Paige Brunton’s Square Secrets Course Review
I’m so excited to be publishing this course review about Square Secrets! To be honest, this is extremely overdue.
Disclosure: some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. Keep in mind that I only recommend products that I truly believe in.
So first off...who is Paige Brunton?
Paige is a Squarespace expert and educator on all things Squarespace. She’s been designing for years and put out a DIY Squarespace course back in 2018 called Square Secrets.
Since then, she’s also created a course specifically designed to help graduates of Square Secrets become Squarespace website designers. Basically, it’s the business side to starting a design business, finding clients, and creating a seamless client experience.
You can learn more about her courses here.
I enrolled in her second live launch round of Square Secrets in August 2018. Years later, I’ve built more than 50 Squarespace websites and I can totally attribute my skill set, knowledge and confidence to what I learned in this course.
I hope you find this course review super helpful!
Let’s dive in...
My journey
It became very clear once I found out about the online business world in June 2017 that I really wanted to become a website designer. With a background in SEO and my growing obsession with graphic design, it made sense that the next step would be to get some serious support in becoming a website designer.
I started fooling around on Squarespace, and that’s when I found Paige. I binged her blog and looked to her as the go-to gal for how to use the platform. I was alllll about that DIY life.
Read more: Should You DIY or Hire a Professional?
Going that route definitely caused me to waste a lot of time. Looking back, it was honestly obnoxious how determined I was to figure it all out on my own. But I bet if you ask any successful entrepreneur, they will admit they fell into a similar trap when starting their business and trying to keep expenses low.
When Paige’s course came along, I was eager to join but the investment felt out of reach at the time. So I missed out on her first live launch and wasn’t able to join again until August 2018. That was a huge mistake. I had to wait 6 months to join and I could have been building websites and making money in my business by then.
How it was different than her blog
If you’ve been a fan of Paige’s blog, you know there is a LOT of valuable information about Squarespace that she provides for free. That’s how she built her business - by putting out educational content each week about Squarespace features and functionality.
So you might be wondering...why would I join this course when I can just read her blog?
I’m sure she gets this question quite often. And I can tell you this…
I used her blog posts for a year to piece together my website and nothing compared to taking the course.
Here’s why the course is totally worth it...
The one major difference is written directions paired with screenshots on her blog versus step by step video direction in the course
Instead of scouring through her blog posts to piece everything together, Paige’s course walks through the process of building a website from start to finish in a super easy to follow manner
Paige might have a couple blog posts about website copy, but the course includes links to Google documents that contain directions and prompts for writing your website content. This was incredibly helpful and I drastically changed my website copy after completing them
You get access to Paige on support calls. You can ask questions and I think she might even still do site reviews
What’s included
Inside Square Secrets, there’s 8 modules and multiple bonuses.
Here’s what’s in the course…
Module 1: Client Conversion Formula
In this module, you learn how to:
Select SEO (search engine optimization) terms
Create website goals
Build your website journey
Find inspiration websites and use them without copying
Module 2: Template Picking Blueprint
In this module, you learn how to pick the right template based on features and function (not needed for Squarespace 7.1)
Module 3: Content Gathering Guide
In this module, you learn how to:
Collect professional and high quality photos for your website
Create a clear and strategic one-liner that will go at the top of your website
Create footer content
Write your website copy for maximum impact
Module 4: Design Best Practices
In this module, you learn:
Website design best practices so your website looks like the farthest thing from DIY
How to convert website visitors into subscribers and clients
Real life website examples
Module 5: Squarespace for Beginners
In this module, you learn how to:
Create your account and set up your fonts and colors
Use blocks and create pages
Design your footer and navigation
Create opt-in pages and pop ups
Set up a blog and understand how to use the blogging features
Note: When I took her course, it was created for Squarespace 7.0 and she has since updated to reflect the new version - Squarespace 7.1.
Module 6: Squarespace Secrets
In this module, you learn how to:
Use index pages and understand why they’re super impactful to use
Use summary and gallery block hacks for fun design layouts
Automate scheduling consult calls
Use Zapier to connect different programs
Create a fake sidebar
Add “jump-to” anchor links
Module 7: SEO
In this module, you learn how to:
Implement SEO on your website
Beat out the competition in the Google search rankings
Connect your site to Google Analytics
Module 8: Launch Prep
In this module, you learn how to:
Tweak your website for mobile and tablet view
Connect social media platforms + add a favicon and logo
Check your website for all the necessary functionality before going live
Connect your domain
Make your website GDPR friendly
Bonuses
There’s a bunch of awesome bonuses that are included in the course:
Ideal client psychology training so you can step into your ideal clients’ head and gather data before building out the website
Client-winning testimonial training so you can collect the best words of praise to display on your website
Q&A call recordings so you can watch past sessions and listen in on common questions
Opt-in gift design and delivery training so you can seamlessly grow your email list with a freebie/lead magnet
How to design site graphics training so you can make your website more visually appealing and easier to digest
How long did it take to go through the course?
Honestly, I binged the course in a weekend. I don’t recommend that if you’re just starting out. Having used her blog posts to put together my website up until that point, I already had a year of knowledge about Squarespace. So a lot of the beginner content I was already familiar with.
To make the website copy and page design changes, I would say that took me a week or two.
Realistically, I would set aside a few hours a week and anticipate a month to go through the course, put together your website copy, gather photos and build the site.
Was there anything I wish was included?
Custom CSS
There is no coding in this course, unless you count creating “jump to” anchor links. That was the only bummer.
However, I found Becca at Inside the Square, who blogs about all things Squarespace CSS. I took her Custom Code Academy course and it was amazing! I highly recommend it if you want to expand your Squarespace CSS knowledge beyond copy/pasting code from other designers’ blog posts.
Going back to Paige’s course, I know that not needing to understand code is a selling point for her course. Many business owners are terrified of dipping their toe in that water, so I understand why the course lacks coding education.That’s why Becca’s course is a great training to purchase alongside this course!
SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is all about making your website readable by search engines.
In the course, Paige covers the bare minimum of SEO basics that is needed to launch a website. I’ll admit that I’m slightly biased on this because I worked in the SEO industry.
Building a website isn’t a small feat on its own, so it would be slightly unrealistic to think that there would be a massive module on the ins and outs of SEO. Basically, this is just to say that it’s covered in the course, just not super in-depth. I’ve gotten this question before, so that’s why I wanted to address it.
That’s why I created my Squarespace SEO course - SEO Strategy Simplified - for anyone that wants to dive much deeper into the world of SEO and start getting found on page 1 of Google.
Is it worth it?
Umm YES!! Paige does an amazing job at breaking down the content. The difference between binging her blog for a year and taking the course felt like night and day in terms of gaining the clarity that I was needing.
Having the step-by-step instruction and getting down to the nitty gritty was incredibly helpful. I can say it gave me SO much more confidence to take on website design clients. So if that’s the direction you’re thinking of going in, this course is a no brainer. And even if you’re a different kind of small business owner, this course will truly help you get your website up and running.
Considering joining but have some questions? Drop them below and I’ll be sure to answer you :)
Looking for more Squarespace blog posts? Check out these blog posts: