5 REASONS I USE SQUARESPACE FOR MY CLIENTS

I get asked all the time if I design websites, to which I answer “Of course! I use Squarespace to build my client’s sites.” It’s kind of a toss-up if the person asking the question has heard of Squarespace or not, so I take the liberty of explaining what it is and the benefits of it.

There are so many perks to using this platform it’s not even funny! I’ve also used Wix to build and design a couple of websites and have found that Squarespace does a waaay better job of making it easy to keep everything on your site consistent. And if you followed my blog or read through my website, you’ll know that successful branding is all about consistency.

So, in the immortal words of Bear Grylls, “Let’s get into it.” (we say this at least 4-5 times a week at my house)

ONE | NO CODING NECESSARY

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, you heard correctly. No stupid, freaking coding to deal with here… Sorry. This subject gets me worked up sometimes. To those of you reading this who may be web developers, my hat is off to you because I have no idea how you do what you do. When I tried to learn how to code my brain froze like 90’s computer trying to connect to the interwebs!

Squarespace does a fantastic job of having all of the latest and greatest tools to implement on your site. You can choose from tons of modules to drop into your site and then customize the look of them. Occasionally, I will have a client that wants or needs a tweak that is specific to their site, and luckily Squarespace has thought of that too. In these cases, you can throw in some code to make your site a little more customized. Usually, it’s as simple as a Google search to find what I need. Like the title says, however, no coding is necessary to get your site up and running beautifully.

No coding not only makes things much simpler before the site launches, it save you money as well. On a traditional website that I design from the ground up, I would have to design each and every page on the site, every special functionality, menus, headers and footers, animations, parallax scrolling, etc. Literally everything needs to be thought out and put into the design files so that the web developer can code it properly. Oh, and you have to pay the web developer on top of paying me. This all gets very expensive very fast. And don’t even get me started on time consuming! At the end of building your completely custom site from the ground up, it’s usually not very easy or intuitive to manage for the client, so they have to continue paying someone to design and code new content for them. And round and round we go.

With Squarespace, I design it, you approve it, I educate you how to use it. DONE.

TWO | CLEAN, ELEGANT, MODERN

When you start working on building your website, the last thing you want is for it to be dated out of the box. Squarespace does a fantastic job of creating templates that are fun, modern, elegant, and functional.

Have you ever visited a website for a business and immediately jumped ship because their design looked like it was completed in early 1998? I have. Many times! Don’t let that be your business. Whether business owners want to admit it or not clean, modern, and functional websites are unbelievably important these days. A recent article on Forbes.com said this, “The ROBO Economy (Research Online Buy Offline), showed that 82% of smartphone users consult their phones on purchases they are about to make in-store and 45% read reviews before making a purchase.” With that many people online, you can’t afford to not have a quality website in your marketing arsenal.

THREE | CUSTOMIZABILITY

For anyone who has built websites personally or has gone through that process with someone else, you know that features, plugins, modules, etc. can make or break your site. Squarespace is template based, but don’t let that scare you off! There are tons of different templates to choose from and they are all customizable to meet your needs. You want to show events coming up? Done. You want to blog from this platform? Done. You want to integrate appointment scheduling through your Calendly account? Done.

I’ve had the pleasure to work on sites ranging from a chiropractic office to a cattle wrangling guest ranch, and Squarespace was able to meet all of their needs. All this while being incredibly easy to manage once I hand off the site to the client.

What about Wordpress’s customizability? Wordpress has thousands of plugins to choose from, and it completely flexible… IF you know what plugins won’t break your site and if you know how to code at least a little bit. It’s been my experience that most business owners don’t have the time or energy to learn how to navigate Wordpress, so their sites sit unfinished for months or even years. Get all the customizability you really need all wrapped up with a bow on top with Squarespace instead.

FOUR | FASTER THAN GROUND-UP WEB DESIGN

I’ve already mentioned this before, so I’ll keep this section short. Because you can completely circumvent having to code your website, you automatically get to skip the most painstaking part of building a site. For most small businesses, this is a no-brainer. And because I’m designing within Squarespace’s framework, I don’t have to spend a ton of time designing your whole site, then designing it for mobile, and then sending it to the developer! GAH! Guys, seriously, having designed fully-custom sites in the past I can tell you that Squarespace is such a better option for so many business owners.

FIVE | EASY TO MANAGE

I used to work for a company that required a fully-custom website. I had the pleasure of designing this website and it turned out great! However, managing the website if we found a typo or needed to replace an image, or add a new page and populate it with content, well…. that was not so easy. I consider myself pretty tech savvy, but it was difficult for even me to figure out how to do seemingly simple tasks.

Squarespace is not like that at all. After I design a website, I walk my client through how to use it face-to-face or over video conference call. I go through every aspect of managing the site from billing, to swapping images, adding written copy, creating new pages, etc. Literally everything, and it only takes about an hour or so. No need for a Master’s Degree in web developer speak to understand how to use it once I had over the keys.

Now, having said all of this, I don’t recommend Squarespace to large and complex companies that have very specific needs to fulfill. Fully-custom sites will always have a place, however, for most small business owners and entrepreneurs Squarespace is the perfect option because of its flexibility in meeting diverse needs.

If you or someone you know needs a website, I would love to help you out.