Why You Should Build Your Website on Squarespace
Whether you’re looking to build a new website, or you already have a live site and are looking to improve it, there are a few key reasons I recommend Squarespace websites for most entrepreneurs and small business owners I work with.
In fact, I exclusively design on Squarespace for my custom web design clients, and our own website is built on Squarespace too.
Quick note before we begin: This post contains affiliate links through which I may earn a small commission if you choose to purchase, at no additional cost to you. (Appreciate your support, thank you! 🤗)
But it’s worth clarifying that I’ve been recommending Squarespace since long before becoming an affiliate, because I truly find their platform to be the best option for what I do: helping small business owners create beautiful and effective websites that can easily be maintained by the average non-web-developer human—and that don’t break the bank.
Why I recommend Squarespace
Here are a few reasons I recommend Squarespace websites for the small business owners, bloggers and freelancers I work with:
It’s simple & easy to maintain
A beautiful website isn’t very useful if it’s not updated and maintained to meet its purpose: telling your story, showcasing your work, helping customers find and purchase from you.
Websites aren’t static “build ‘em and let ‘em sit” pieces of art. They’re dynamic pieces of content that change over time with your newest info, stories, products, services, etc.
So, it’s very important that your website be regularly updated and maintained. (And this is also important for your SEO!)
Most of my clients are small business owners who don’t have the budget for an in-house web design guru. So, my role is to build a beautiful website on a platform that’s simple and practical to keep updated on your own.
Squarespace uses a drag-and-drop editing interface in which you can make simple updates without requiring a web designer to break into any heavy duty code.
This makes it quick and easy to write blog posts (which, in most cases, you should totally do!), add new photos to galleries, update text, run special promotions, add new pages, disable or delete unused pages, etc.
Design-oriented templates & layouts
Squarespace websites are structured with an eye for simple, clean design. They’re also well-built for image-heavy sites and functionality like galleries, product pages and scrolling layouts. This makes them particularly useful for creative industries.
But, just because they can handle a lot of imagery doesn’t mean they have to. The clean design is also a great choice for text-heavy sites too.
All Squarespace websites are built off a “template”—basically, a foundational structure and design you can customize to make your own. You can take a peek through squarespace.com/templates to view the range of template styles they offer.
Here are just a few examples:
Not to say that other website platforms can’t be constructed into beautiful websites too, but Squarespace tends to be the most design-forward website platform out there—out of the box, its templates are super sleek and modern, and many Squarespace users are able to get by with minimal customization to craft their own “professional” (but really DIY) website.
Mobile-responsive design
All Squarespace websites are mobile responsive by default—meaning, they’re designed to function and look just as nice on mobile devices as they are on your computer screen.
This is super important, as these days, you can expect about half of your website traffic to come from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
Not only does a non-mobile-friendly website hurt your SEO and lead to a negative user experience for your website visitors, but it can also cost an arm and a leg to hire a developer to fix and rework it later. So, you’ll definitely want to get set up with a mobile-responsive website from the get-go.
In being mindful of mobile-friendly website design, Squarespace also makes it easy for you to preview your site’s mobile styling in the back-end of your editing dashboard, so you can make any necessary adjustments to get everything looking exactly as you’d like on mobile devices too.
All your website details in one place
Though it’s possible to purchase your domain elsewhere (and it might be a little cheaper too), I say it’s worth the few extra bucks to purchase your domain directly through Squarespace and have it managed there.
Not only does it make sense to keep your domain name living where your website content is also housed, but Squarespace’s back-end is much simpler to deal with than other web hosting providers tend to be. (Can’t tell you how many people come to me not knowing how to log in to their Bluehost account to retrieve their domain! 😬)
So, if you ever need to make changes to your domain or web hosting (say, update the credit card on file when it expires), it’s a lot simpler and easier to do in the back-end of Squarespace—no extra login information required.
Why it’s important to easily access your website’s domain information: This may seem like it’s not such a big deal, but it can have potentially big consequences. Domain names are typically purchased on an annual subscription basis, which means they expire at the end of their “term.” Thus, it’s mega-important to have your domain registered to an email address you check regularly, so you can be sure you’re being notified to renew the domain before it expires, or you’re able to update billing information if the credit card on file expires, or was canceled, etc.
Neglecting to do this would result in your domain name expiring and your website going dark. You would then have to buy back the domain name from the registrar—sometimes at a much higher price than you originally paid for it!
