Squarespace is an all-inclusive platform that has everything you need to build and grow your website. This website builder doesn’t require the user to be tech savvy and provides your website visitors excellent user experience regardless of the type of device they use. If you are looking for a platform that will give you one system to handle all your needs, look no further. Here are more of the fabulous features of Squarespace!
Easy Building and Editing
Squarespace provides all the expected elements for text, images, galleries, buttons, etc. It allows you to customize using a drag-and-drop system, so no knowledge of code is required. Images, text, video, and audio files can be easily pulled in and edited quickly on the fly. Inline editing is available so you can edit content live instead of through a multi-step system.
Almost 100 artistic and modern design templates are available, so you don’t have to build your website from scratch. Templates cover a range of styles and industries and present professionally with sophisticated design and clean lines. You can customize templates to reflect your brand and are able to install multiple templates onto one website. Unlike other platforms that require a mobile version of a website to be built, all Squarespace templates are automatically device responsive.
The templates are photo-heavy and well-suited to creative industries or businesses with a story to show. When cropping pictures, Squarespace allows you to set a focal point in the image and crop around that point versus automatically cropping around the center of the picture. The platform also automatically generates multiple scaled versions of images, so they present properly and load quickly on all devices. Not only does Squarespace provide responsive loading, it also employs progressive loading so the images at the top of a page will load first. Users have full control over image file names for SEO purposes as well. Other perks within the platform are that colors can be adjusted within templates and free Typekit and Google Fonts are available without having to embed codes.
What Else
Squarespace provides a solid selection of add-on features like gallery and social media widgets and the option to include responsive and interactive line, pie or bar graphs. You can also add a YouTube or Vimeo link and Squarespace will embed the video. There is a fully customizable contact form builder to create detailed forms, and a well-designed comments system. Comments can be sorted by date posted, most likes, etc. and users can enable or disable anonymous comments.
Website analytics are included within the platform. The built-in visitor analytics tool shows hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly traffic statistics. SEO offerings are competitive with those of other platforms – title tags and descriptions, HTML markup so the site is indexable by search engines, customizable website address, and Squarespace automatically creates a site map that can be submitted to Google.
The platform also offers solid blogging features to include post tagging, categories, comments, customizable URLs, and more. Users are not limited in what can be included in blog posts and can add a pin button to increase the likelihood that blogs will be pinned.
Squarespace offers integration with Google docs and Maps, Mailchimp – a newsletter tool allows you collect user email addresses, and Getty Images, which makes available more than 40 million images for a relatively minimal cost. There is also comprehensive social media integration. Squarespace will simultaneously post to Twitter, Facebook, or Tumbler and can display Instagram feed and tweets on the website. It automatically pulls the most recent posts from these channels to constantly keep your website up-to-date.
For a platform with only a secondary focus of ecommerce, Squarespace offers easy to setup and use processes. It provides an intuitive ecommerce with customizable email receipts (so, for example, you can differentiate between donors and buyers), customizable check-out, gift cards and more. This professional web store provides support for Apple Pay and Paypal, and USPS and ShipStation are available for shipping products or merchandise to consumers.
Squarespace offers a resource section with comprehensive guides as well as 24/7 chat and email assistance. They host the websites as part of the monthly cost and ensure optimization, compatibility, site speed, security, etc. The platform also regularly updates their software, so your website automatically keeps up with Internet changes.
Squarespace is a platform well-matched to small business owners who want a cost-effective way to manage and market their business’ online presence. It gives you the tools you need to create a designer website and allow your customers to book appointments, buy products or services, stream podcasts and more.
We find it is best to stick to what your are good at. People often get hung up on deciding how to create the best experience for their target customer. We are experts at the Squarespace platform and optimizing your site's user-experience. Stuck not knowing what to write? Not sure you have that design eye? You will most likely save money and time leaving your marketing to experts who know what they are doing in this arena. If you are interested in starting your Squarespace website, contact the experts at Strategy Driven Marketing to learn more.
P.S. If you’ve started a Squarespace website and are stuck somewhere in the process…we encourage you to contact us now, we are here to help!!!