Why Squarespace Stands Out in the World of Website Platforms
About the episode:
Today on the podcast, I want to talk about why I often recommend Squarespace to my clients. There are many options for website platforms, and it can get pretty confusing to pick one – especially if your website has to serve multiple functions. I’ll shortly mention why some of my clients think about using WordPress or Showit when they begin working with me and what those platforms offer, but I really want to focus on Squarespace because it's so user-friendly, adaptable, and packed with everything you might need. I believe it really is the best option for almost every entrepreneur, no matter where you may be in your own journey as a business owner.
Plus, I have some exciting news! I'm about to relaunch my Squarespace template shop! It's a fantastic opportunity to get a professional-looking website without the hefty price tag. If you've been considering giving your site a new look, joining the waitlist could get you a discount on these carefully crafted, stunning templates.
Discover why Squarespace is a top choice for my clients:
Key features that set Squarespace apart from other platforms
How to transform your site with designer Squarespace templates
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Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Rebrand with Ruthann. Thank you so much for being here, especially because I know there's so many podcasts out there to listen to. So thank you so much for taking the time and tuning in. Today I am talking about website platforms and specifically Squarespace and why I recommend it for my clients. Basically nine times out of 10, I recommend it for my clients. So I'm excited to dive into why I recommend it so highly.
And we're also gonna talk about some other website platforms out there such as WordPress and Showit, which are the other two I hear the most about from potential clients when they're chatting about working with me. And so we're gonna talk about all the things and hopefully this gives you a lot of clarity for which platform you should go with in your online business. If you feel like maybe you need to switch platforms, you know, hopefully this is a great podcast episode that can be a resource to you as you're making that decision. So there are a ton of, you know, first of all, there's so many website platforms out there. It's important to know that there's not just three. There's Squarespace, WordPress, Webflow, ShowIt, Wix, Weebly, and the list goes on. There are so many platforms out there where you can host a website. So I think it's important to know that, you know, there are so many, but whenever you're making the decision to go with a website platform, I think it's really important to go with a platform that's been in the online space for a while that's not just like the new thing that might go away after like a few years. So you wanna find a website platform that has been established for many years. That's what I recommend anyway. And making sure that It's something that is gonna grow for years to come and it's not just going to, yeah, like I said, go away. So I'm gonna talk about two web platforms before I get into Squarespace and talk about the wonderful things about Squarespace. So the two I wanna talk about are the ones that my clients are thinking about the most. When we are in a discovery call, we are talking about web platforms, why certain web platforms might be best. So many of us, myself included, started off with a WordPress site because WordPress is well known in the online space to be, well, it's free for one and it's open source, which means it can't, you can grow it as big as you want to grow it. And there's a lot of benefits when it comes to WordPress.
But I think there's kind of a drawback as well. And I think when it comes to WordPress, there are themes you can get so it looks, you can get it to look how you want, but I think there's so many restrictions as well. And it's a little bit clunky on the back end, just it's hard to sometimes navigate everything and it's just a little bit more technical, I think, because there's so many add -ons and things you can do with plugins and there's a lot of features you can add on as well. It can be a little bit hard to manage at times if you really aren't a techie person and you just don't want to deal with it. I think most times when potential clients are hearing about WordPress, they're like, oh, I've heard WordPress is the best. And it's like, well, WordPress is fantastic.
But you kind of really need a designer and you also need a developer if you want it to get it how you want it to look. And making changes a lot of the times are hard to do, harder to do. If you're not writing the code yourself or if you're not in the back end yourself, you always have to have your designer and developer helping you make changes, create pages, that kind of thing. And you can make changes pretty easily.
in WordPress, you just need to like anything else. There's kind of a learning curve to know about what changes to make. And the changes I'm talking about are like text changes, photo changes. They're not like creating a new page. And so WordPress can be a little bit hard to manage. It can be kind of a lot if you don't really want to get to like in the weeds with the text stuff. And that's why I think for most of my clients, they want a platform that they can easily go into, make updates, make changes, blog, create podcast episodes, that kind of thing. And so I think it's, just looking at what you need in a website platform is key. If you have a developer and a designer on your team, then I think WordPress could be the way to go. If you are really building a really strong blog on your site,
I think if you're blogging, I have a client who is a blogger and she is a fashion influencer and she's blogging six times a month. And in that case, we did build her site on WordPress because of her goals that she has and it just made the most sense for her. And so I think it's really important to know what is the most important thing to you? What is your long -term vision? And what is the goal you have for your business and that kind of thing.
