Constant Contact is a name that you have probably heard of in terms of creating email newsletters, but did you know that they also make an easy to use website builder? In this review I’m going to take a look at the Constant Contact website builder and tell you what I think about it and who can benefit the most from using it.
Setting up your website
I really like the way that constant contact help you get started. They start by asking you what type of website you are looking to build or what category it’s in. You are then asked to add in the name of your website.
After this they have you select your main website colors and fonts, which is exactly what suggest in my website building tutorials. Start with your colors and fonts, this will help keep the look of your website consistent across all of your page.
From there the Constant Contact website builder sets up several pages for you that they think that you might want to use. Now you just need to modify, add or remove pages and content to get your website up and running.
Using The Builder
The webpage builder functions by giving you pre designed sections that you can add to your pages. There are many different type of page sections that you can add that are all predesigned.
You can then choose to turn on and off various different parts of these sections like the title, subtitle description image etc.
It’s not actually possible to individually add content parts. If it’s not included in the section design you can’t add it.
Managing your pages
Managing your pages and your websites navigation are handled under the little page icon at the top of the builder.
In this drop down you can move between editing different pages, looking at an over view of all of your pages (I think the overview is a really cool feature) or managing your websites navigation.
Managing your websites navigation menu
The website navigation options are very limited. You can re-order the items in your menu or you can rename them. That is about it. I was disappointed that it was not possible to create nested items so that you could have a dropdown in your websites menu.
I think that this really limits the number of pages that you would want to create for your website.
Blogging
The Constant Contact website builder does offer blogging functionality. It also offers several different layout options for your blog feed. There is also an option to add different blog categories. This however works more like a way of filtering your posts by category rather then creating a new blog page or blog feed for each category.
It’s nice to have the blog functionality, but this isn’t going to be for websites that plan on building an extensive blog.
Portfolio
If you are looking to build a portfolio website with the Constant Contact website builder you can, but I think that it’s really only suitable for a small portfolio websites with just one or 2 gallery pages.
Customer Support
Customer support is a place where I found that Constant contact did a really great job. I was able to get a hold of a customer support agent via chat in a matter of 10 min or so. They were able to assist me with a couple of questions that I had and help me get back to building my website. This was one of the fastest support responses that I received.
I think that customer support is an area where these non-website building platforms really have an advantage over building a typical WordPress website where most themes that I have tested will respond to customer support requests in 1 to 3 days.
Conclusion
If you need to build a website really quickly and are new to building websites I think that the Constant Contact website builder could be a good choice. The pre designed website page sections can help you build a website really quickly and easily.
The fast response by technical support can be a real help to non-techies who are looking to build a website.
I found that the page section offered were nice, but somehow just didn’t fill the needs of what I was trying to build. If you like this style of fast website builder with pre-made pages and page sections I’d also recommend checking out the Jimdo website builder.
