7 perks of having a Squarespace website
Squarespace is an increasingly popular platform for building websites and I’ve been using it to build online homes for my clients’ businesses for the last 3-4 years. What is the appeal of it and the attraction to it? Too many to name, in my professional opinion. It’s the perfect drag and drop builder for getting a site up and running that still looks sophisticated and functions well. Below, I’m naming just a few perks to choosing it for your next website development and hosting project.
1. Sleek and professional templates – no coding required!
Squarespace is known for its gorgeous templates. Just recently, they added several new ones to choose from. When it comes to templates, you might think that they’re generic and anyone else with a Squarespace account can have a site that looks like yours. However, you can customize a template in so many ways that it still looks unique. The template just gives you a skeleton to work from. You can move and adjust elements. And, if you know some code or you’re working with a designer who does, you can still inject HTML and CSS when and where you need to for an even more customized user experience. I often add dropdown menus or fixed navigation to my client sites (if they don’t come with the template to start) for a couple of additional bells and whistles that make the site more professional.
2. G-Suite and MailChimp are seamlessly integrated
If you wish to use professional email from Google (like, name@name.com) and you purchase a business account, you can setup G-Suite free for the first year. After that, it’s a mere $5/month or $50/year if paid for upfront. You can add individual users within your Squarespace account and send emails to those accounts that walk them through the G-Suite dashboard setup. Also, if you use MailChimp for your email subscription platform, you can connect to it directly — via email sign-up forms on your site that connect to specific lists that you have setup within your MailChimp account.
3. Domain can be free for the first year
If you purchase your domain through Squarespace (with a paid annual business plan) it is actually free for the first year and then renews for a certain fee (usually $20) the following year, which is a nice bonus. Even if you have your domain through a third party like GoDaddy, you can still connect the site to the domain easily — it only takes a few seconds!
4. Easy to manage and update down the road
My favorite thing about Squarespace (and the reason why I build my client sites on this platform) is its ease of updating after I’ve designed it. For many of my clients, I don’t necessarily continue to manage their sites for them after they are launched. But, at the end of our time of working together, I do walk them through (via a video conference and screen sharing) the back-end of their site. They learn how to change colors, fonts, insert or replace photos, add elements (like content blocks) or move them around, add blog posts and more — the basics that they’ll need to know in order to keep their website current. The drag and drop functionality is easy to figure out, as Squarespace is fairly intuitive and user-friendly. My clients can “learn as they go” and not be overwhelmed by the back-end of a site that is confusing and hard to navigate.
5. Everything is already built-in for you
To add to the ease of managing a site once it’s finished, it’s good to know that Squarespace is an all-inclusive platform. Everything that you could possibly need for starting a site and getting it up and running is already built-in for you — things like analytics, some SEO, the SSL certificate, eCommerce and more are all features that you don’t have to worry about integrating yourself or through third-party apps.
6. Sites are responsive
Another great feature of Squarespace sites is the fact that they’re automatically mobile-friendly and responsive, meaning that they will scale to fit any size screen that they’re viewed on without any extra work from you!
7. Support is helpful
Although there isn’t a phone number to call, the online support from Squarespace’s team is really great. I come across issues (often involving unique features or HTML code that I need to integrate into a template) and can always troubleshoot and find an answer using their “support” site. Rarely have I been stuck on something for very long, without being able to figure it out.