Description

Back in 199something — during the early days of the web — I asked a friend who owned an ad agency how I could create my website.

He flashed a salesman’s smile and said, “It’s so easy, Lynford.”

“All you have to do is get a designer to create your design for you. Then you need to find a developer to turn that design into a web template. Then you add all of your content. Then you need to find someone who will maintain it for you.”

But what if I want to do it myself?

“If you can do all of that yourself, then good luck,” he shrugged.

That was then.

These days it’s so much simpler to create a website. And when you use a platform like Squarespace, creating a website can be so simple. Here’s why I use Squarespace and think it is one of the best options for creating and maintaining a website.

These days it’s so much simpler to create a website. And when you use a platform like Squarespace, creating a website can be so simple. Here’s why I use Squarespace and think it is one of the best options for creating and maintaining a website.

Why Squarespace?

• Remember, I said you need a website?

• A website is one of the four pillars of personal branding we discussed in episode 02.

• You might be wondering how you get started with a website.

• I use a platform called Squarespace. In fact, I’ve been using them for the last 10 years.

• Squarespace is an online tool for building and publishing websites. Squarespace uses pre-built website templates and drag-and-drop elements to create webpages.

• But it wasn’t always that easy.

• In the old days, I created websites from scratch using Adobe Dreamweaver. Back then, you did a lot of designing and coding — page by page, unless you knew a language called CSS or cascading style sheet.

• Since then, I’ve tried Wix, Weebly, Wordpress.com & Wordpress.org. I used the blogging platform, Blogger from Google. I tried Apple’s then website maker product. There was one that was native to Apple computers.

• It wasn’t until I stumbled onto Squarespace about 10 years ago that I knew I was home. I found it to be the simplest, most intuitive, and complete solution.

• I had just spent my entire weekend and then some trying to get my site up in Wordpress because that’s where all the cool kids said you need to host it. 

• I downloaded plugins and bought themes and clunked around them with no discernible process. 

• In sheer frustration, I Googled to see if there were any simpler options, and Squarespace popped up. I logged on and had a decent site up in a couple of hours. It was too easy and looked the way I wanted it to look, with drag and drop simplicity.

• We’ve grown together over the years. Squarespace has added lots of features and upgraded its platform a few more times. Now I wouldn’t use anything else.

• Here are some reasons it’s worth a look.

What I like

• Beautiful, professionally designed templates. It is easy to have a website that looks like a professional designer did it, even if you don’t know a lick of code.

• A modular system makes it not only easy to make them look good but hard to mess up.

• Everything you need is built in. You know it’s there, and you know it works.

• Unsplash Images + thousands of web fonts

• Mobile-ready, fully responsive - out the box. No resizing all your images yourself or making any adjustments to load AMP. Squarespace takes care of all of that behind the scenes. Just upload your image, and you’re done.

  • Blogging options are superb. This is where it shines. You can create so many different options for your blogging/podcasting platform (CMS). You can even add more than one blog to your site if you choose. Multiple blogs give you lots of layout & design options, even if you don’t use them as a traditional blog.

• SEO - Squarespace makes it very easy to create more searchable pages. The platform tells you exactly what to do to make your content more searchable by Google.

• Built-in marketing features — Announcement bar, pop up email, newsletter blocks

• Support — Chat and email very responsive. Tons of help videos to do everything imaginable.

• They also offer complementary services

  • Logo design

  • Email marketing

  • Creating social stories

  • Scheduling 

  • Website analytics

  • Memberships

• Commerce - You can sell any product or service. Even offer free downloads.

• Mobile apps

  • Squarespace - manage your website

  • Analytics

  • Commerce

• 14-day trial, no credit card required

• Built for

  • Small to mid-sized businesses

  • Photographers

  • Bloggers

  • Artists

  • Restaurants

  • Musicians

  • Weddings

  • Students

What I don’t like

• Not easy to export a blog to another Squarespace site

• No staging site. Everything publishes as you create.

  • (Update 4/22/21) - The new Squarespace 7.1 now lets you save and publish separately. This is no longer an issue after you upgrade.

• Can’t create pretty link URLs