In this interview, marketing specialist Jacobo G. Polavieja shares the ways in which Elementor has made an impact on his online marketing business workflow.
Interview with: Jacobo G. Polavieja from Shumaia
'I started on my own building and monetizing my own sites through SEO and PPC, specially affiliate and lead generation sites.'
Here at Elementor, we are always interested to find out how professional users take advantage of our page builder to scale their business.
To get first person feedback, I recently posted to our Facebook community, inquiring about users who transitioned to Elementor, asking them how Elementor impacted their day-to-day workflow.
One of the people who answered was Jacobo G. Polavieja, an online marketer that heads both inhouse and client projects. Following his riveting reply, I asked him to do an interview and tell his story.
can you tell us a bit about your business and operation?
I started on my own building and monetizing my own sites through SEO and PPC, specially affiliate and lead generation sites. I then gradually incorporated members to the team as workload increased, and began taking some client work from people that asked me. I’ve now partnered with an ex-team of data specialists from Amazon and we are taking it further through our soon to be launched agency site (built with Elementor, of course) at shumaia.com.
What did you use before Elementor?
I’ve used almost everything that’s out there when it comes to WordPress and landing page builders: Visual Composer, Thrive, X Theme, Pro, ClickFunnels, Unbounce, LeadPages, InstaPages… you name it. I discovered Elementor about a year ago and haven’t looked back.
What made you move to Elementor?
As a user/developer, its ease of use and responsive options.
As a computer scientist, I valued that it renders fast, how its CSS system works, and that it lets me choose which tag I want for most elements (span, p, h1, h2, …, div), something very important for SEO and something not many builders offer. It also doesn’t pollute your WP content with shortcodes which is a big plus if we need to move some day (I think we won’t!) and to be compatible with other plugins that deal with content as some SEO plugins do.
As a business owner, it is essential that it fits nicely within our workflow and platform, let us develop quickly, and the huge and great community around it.
How has your work improved since moving?
Basically, better and faster development compared to what we used. Time is money; so being able to develop quicker, with less glitches and achieving exactly what we need so that there aren’t many corrections afterwards, is a huge plus.
Can you point out some of the advantages and disadvantages of using Elementor in comparison to your previous setup?
In comparison to external builders like Unbounce, InstaPage, etc, as a “power user” I find it easier to build what I want with Elementor than with those services; not even taking price into account here. They are good if you want to set up one of their samples and be live with something ASAP (although if I wanted any of their templates, I would even prefer to easily recreate it with Elementor), but I found them more cumbersome than Elementor when needing something very specific. And those specifics can be quite important regarding Conversion Rate Optimization on landing pages with paid ad campaigns.
There’s also another big factor when it comes to those services business-wise. With WordPress + Elementor I host everything, and all data and designs are in MY properties; we don’t have to leave WordPress for anything. For some people this can be a drawback, but for us it’s a deal-breaker. Having MY data on MY servers and do whatever I want with it is a big big plus. You can more or less do the same with those builders if you connect to a CRM/etc, but it’s not the same degree of control and platform dependence, difficulty and costs keep adding up.
While we have the full power of WordPress at our disposal to do whatever we want, anything that goes beyond simple lead capturing is going to be exponentially harder with those services in our experience. So in the long run I think you’re better off setting up something different.
In comparison to other WP builders, as I already explained, Elementor has been the best experience of them all and has unique characteristics that are important for us.
When it comes to disadvantages, it’s hard to think of any. As we are heavy on forms, I wish Elementor improved that widget, but I also recognize it’s not its value proposition or focus. And that’s a good thing too… If I need anything else, I can pick and choose with Elementor. Because WordPress probably has what I need and I can use it. So if I need complex forms and processing I may just go with Gravity Forms or whatever suits best. With external builders… Not a chance.
Can you explain a bit about your workflow? What kind of projects you do and how the process goes?
We have two types of projects: in-house projects and client projects.
In-house projects are sites to materialize ideas we have, and we develop everything from the ground up with the intention of ranking them in Google and monetizing them through SEO and PPC. We start from zero and go all the way. From setting up WordPress to implementing the design and landing pages with Elementor, to the SEO aspects and planning: technical SEO, content creation plan, link acquisition plan, etc.
With client projects we have to deal with whatever’s handed to us. It starts with a technical and content audit and we plan according to what we find. There’s usually a lot to fix when it comes to SEO and content, so we build that solid base first and grow the site from there.
We’ve migrated several client sites to Elementor once they trust what we do, with great results.
How does Elementor compare in terms of the metrics you might care about?
Its ease of use and customization options are its biggest assets in my opinion. Granted, everything can be improved, but it’s the most complete solution out there.
As it’s built for WordPress, we can integrate with virtually anything, and the team behind Elementor is also pushing that boundary for its form widget and allowing others to expand Elementor. Again, having all the power of WP at our disposal is a great advantage.
When it comes to templates, I think Elementor is still behind some of the more traditional competitors, but it’s something expected being such a young project. The market is picking up though, and we see new templates released from third parties and from Elementor team each month. Witch such a rate of growth this past year, I think we’re only headed to having more and more resources for Elementor. The ecosystem around it is bigger by the day and there are more and more interesting projects complimenting what Elementor does.
Cost has never been a main deciding factor for us, but it’s hard to imagine a product with so much value per dollar. It’s a fundamental part of our strategy, so we are good investing in it as long as the E team keeps outputting awesome things.
Thanks Jacobo for taking the time and doing this interview. I hope we do a follow up soon, so we can see how Elementor 2.0 affected your business.
