9 Reasons Why Squarespace Is The Best Website Builder For Solopreneurs
When it comes to designing websites, there are many options to choose from. The most common platforms are WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix. Having had experience with all three, I find Squarespace to be the best option for a small business or solopreneur.
If you’re a non techie person and like user friendly platforms, then read below to hear about the benefits of Squarespace. Because you, my friend, are in the right place!
1. The setup is easy since the website is hosted on Squarespace.
That means that you can just purchase a domain through Squarespace and start designing.
For my Wordpress blog, I purchased the domain through Wordpress and hosted it on Wordpress.com. When I had to transfer my blog from Wordpress.com to Wordpress.org and host it on Siteground, I was so confused and had to pay to have it transferred over.
With Squarespace, you save yourself the hassle by setting up the domain and hosting in one place.
In terms of getting started, it’s very straightforward. You sign up with your email, choose a template and start designing! You have a two week trial for every template you try out. After that, you have to put in your billing information and choose between a personal or business plan if you'd like to keep designing it.
Once you’re ready to make your website live, you can purchase the domain and connect it to the website. Or you can purchase the domain and create a cover page letting people know that your site is under construction.
2. The backend is easy to navigate
If you're looking for a platform that is user-friendly for non-techie people, Squarespace is the place to go. Many entrepreneurs loveee Squarespace for this reason!
Wordpress can be overwhelming, but with a few short intro videos from Squarespace help pages, you can start designing your website right away.
When you go under the Pages tab, you’ll see the different sections clearly broken up - primary navigation, footer navigation and not linked - among others depending on your template. You can use the “+” next to any of the sections to create a new page and you’ll see a popup like the one below.
When you create a new page, specifically a Page (top left from the options above), you can use Squarespace’s drag and drop features to move things like spacer blocks, text and images around the page as you’d like.
Even if you decide to have a designer create your site, most designers will provide you with a Squarespace lesson at the end so that you feel comfortable making changes on your own. That way, you don’t need to pay a coder or developer to make small tweaks to your website, which can typically happen with Wordpress site owners.
3. Squarespace can be very customizable, depending on the template family you choose.
If you choose a highly customizable template, like something from the Brine family, you can change just about anything on your site. But in general, with Squarespace's drag and drop features, you can still have a good amount of customization when designing pages on any template.
Just make sure to do your research ahead of time before you pick a template. You want to choose a template based on its functionality, not the example industry that the template shows. For example, if you’re a restaurant owner, don’t pick a template because it showcases an example restaurant’s website.
The other great part about designing with Squarespace is that you don’t need any coding knowledge. You can still create an amazing website with absolutely no code. I only have a small piece of code on my website, and the page would be fine without it.
4. Squarespace templates are very clean and professional.
Squarespace is great for any solopreneur or small business because no matter what template you choose, you can create a beautiful, modern, and clean website. You can use the pre-designed website of the template you choose as a guide if you’re unsure how to set up your website, or you can delete it all and start from scratch. The latter is recommended so that your website looks nothing like the template (which seems to be a concern for some people when choosing Squarespace).
5. Squarespace sites are mobile friendly
When you design a site on Squarespace, it will automatically be optimized for mobile. You can even change the views from desktop to mobile or tablet to see how your site looks on the different screens.
If you’re not sure why this is important, it’s because Google crawls the mobile version of website first when including the website in its index, which is known as mobile-first indexing. According to Moz, “the lack of a mobile-friendly experience could impact negatively on the rankings of that site, and a site with a better mobile experience would potentially receive a rankings boost even for searchers on a desktop.”
With most searches coming from mobile phones, it’s no wonder this is such an important factor. If someone is coming to your website on a mobile phone and your website isn’t showing correctly or certain functionalities aren’t working, chances are that they will close out of it and move on. As a result, you miss out on potential leads.
6. Squarespace support is 24/7
I have used Squarespace support several times and I absolutely love it. No matter what your issue is, they will help you out in a friendly and responsive manner.
Email support is available 24/7 and live chat is available Monday to Friday from 4am to 8pm EST.
7. Squarespace websites update automatically
If you’ve used Wordpress before, you know how common it is to go into the backend of your site and see x number of updates for plugins available. The wonderful feature of Squarespace is that their websites update automatically, and the best part is that you don’t even notice it.
8. All Squarespace templates have e-commerce capabilities
If you’re an online business owner that wants to sell physical or digital products, Squarespace has e-commerce capabilities you can build into your website with the business plan. That way, you don’t need to sell your products on a different website.
9. Squarespace has great SEO features
So many people hear of the Yoast plugin for Wordpress and think that they need it for SEO.
But the truth is that Yoast is literally an SEO checklist for your page or blog post - it helps you identify areas where you could improve different SEO factors.
It doesn’t make your site quicker (it can actually do the opposite if you have too many plugins) and it doesn’t send any extra signals to Google that your website is more SEO friendly than someone else’s.
Squarespace users, as an alternative, can just use an SEO checklist when publishing a page or blog post.
>> Learn more: Squarespace SEO Guide: How to Optimize Your Website <<
But what are these wonderful SEO features Squarespace offers do you ask? From search engine and page descriptions to Google search keywords analytics and SSL certificates, Squarespace offers great SEO features to boost your rankings.
Overall, Squarespace offers the perfect capabilities for business owners looking to have a clean and modern website that is customized to match their style and help them rank in search results. There’s no bulky setup to stop you, and even if you run into issues, someone from Squarespace support is always available to answer questions or concerns.
Have I convinced you to build your website on Squarespace? If so, I’d love to help you bring your dream website to reality.
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