Beaver Builder 2021 Year in Review

Hello! Hope you’re all doing well. At the start of the New Year, I always like to review all the things that have been accomplished in the previous year.

Here is a recap of all the great things that happened at Beaver Builder in 2021.

Ready to travel back in time?

January – Hiring Blitz

As our business continued to grow, we needed to recruit some more talent to help support the development of Beaver Builder and Assistant Pro.

We were able to hire three new developers Rahul, Nazmul, and Brian and they have done an amazing job since joining the team!

Also, a common request that come up often over the years was that people wanted video tutorials on how to use Beaver Builder. We had created some videos but it wasn’t at the frequency that we wanted.

We hired Jennifer and Leah and they’ve been a valuable addition to the marketing team.

February – YouTube Videos

With our two new video specialists on the team, we were able to start producing video tutorials on a consistent basis.

Each week we published video tutorials on how-to-use Beaver Builder, Beaver Themer, and the Beaver Builder Theme.

We invite you to check out our Beaver Builder YouTube channel and subscribe.

March – New Website Design

We have been wanting to update our website and company branding for quite some time. But, like most things it always takes longer than you anticipate.

But after many months, we were able to finally launch the new site design. I wrote an in-depth article about the process.

You can read about the behind-the-scenes journey of our website redesign here.

We were happy to see all the new branding styles come together and it was well worth the effort.

April – Website Optimization

After the new website design was launched we needed to test and review how the site performed.

Initially, we noticed that the conversion rate wasn’t meeting our expectations.

We started running split tests using Google’s optimization tool and conducted heat map tests with Hot Jar  (These tools are completely free or have a free version for you to try).

After reviewing the data, we found some minor tweaks that needed to be adjusted to the new site. As a result, we improved our conversions by 30% =)

May – Design Principles PDF Guide

We’re always looking for ways to add value for our website visitors.

Since the bulk of our audience is developers and web design freelancers, we thought it would be beneficial to create a resource that could provide some tips to boost conversions.

Thus, we created a PDF to help people learn about web design principles. It’s a nice robust vibrant guide that is free.

If you would like to download a copy you can visit this page.

June – Podcast Advertising

Podcasts have grown in popularity over the years and we wanted to see if we could reach a new audience by advertising on podcasts.

We found a great show that has a highly engaged audience from Nick Loper’s Side Hustle Nation podcast.

We reached out to Nick and found out that he also uses Beaver Builder for his own website. What a perfect match!

We sponsored his podcast for 4 episodes and it was really neat to hear how he effortlessly mentions Beaver Builder in the mid-roll of each show.

You can listen to one of his episodes where he mentions Beaver Builder here.

July – WVSTC Conference

We get invited to speak at conferences all the time. But one unique opportunity came up with the West Virginia Statewide Technology Conference.

They mentioned that a lot of teachers and students love using Beaver Builder to learn how to build websites.

We were honored to speak and to help educate the next generation on how to create websites using our products. You can watch the replay of the presentation here.

In fact, we learned recently that many big-name colleges use Beaver Builder to create college websites. You can see a list of them here.

August – Company Meetup

Once a year we try to get together and meet to talk about business and hang out with the families.

This year we all met in Northern California and enjoyed a day paddle-boarding. (You’ll notice on the corner of the picture me laying down exhausted from a day of paddleboarding LOL).

Overall, it was nice to get out of the house enjoy some of Billy’s backyard BBQ and spend time together in person.

September – Beaver Builder 2.5

Take a sneak peek at the new outline panel coming in Beaver Builder 2.5…

Beta is coming out soon! pic.twitter.com/qoJbADhUlX

— Beaver Builder (@BeaverBuilder) June 21, 2021

 

The biggest Beaver Builder version update came at the end of Q3. The development team worked really hard to test everything thoroughly before the update was released.

The community always appreciates us taking the extra effort to double/triple check so that we provide them with a stable version update.

Beaver Builder Version 2.5 named “Contra” included many new features like the Outline Panel, major updates to modules (Pricing Table, Menu Module, and Separator Module).

If you like to read all about this update you can check out this article.

October – Assistant Pro Launch

We had been developing the Assistant plugin and Assistant Pro cloud-based product for a couple of years. Finally, the time had come to share it with the world.

A lot of work went into this project and it was exciting to see how many people signed up and wanted to give it a try.

We invite you to check out our new product and create a free account here: Assistant.pro

November – Cloudways Partnership

A couple of months ago we met with the team at Cloudways and discussed a partnership opportunity.

They wanted to offer Builder Builder Lite in their WordPress hosting packages.

Our community had good feedback from their experience using Cloudways so we thought it would be a good fit for us to partner with them.

You can learn more about Cloudways + Beaver Builder hosting packages here.

December – LoFi Video

I’ve always been a fan of listening to LoFi music while working in front of the computer.

Then one day the thought came to mind, “wouldn’t it be fun to create our own Beaver Builder LoFi video?”

This was a fun passion project that started a couple of months back. We found a very talented illustrator to create the artwork and we published it with music and animation on our YouTube channel.

It’s free for you to listen to and enjoy.

Last but not least, we also released Beaver Themer 1.4 in December. You can learn about this update here.

Wrap-Up

With 2021 in the books, we’re already making plans for the New Year. You’ll continue to see great updates to Beaver Builder, and Assistant Pro.

We plan to release some more educational content to help you learn how to use our products to help you build your business.

Thanks for taking the time to go down memory lane and we hope you all the best in 2022.