Everything to sell anything
About Squarespace – An Introduction
Squarespace was established in 2003 and is now one of the leading website builders in the market. Their award-winning designs and full-featured editor make the company stand out from the competition. Currently, Squarespace hosts millions of websites around the world as they target users who want to create online stores, blogs, and digital portfolios. The service is perfect for users with all kinds of experience levels in website building.
Despite having a beginner-friendly interface, Squarespace also allows more experienced users to modify their websites by inserting HTML code for further customization. Users can also integrate several third-party services such as Disqus, PayPal, and Eventbrite onto their websites. They also work in partnership with Square, a leading point-of-sale company. Square’s payment processing hardware and software are now included in the Commerce app.
When we talk about template designs, Squarespace doesn’t fall behind. The site builder has both beautiful and functional designs. The flexibility of their builder is also something to consider as it allows users to modify more aspects of their website.
Tools and Characteristics
Mobile Optimization
Website builders now offer mobile optimization if they want to be a go-to option for users and Squarespace doesn’t let itself fall behind. The online shop comes optimized for mobile shopping and checkout which is becoming one of the fastest-growing e-commerce segments. The Mobile Information Bar provides essential contact details such as phone number, address, and hours
Image Manager
Squarespace lets you drag and drop photos from your desktop folder directly to the platform. Once it’s uploaded, you get the image scaled in different sizes to accommodate different screen sizes. You can edit images on the Squarespace platform with Adobe Image editor.
Style Editor
The drag and drop editor lets you change fonts, colors, and text sizes on your website. You have hundreds of available options so it’s easy to make a page that stands out.
Custom CSS
For users with coding experience, using CSS is one way to change the design or add more features to their website. Squarespace allows users to access the CSS for any template if they want to make changes.
SEO Integration
The Squarespace builder is already updated and optimized for the best SEO practices currently. You don’t need additional plugins to manage your SEO tasks on the platform. You get pages with URLs and HTML markups that can be searched easily, the ability to modify page titles and image tags, automatic tagging, automatic Facebook Open Graph support, and Google sitemaps generation.
User Experience
Just like most website builders, users don’t need any web development or coding experience to get the most out of Squarespace. It’s possible to create a website in less than 10 minutes and spend the next hour customizing it to your preferences. The drag and drop editor is organized according to section and every section allows you to add a new item to your websites such as an image, purchase button, or contact form. You can modify the content or layout by clicking directly on the element.
Under the Design menu, you can find the Style Editor where you can upload media elements and graphics for your website. You can then use the customization tools found on the left sidebar to edit any media you have uploaded. Squarespace’s tools are easy to use but it won’t hurt to watch the tutorials available on their YouTube channel to get a better grasp of their features.
Pricing
There are no free plans from Squarespace but you can take advantage of their free trial for two weeks. They won’t ask for any payment details and will also offer to extend the trial for another week if the first 14 days are not enough to explore the platform. This allows you to create a test site and see how the content and features would look like before spending your money.
The Commerce Basic and Commerce Advanced plan both include Point of Sale. Squarespace will not charge extra transaction fees and you can take payments with the standard rate charged by Square.
Personal
Squarespace offers the Personal plan at $12 per month if you get an annual subscription and $16 per month if you pay monthly. The Personal plan is recommended for blogs and portfolio websites. It comes with, mobile optimization, SSL security, 2 site contributors, website metrics, and 24/7 customer support.
Business
The Business plan costs $18 a month with an annual subscription and $26 if you choose to pay monthly. This package comes with all the inclusions of the Personal plan plus the following additional features:
• $100 in Google Ad credit
• unlimited contributors
• G-Suite email account for a year
• advanced metrics
• inventory management
• unlimited product inventory
• integrated accounting
• promotional pop-ups
Commerce Basic
Annual subscription for the Commerce Basic plan costs $26 a month while monthly billing gives you $30 a month. This features all the tools from the Business plan but without the transaction fees. It also features e-commerce metrics, tax and shipping controls, inventory management, mobile-optimized checkout, customer accounts, and more. This is a great plan for those who want to start an online store. You get the same price with the Business plan but with more features and tools.
Commerce Advanced
The Commerce Advanced plan gives you all the tools from the Commerce Basic plus a list of other commerce tools such as abandoned cart recovery, advanced discounts, and advanced shipping options. The plan will set you back $40 a month with annual billing or $46 a month if paid monthly.
Conclusion
Squarespace offers some of the best tools and features in the arena of website building. Sites hosted or created through Squarespace are beautiful, interactive, and unique. You don’t have to be an expert or hold prior website building experience to create one. However, more advanced users can also take advantage of tools for further customization. Creating a website itself can be done in a few minutes. But if you’re new to website builders, you might have to spend more time learning the ropes. For any questions and concerns, you can browse through their collection of tutorials and videos or reach out to their customer support team.
