You’ve got your business idea and plan all ready to go, and now it’s time to create the website of your dreams - one that will convey who you are, what your business does, and allow your users to fall in love with you before they even have a chance to say hello! But what website platform do you choose? With so many options out there, it can be tough to decide which platform is the best fit for you and your business.
So how do you decide if Squarespace is “the one” for you?
To be honest, there are a ton of factors you could consider when trying to decide which platform is going to be right for you and your biz, but I want to focus on two things: your time and your content.
Time - Your time is valuable. As a business owner, your priority when you’re first starting out is to make sure that you can devote as much time and effort needed to developing your business, brand, and services. You don’t want to spend a ton of time trying to find and implement plugins and building your website. At this point in time you might not have the money to export the work to hire a web designer and you need to do it yourself.
This is where Squarespace REALLY exceeds as a platform in my opinion - building a website on Squarespace is intuitive and they include so many of the key things that will help optimize your site. Features like SEO, security, and premium features like pop-ups and announcement bars (which might be plugins on say, a Wordpress site) are already included. Not to mention if you ever have This makes it super easy and time-efficient for you to create and maintain a site if you’re a one person show at the moment. It’s as simple as selecting the plan that works best for you and includes the features you need, and implementing them. There’s no worry about finding plugins and trying to download and implement them onto your site, everything you need to run a fantastic website is there. Now, should you decide you’d like to have features that aren’t offered by Squarespace, there is the Custom CSS box where you can implement coding to add something that Squarespace currently doesn’t have (e.g. if you want to use Calendly as your method of booking clients instead of their partner, Acuity Scheduling).
Simply put: It takes significantly less time trying to figure out how to use Squarespace and maintain your site than with Wordpress and if time is not on your side (or you aren’t necessarily tech-savvy), Squarespace is the best platform for you.
Your Content - When you’re building your site, it’s important to know exactly how much content you have and have an understanding for your vision as to how much content you may eventually have as well. For example, if you currently don’t have a ton of content, simply need a 4-5 page website that conveys your services and maybe a few digital products, Squarespace is 100% the platform for you. However, if the site you’re building needs to have a TON of content such as an extensive resource library, a variety of options, opt-ins, blog, and information about you and your service(s), WordPress may be a better option.
This is not to say that Squarespace can’t handle a ton of content or doesn’t have a ton of options for customization, but by the time you’re developing that much content or have that much information and tools you’re providing your clientele and users, you probably have a team who is running the back end. In this case, you can hire WordPress wizards to handle everything for you since you’re no longer a one-woman (or man) show and are free to focus on content exclusively. Squarespace is the better option when you don’t have a ton of time or too much content you’re trying to manage, but as you grow, you will have more options for customization and content management with Wordpress, and likely the money to hire someone to help you as well.
BONUS: 2 Features Offered by Squarespace That Will Make Your Web Design Journey Easier
SSL Security - All sites include SSL Security, which is crucial when it comes to Google ranking your site and user peace of mind. As of July 2018, Google implemented a protocol that basically said if your site wasn’t SSL Secure, it would be heavily impact your search results rankings. Squarespace automatically updated its platform to include this as an option, and the only things Squarespace users had to do was *literally* click a checkbox and their sight was secure. Wordpress users on the other hand? Not so easy. See part of the service that you’re paying for with Squarespace is that they make sure to update their extremely inclusive platform to ensure the back end (security, SEO, etc.) is as up-to-date and easy to use for you. Wordpress is much more manual in their approach and at the time this change was taking place, web designers were swamped trying to help site owners convert their security measures. Why was it such a big deal? Ensuring all the sights meant that EVERY link had to be secure, so if a blogger had tons of links, can you imagine the tediousness of having to go through each link to make sure it was secure and didn’t break? #GoSquarespace
SEO Optimization - Another huge difference between Wordpress and Squarespace is that the Squarespace platform is already optimized for SEO. It’s as simple as filling in the boxes and you’re good to go (on a basic level - of course there are more ways to improve your SEO but these are the basics when you are building your site). Wordpress on SEO is a much different story: you have to search for and download an SEO plugin (with tons to choose from) before adding your titles, tags, descriptions, etc. to optimize your site. #aintnobodygottimeforthat
Customer Service - You may not think customer service is important until it’s 4am, you’ve been up all night trying to work on your site and you’re about to pull out the last of your hair trying to figure out why something doesn’t work. You’ve googled questions, checked out forums and still can’t figure it out. Cue Squarespace CS. You send them a quick message on the live chat (because it’s 4am and they’re awake too), and in 10 minutes you’ve figured out the problem that you’ve spent the last hour on. The WordPress user on the other hand? Same problem, 4 hours later and no solution. Okay okay it sounds like a dramatic commercial at this point with a Morgan Freeman-esque voice-over but SERIOUSLY, Squarespace has AMAZING customer service. I have no shame in admitting I’ve reached out to them for help numerous times, and they are always quick to respond, extremely knowledgeable, and courteous. What more could you ask for? Squarespace offers two methods of contact - they have a live chat during the day, starting as early as 4am EST and closing at 8pm EST, and if live chat is closed, they have 24/7 email services as well. I have neither seen nor experienced this option with Wordpress, at least not to the degree of ease that Squarespace has. #winwinwin
Fun Fact: A massive difference between Squarespace and Wordpress is that there is a team in New York who works for Squarespace to ensure the platform’s back end stays with the times and keeps platform features up-to-date(such as SSL for security and SEO optimization). Wordpress doesn’t have a consolidated team like this, and it’s pretty much a free for all if you’re using if you’re using WP. This is also where Squarespace’s amazing customer service
So there you go! Long-story short, if your biz doesn’t have crazy volumes of content and you need a site that is intuitive to use, easy to maintain and fully equiped with the assistance and features you may need, Squarespace is the site for you. Time to build your website!
