Is Squarespace Worth it for Your Small Business?
Whether you have a website you don’t like or isn’t converting well, or you don’t have a website at all - making the decision between which platform to use can be tricky.
There’s lots of platforms now with similar functionality, similar features and similar price points, so how do you know which one to go with? Or if you need a website at all?
As a brand and website designer who’s worked with over 200+ businesses, I always come back to Squarespace being the best of the best out there.
But before I dive into why, let’s touch on whether you need a website or not.
I mostly sell on social media, like Instagram, do I even need a website?
If you’re a service based business who isn’t an MLM or MRR, then heck yes you need a website! Of course you know that you don’t own your social media or your following, but your website you do. Your website is a further indicator to your potential clients that you are, in fact, a legitimate business (and not some weekend warrior who took a 24hr course). It’s like your PhD, your Diploma, your Certifications on the wall of your office.
Your website does a lot of heavy lifting for you.
It explains your process, your unique approach so that folks understand how you’re different.
It allows for them to determine whether you’re the best fit for them based on your offers yes, but also your tone of voice, your messaging, the design as a whole.
It answers questions that folks should be able to find easily (and not have to ask you in your DMs over and over again). Consumers want their buying power back, and that means being able to go onto your website, gather all the information they need so they can make an informed decision to inquire with you or not.
If you’re in the health and wellness industry, or a photographer, having a website is a key asset to positioning your brand as a higher quality, higher skilled, knowledgeable provider. You’re competing (whether you like it or not!) with countless others in your industry, from newbies to pros, you don’t want to be lumped in with the new competitors out there. Especially given all the hard work, sacrifice and expertise you have! (blood sweat and tears baby).
If you don’t have a website or your website doesn’t showcase the quality of your brand now, you need to book in for our 2 Week Website package. 5-7 pages, fully designed and developed, conversion focused and packed with your personality.
Now lets get to Squarespace specifically…
As a website designer, I’ve tried almost every platform out there and always come back to Squarespace. Here’s why
Easy to Customize
With it’s drag and drop functionality, thanks to the new Fluid Engine Builder, it’s incredibly easy to customize each section within each page. The features are very intuitive - resizing images, adding shapes, formatting written copy. You don’t need to know code to create a beautiful website!
Wide Variety of Blocks
The blocks are what make up each section within a page - image blocks, text blocks, summary blocks etc. Squarespace has many integrations built in as well (like charts, diagrams, but also RSS feeds for podcasting, table for menus, maps, search field, amazon etc).
Mobile Design
You can customize the mobile design separate from the desktop version. And it still uses drag and drop functionality, so you don’t have to play around with a lot of code to get a responsive mobile site. And unlike Showit, your blocks are already loaded in that section, so you don’t have to add individual blocks all over again. You simply drag, drop, resize and reorder!
Ease of Use
We design websites for fitness coaches, nutrition coaches, pelvic floor physical therapists, photographers, therapists, energy healers and countless others. One of our core beliefs is that our clients should be able to make basic updates to their site, confidently. So the ease of swapping photos, updating written copy, changing buttons is something we really value in Squarespace. Yes, we use code to make the sites we design more elevated and on brand with our clients personality, but the basic functions we ensure will always be easy for our clients to use. Alongside the recorded walkthrough videos we provide them.
What about for my industry? Will it work?
We’ve designed and developed Squarespace websites for both product and service based business owners, but let me go a step further too…
Health, Fitness, Healing Industry
Whether you’re a strength coach, PT or therapist - Squarespace is a great fit. Because of the ability to customize your website to the degree that it can, you can create a very stunning experience for your potential clients. With drop down menus, unique ways to display your process and services and integrated forms that arrive right into your inbox, it serves every requirement you’ll need! Most of our clients fall into this industry and book in for our 2 Week Website Package.
Photography Industry
Squarespace is a great fit for photographers because of the many ways you can do quick, batch uploads of your clients to your portfolio. You spend a lot of time editing at your desk, the last thing you need is to double that up with uploading to your website. Squarespace has a specific Portfolio page, with many cover designs you can choose from, along with gallery blocks where you can drag over 50 photos (maybe more!) at a time and do a mass batch upload. We created Randi Rey’s site in Squarespace and within 6 months of her project with us, she had a $39,000 increase in her revenue. (she booked in for The Roadtrip & 2 Week Website Package)
Product Based
Lots of folks typically default to Shopify for their product based businesses but honestly Squarespace is where its at. Shopify is still very rigid in their design, and oftentimes you need heavy javascript and code to customize it. Squarespace has great drag and drop design functionality, and their product upload/categorization is superb. You can add multiple variations, sizes and colours, you can add forms based on options the customer selects (which works great for makers who have customizable options like names, birthdates, est dates etc). Our clients typically book in for a 2 Week Website here, and we do a 5 product set up for them, as we also believe they need to be confident in uploading products/changing products in the backend of their site. However a full product setup would likely fall under our 4 Week Website option!
How much does Squarespace cost?
It’s pretty on par with all other website platforms these days. And with most platforms, you’re either getting the site for free and having to pay for countless plugins (like WP) or you’re paying for the all in one, have faster load times and less issues with the plugins.
If you’re service based:
$32/month or $276CAD Annually (save 20% with us as we’re Circle Gold Members)
If you’re product based:
$42/month or $396CAD Annually (save 20% with us as we’re Circle Gold Members)
Does it handle my domain?
Yes and actually Squarespace acquired Google Domains so everything is housed now within Squarespace. You’ll have to pay for your domain ontop of your annual or monthly subscription, and those prices vary from $40/yr to $14/yr depending on the domain you choose.
I’ve heard its bad for SEO
This is a myth I’m always happy to crush lol. SEO is heavily dependent on how the developer builds the site. What heading tags they assign to what piece of copy, the alt descriptions on the images, page descriptions and names, backlinks etc. It’s all dependent on how the site is built by the developer. The only site that is lower on the SEO scale is Showit, because there’s no grid system it uses for the page to be built, search engines have a hard time reading the content of the page. Our 2 Week Website clients have never had a problem with their SEO, and Squarespace now has an AI SEO feature to quickly add SEO to your site.
Will I book clients once I get a Squarespace website?
If your current site isn’t converting well then I’d recommend a re-design for sure, you may need to update some written copy but if your site wasn’t designed strategically, you can end up getting a lot of drop offs from your site visitors. I’d suggest booking in for a discovery call and we can chat details about it.
Another factor could be your brand identity. Your brand identity influences the design and personality of the website. If you haven’t had a professional brand identity there’s a good chance the site isn’t visually stimulating to your site visitors, nor is it giving them an idea of the experience you provide. Again - booking a discovery call is your best bet!
I’m an open book, if you have any questions about whether Squarespace is the right fit for you please send them my way!
— Cheryl
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