Technology auto-updates
Have you ever set your website aside for a few months and come back to find that something’s broken because you forgot to update the plugin you were using for that functionality? If you have, you know what a pain it can be. (And if you haven’t, I don’t recommend trying it!)
One of the things I like about Squarespace is that you don’t have to worry about what’s making the site function behind the scenes.
(If you want to worry about that, more power to you! There are other website platforms out there, such as Wordpress, that can introduce you to the back-end upkeep a little more. 😉)
But most business owners I know don’t have the extra time to keep an eye on the back-end of their website, making sure everything will keep working smoothly—lots of other things to do instead!
So, one of the reasons I recommend Squarespace is that any behind-the-scenes futzing and fixing that needs to happen is handled by Squarespace itself—and happens without you even knowing or having to think about it.
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Website integrations to streamline your business
Squarespace websites support a wide range of integrations to connect your other business tools and streamline how they all work and function together.
Some of the most common integrations I install on Squarespace websites are:
Mailchimp email marketing (sending new email list sign-ups directly to your designated Mailchimp list)
Google Drive forms collection
Google Workspace professional email addresses (which I recommend you have!)
appointment scheduling via Acuity Scheduling
restaurant scheduling via OpenTable
embedded YouTube or Vimeo videos
membership-protected content via MemberSpace
This means these services can easily be linked to Squarespace to connect your favorite business tools with your Squarespace website.
Squarespace also offers a super-helpful direct integration with Unsplash, allowing you to source beautiful, professional (free!) stock photography for your website, directly inside the Squarespace editing interface.
Advanced e-commerce capability
Though, in all fairness, it’s certainly not the most robust e-commerce platform out there (Shopify takes the cake on that one), Squarespace does offer substantial e-commerce capability, and tends to be one of the more nicely designed e-commerce platforms.
You can sell physical products, digital products, or services directly from your Squarespace website, linking payment to Stripe, Square or PayPal. You can also collect donations directly from your Squarespace website.
Squarespace is a great e-commerce option for many industries and business types—though it’s probably best for smaller-inventory stores (as in, businesses without a gazillion different products), or for businesses in which the store/commerce capacity is just one part of the overall website.
If you’re interested in selling products or services from your Squarespace website, here’s another post that describes the different commerce functionality in each of Squarespace’s pricing plans.
Easy-to-understand analytics
Though the much-more-powerful Google Analytics can easily be synced with your Squarespace website as well, Squarespace also has its own built-in analytics reporting, which offers clean and easy-to-understand snapshots of your site performance—website traffic, conversion rates, referral sources, popular content, and more.
For small business owners or entrepreneurs just starting out, Squarespace’s dashboards are much easier to understand and interpret than the more-complicated Google Analytics reports—and they’re already all set up for you, no action needed on your part.
I find that my custom web design clients tend to like Squarespace’s analytics dashboard a bit better than Google Analytics because it’s easier to understand—and, thus, more helpful to them in understanding their website performance!
Make updates from the Squarespace mobile app
Squarespace has a mobile app! And it’s pretty cool. 😄
It allows you to make updates, write blog posts, and check your website analytics from the surprisingly functional and useful Squarespace mobile app interface. This perk is incredibly helpful for having access to your site when you’re not near your desktop.
Maybe someone alerts you to a typo in a blog post that just went live, or you want to work on a blog post while on-the-go—the free mobile app can come in quite handy!
All Squarespace sites come with a free trial
All Squarespace websites come with a free 14-day trial so you can dive right in, explore its features, and see if it will work for your needs before committing.
So, what’s not to like about Squarespace?
Are there any cons to using Squarespace as a website platform? Sure there are!
→ Drag-and-drop means there’s already a lot of coding you have to contend with when customizing. So, it’s not always the favorite choice of hard-core developers.
→ Currently, Squarespace is not as well integrated with Zapier as they could be, which can be a pain if you’re trying to use Zapier to sync your website with another tool Squarespace doesn’t have a direct integration with. (Zapier is one of the most common business tools my custom web design clients use to help run their online business operations!)
→ And, right now Squarespace has two concurrent versions of their platform (Squarespace 7.0 and Squarespace 7.1)—and it can be a little confusing for new users to understand which version of the platform is best for them.
But, all in all, Squarespace is a wonderful website platform for getting the best combination of design, functionality, ease of use and affordability.
And they’re a great option, in particular, for small business owners and entrepreneurs who want a beautiful and professional website you can easily use and maintain yourself. 👍
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