Looking around the page builder community – Elementor, Divi, Oxygen et al. I see a lot of sneak peeks and teasers – Its always helpful to know what is coming but these ‘announcements’ are also very distracting and, in some cases, – can lead designers and developers into an abyss of ‘What the heck do I do now, wait for the update or use a plugin or layout that I know will work NOW!?
Simply put, these ‘sneak peek’ announcements are no more than marketing techniques to keep the community of page builder users informed and excited and engaged – you knew that, right?
Its great that the page builders’ want to include community desired and developed plugins, modules, drag and drop this and drag and drop that in their core product but, in the end, the community ends up getting confused and sits bewildered at their computers wondering what on earth they can do to keep their workflow consistent. Comments like this are not uncommon on popular page builder sites.
With so many updates, so many additional things that are ‘teased’ with no launch date announced, the developer & user community around these page builders are faced with never-ending weekly and it would seem almost daily updates, new features in core that ‘say’ they will do this and that and the pain in the rear of having to control their clients’ desire to have the latest and greatest functionality – even if they don’t need or know what a CPT is ????
At Elegant Marketplace & Layouts Cloud, we strive to offer the very best in ADD ONs, be they child themes, plugins, modules or layouts – the page builder community it would seem, love what we do as our over 50,000 registered users can attest.
Even if these page builders integrate everything we do in their own offerings, we see a bright future for ourselves, our customers and friends in the community. So, rather than waiting around for that Sneak Peek to actually appear – why not take advantage of all that is on offer at Elegant Marketplace and other stores and marketplaces that serve the community right now, and support the people that make what you want, when you want it?
Feel free to leave your thoughts and comments so we know how you feel too 🙂 Are you tired of Sneaking a Peek and waiting for things to appear or are you excited to learn all about the page builders’ plans, even if there is no date announced and they leave you in some kind of LImbo land?
Ha, that’s my comment you quoted in the post. 🙂
Sneak peeks may be about keeping users “informed and excited and engaged”, but my theory is that ET simply started doing sneak peeks to prevent users from jumping ship to other builders. Essentially ET was solely focused on their Visual Builder and was completely blindsided when other builders showed up with CPT, dynamic data, theme building capabilities etc. Because ET hadn’t started working on these types of features yet, maybe they didn’t even have plans to do so any time soon, once they were forced to add them they had to start releasing sneak peeks because it was going to be such a long wait for those features to arrive. Without sneak peeks many users would likely have switched builders.
This has been one of the best examples of how important competition is. If other builders hadn’t shown up with those important new features, I’m almost certain ET would still be focused solely on their Visual Builder.
Great points there – and yeah I know but I did not have permission to use your name 🙂
They are definitely a marketing technique and a “double-edged” sword at the same time. Ther problem is that they give customers (us) no sense of direction for today’s project…
Sneak Peeks are a double-edged sword, if that could be a proper term. On one edge, if you are a designer or casual user, I would suppose you’d want to know what is in development so you might prepare to offer clients or use personally. On the other edge, as a developer, sneak peaks could alter plans to move forward on new plugins, etc., and do a disservice to the community.
But like crying “wolf!”, if those who offer peeks don’t follow through or take months to issue, then constituents can make judgments and then eventually choose whether to pay attention or not. It would be different if the peeks all had a closing phrase, “coming in two weeks.”