The MacKellar Memo | June 2022
I recently had an experience that I’m sure many, if not all of you, have encountered at some point. I was attending a wedding at a resort, which had maybe six or seven restaurants on the property (it was a massive complex) and each of the restaurants had a specific focus. There was a sushi restaurant, a Mexican taco stand, an Italian wood-fired pizza space, etc. All except one that is.
This resort had one of those restaurants that cycled through a “culinary theme” every night of the week. Monday was seafood, Tuesday was Italian, Wednesday was American and you get the picture. If I stayed for a full week, I could, in theory, dine here every night and never eat the same thing.
But you know what was the same? The dining room never changes. The number of tables never changed. The physical buffet stand was always the same. The kitchen layout and staff was consistent, night after night. But each night, they’d churn out an entirely different menu to awe guests.
You’re thinking “dude, get to the point.” And I will now that I’ve set the table.
The point? The restaurant is the CMS and page builder, and the culinary offerings de jour are pre-built themes. While the food/theme may look and taste different, it’s all coming from the same CMS and page builder behind the scenes.
So why is this important? There’s a number of ways we should be looking at the relationship between themes/menu nights and page builders/the restaurant in this lovely analogy:
Consistency: If you’re always using the same stove, you’ll know exactly how it behaves over time. This, in turn, will make you a better cook and allow you to produce better, more consistent meals each time you take a turn at the stove. Same concept with the CMS/page builders. We at CSG prefer WordPress as our CMS of choice and tend to opt toward something like Kadence (though there are others, like Elementor or WPBakery, for example) as a page builder. Similar to cooking, we find better results if we continue to focus on a few areas where we excel vs. trying to cook in WordPress one day, in WebFlow the next and SquareSpace on Wednesday.
Timelines: By working within the same environment, you come to know how quickly things can be done. Need that woodfired pizza ready? You know the oven gets to 1,000 degrees so it will be ready in 2 minutes, no matter what. But if you decide to try a new oven, you’re not sure how the temperature will fluctuate. Same for websites. If we’re focused on a small sliver, we know exactly how long it takes to build feature X or that if the client asks about feature Y, we absolutely can do that but it will add an additional 2 weeks. This, in turn, helps keep us on time and on budget while still producing an amazing outcome for clients.
Flexibility: Once you master your workspace, you know how to be flexible when things don’t work out perfectly. Is Asparagus fresh and in-season? Sweet - let’s make an asparagus special. Need to get a microsite up quickly to capitalize on an unexpected product placement in a major summer blockbuster? You know that using a specific theme can help you meet that immediate need while still being flexible for long-term growth since it’s all within the same CMS/page builder.
Speed: That kid needs a grilled cheese because she/he can’t eat shellfish. Yeah, any restaurant can knock that out fast. Client comes to you needing a business card website before a big new biz pitch? Yeah, we can handle that quickly, too, because we’ve done it 1,000 times. Working within the same CMS/page builder means you know what layouts, features and more will work - and work quickly - when you really need them in a pinch.
Presentation: If you’re cooking the same Italian dish every week, you’ll look for ways to put some personality into the presentation - and more importantly know how to do it without ruining the dish. The same for websites. Familiarity with a CMS/page builder means you know that a theme is just an outline and you do still have the ability to bend the theme to your will to create beautiful, unique and high-quality websites in the eyes of your clients and also Google.
If I’ve sufficiently talked you into opening a restaurant - or wanting to learn more about page builders - head on over to Kadence and take a spin through their theme section to see how one page builder can come to life in so many different ways.