The Magento Page Builder is a tool that lets you easily create and customize web pages using a drag-and-drop interface. Similar to other page builders on various platforms, it’s designed to give you, as a merchant, more control over your content without relying on your agency for every change.
The nature of its interface simplifies page creation for non-technical users, but understanding its practical applications and limitations is key before getting started. Below is an overview of its key features. They can help you determine if this tool is the right choice for your Magento-based website and the specific tasks it can simplify without firing back on your results.
Advantages of Magento 2 Page Builder
As previously said, Magento Page Builder simplifies the page creation process for non-technical users. Its key advantages include:
Ease of Use
The Page Builder tool offers an intuitive, visual interface where you can create pages by simply dragging and dropping elements. This means even users with no prior coding knowledge can independently design page layouts.
Variety of Templates
Magento Page Builder provides a wide selection of predefined templates and layouts, enabling users to quickly start creating pages. You can select templates that best suit their needs without having to design from scratch.
No Design Experience Required
Thanks to its visual nature, you can create professional-looking pages even without prior design experience. Simple tools allow for the addition of images, text, and other elements in a user-friendly way.
Cost-Effective Tool
Compared to hiring a professional developer to create a custom page, using Page Builder can significantly reduce the time and costs it takes to finish a certain page on your website. This is especially beneficial for small and medium-sized businesses looking to save on development expenses.
Quick Prototyping
Page Builder enables rapid testing of different design and functionality ideas, allowing for quicker validation of concepts and prototyping. Also, it can be previewed in mobile and desktop versions.
Complete Control Over Customization
Users have substantial control over the appearance and functionality of their pages. Page Builder offers flexible customization options, enabling users to tailor pages to their specific needs and brand identity.
Magento Page Builder provides merchants with an excellent tool for creating and managing website content efficiently. It facilitates the content creation process and significantly reduces development time and costs—provided the merchant knows how to use it effectively.
It can help design landing pages, manage promotional campaigns, and easily customize homepages. Its user-friendly interface enables merchants to create professional, visually appealing layouts without any coding knowledge, making it an ideal solution for eCommerce stores that demand frequent updates.
Disadvantages of Magento 2 Page Builder
While it does have useful advantages, it is important to look out for cases in which the use of Magento Page Builder negatively reflects your overall results. Some of the disadvantages include:
Potential Performance Issues
Pages created with Magento 2 Page Builder can sometimes become “heavy” or slow. This is primarily because the tool is not optimally designed in terms of performance. One of the most significant issues is that images are not lazy-loaded by default, leading to longer page load times. This lack of lazy loading can negatively affect performance, particularly on image-heavy pages, resulting in a suboptimal user experience.
Limited SEO Optimization
Some page builders, including Magento Page Builder, may have limitations regarding search engine optimization (SEO). While basic SEO features are available, more advanced optimizations often require additional adjustments, which may not be straightforward in a visual interface. For example, images in banners and sliders frequently lack alt, width, and height attributes, which are important for accessibility and SEO. Similarly, videos embedded on the site often do not include enhancements for SEO, such as structured data (rich snippets), which could provide better context for search engines.
Too Many Options Can Be Overwhelming
Many users may find it difficult to choose among the numerous customization options, leading to delays in completing the page or user fatigue. “Decision fatigue” can be a challenge, especially for those new to working with page builders.
Not Ideal for Complex Pages
While Page Builder is excellent for simpler pages and basic customizations, advanced functionalities requiring specific tweaks or integrations can be challenging to implement. In such cases, additional developer support is needed.
Although we most commonly enable the Page builder in our projects, there are situations where we choose to disable it. The editor is great for creating blog posts and simple landing pages, such as those for Black Friday promotions.
However, its default versions are not ideal for more complex pages or for use without proper development expertise. In these cases, it can negatively impact performance, SEO, and overall functionality, as it doesn’t provide the same flexibility and possibilities as custom-developed solutions.
When Do We Choose to Disable the Block Editor?
For every new project, we tend to leave the Page Builder enabled because it makes content updates significantly easier. However, for some older projects, we occasionally decide to disable it. The main reason for this is that Page Builder wraps every piece of content with an additional
element as a wrapper. This can cause issues if the styles or JavaScript rely on the existing structure, as the added wrapper can disrupt functionality.
The challenge lies in predicting and identifying these potential breakages. To detect and address such issues, we must manually review and save changes across all blocks, pages, or other editors where the Page Builder has been applied to ensure the new wrapper is properly generated. It’s easy to overlook something in this process, which could lead to frontend issues when content is updated in production. Unfortunately, there’s no straightforward way to revert to the previous state—fixes often require code adjustments to accommodate the new structure.
Due to these uncertainties, it’s difficult to estimate the effort needed to enable Page Builder on older projects where it wasn’t previously used. Consequently, we typically recommend adding the Page Builder only if the client has a clear need for frequent content updates.
Conclusion
Magento 2 Page Builder is a powerful tool for managing content and creating visually engaging pages, especially for simpler tasks. It offers numerous advantages for users who want to quickly and easily create visually appealing pages without technical knowledge. However, like any tool, it has its limitations in handling complex requirements and potential impact on performance and SEO, which should not be overlooked.
Before deciding to use it, it’s important to consider the specific needs of your website and the advantages and disadvantages. As usual, if you need help with your Magento online store, reach out to us. We’d love to hear more about your project.
