make much of a difference in the overall look of the site.

It distracted me from making good content and distracted the reader from the content in the blog post.

Any graphics or elements can be great to put in, but anything fancier for a blog post is not really that necessary.

So, most of the time people use these page builders and they don’t need too and make the whole process more complicated.

Removing Thrive Architect from a Post

I just migrated a post from Thrive Architect to a regular WordPress post. The page size went from 2.1 MB to 1.5 MB.

The load time went from about 2.89 seconds to about 1.25 seconds which is about 56% faster. That’s a huge win for a pretty straightforward change.

I originally used Thrive Architect to make the page more interactive and have more bells and whistles. Things like icons, richer looking bulleted (unordered) lists, and some buttons that triggered popups. Well, turns out that stuff really didn’t matter all that much.

Thrive Architect is a slow, bloated interface, like all visual composers. They have their place like building landing pages fast, but holy shit every visual composer that I’ve used is such a pain. They are buggy and I’ll leave it at that.

Site Design Questions

About the author: Doug Cunnington is the founder of Niche Site Project. He shows people how to create Affiliate Sites using project management and a proven, repeatable framework. Doug loves creating systems, using templates, and brewing beer (but usually not at the same time).

1 comment… add one
  • Kathy Adams

    I agree with you. Page builders are very distracting and take forever to create a page. At least that’s been my experience. I don’t want to have to be a designer and content creator. I’ve been searching for days to find an Amazon affiliate theme that looks decent and is easy to use. Any suggestions?

    Reply

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