So that is the first web platform that I hear most people talking about in discovery calls, when they're thinking about getting their site up and running is WordPress. I hear it's the best and they just don't know too much about the web platform. So they just assume, let's get started on WordPress. But like I said, there's a lot of things to consider and so many of them are dependent on what you want to be doing you know, what is your vision for your business, for your website. And so that's really important to keep in mind. The next platform that a lot of people talk about is Showit. And Showit is a drag and drop platform where you can move everything around exactly how you want it to be, like to the pixel. And you have the ability to make like mobile design is isolated and the desktop view is also isolated. And I think you have a tablet view, but I could be wrong on that. It's been a while since I've been in Show It, but I used to design in Show It years ago. And I think the draw to Show It is it's completely customizable. I think the downside to that is if you are not a designer or if you're not someone who wants to worry about the design in Show It, it can feel sometimes like,
If you want to make a change on your homepage or something, you have to change a lot of things, depending on the type of change you're trying to make, you have to change a lot of things to get it to look how you want it to look. And sometimes if you're not a designer, you can make a change and it doesn't look how you want it to look. So I think it's kind of one of those things where you have true freedom, like it is a blank canvas freedom where you can design it however you want it to look, but I think sometimes having that much freedom can be tricky because it's like, you know, I'm not sure where to put things or I'm not sure how to like lay things out. So again, most of my clients are not designers. Most of my clients are coaches and service providers. And so they don't really want to be in their site doing all the designs, doing all the layouts, doing all that kind of thing. They just want to have a beautiful site that they can manage on their own, that they can update on their own.
And so sometimes ShowIt is one of those things where it's like it's almost too much creativity for the person who just wants to have a beautiful site and be able to do all the up keeps themselves. And another thing about ShowIt is that they have, whenever you have a blog, it does have to go through WordPress, which there's pros and cons to everything here. So it's not like there's only cons to something and only pros to something else. No, there's pros and cons to everything.
But with Showit, you do have to have a WordPress blog, which it can seem a little clunky and a little hard to navigate. It's just not as streamlined as Squarespace, which we are about to get into. So I think the thing about Showit is it's fantastic for the designer, for someone who really, really cares about like a completely custom experience, like a photographer.
It's really great for photographers, designers, that kind of thing. But for the average online business owner who is wanting to look really professional online, to be able to, like I said, do all the upkeep themselves, it can be kind of a lot to manage if you're going at it alone without having that designer eye or if you don't have a designer on your team, that kind of thing.
And I just want to say there's exceptions to all of this. So if you have a designer eye and you're really wanting to do everything within the pixel, then maybe show it is for you. If you are a coding expert and you really love technical stuff, maybe WordPress is for you. So I will say, for everyone out there, everyone has their own preferences and stuff. But this is just kind of a general overview just to get you thinking about what might be best for you.
And so moving on to Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that I recommend. I've been on a lot of them. I've been on Showit, I've been on WordPress, I've been on Wix, I think I was on Weebly at one point. So I've tried a lot of them out there and I love Squarespace because it is truly an all -in -one platform. And I think this is the difference between other platforms. Squarespace has everything you would want in a platform in their platform. So I feel like I'm saying platform a lot. But it's just one of those, one of those, okay, let me say that again. What I love about Squarespace is that it is truly an all -in -one platform. It has a drag and drop feature. And so unlike Showit, it's not like drag and drop to the pixel, but it is drag and drop within a grid.
So you can almost get that, you know, to the look that you want it to be in the new Fluid Engine editor. So Squarespace did go through a change a few years ago. I think it's three years at this point as I'm recording this. And they upgraded from, they used to be all of the Squarespace designs were in a template structure. So you could only design within that template. So you had a ton of restrictions when it came to how you wanted the site to look. And if you really wanted it to get, if you really wanted to get that look you wanted, you had to do code. And so Squarespace has since upgraded in 2019, it made the fluid engine upgrade to, in 2019, it upgraded from their 7 .0 to 7 .1, which is also called fluid engine and,
In this new editor, you're able to do, I mean, it's basically opened up everything where you don't need to design within a specified template. Every single page actually gives you template options, so you have a lot of options within every single page. They have pre -designed templates that you can work from. Obviously, if you work with a designer, you would have your own design within the site. And there's so many more robust design features.
There's so many things you can do now in the Fluid Engine Editor that you didn't have any ability to do in the previous version. And so I think, yeah, there's just so many great things about Squarespace. And I think the main one is that it's easy to use. It's very easy to use. You can just, you can duplicate, you can duplicate text blocks, you can duplicate images, you can duplicate sections.
You can copy pages, you can move things around. It's one of those things, especially because I give my clients Squarespace training at the end of our work together, whenever we're working on a website together, I give them Squarespace training where they just watch the video and then they feel like they have pretty much everything that they need to know in that video and so they can go back and watch the video if they need, but they have complete control to do anything that they want.
They're not gonna mess anything up. It's just one of those things where it takes a little bit of time to practice through. But it's so easy to move things around, to create a new page, to blog, which is a huge one. Blogging is something that most of my clients do. And having a blog that's so easy to blog in, to schedule content, to have like schedule content in advance. It's just so easy and it's so nice and my clients love Squarespace. So once they're on Squarespace, normally they stay on for years and years. And I know for me, I started my Squarespace site back in 2016 and I am still on Squarespace. I started out in the 7 .0 version and then when the upgrades came, I did upgrade. Because there are so many changes to the Squarespace platform, in that fluid engine upgrade, you do have to create a new site from scratch if you want to use all the fluid engine features because they made so many features. They're, yeah, they have so many new features that because of that, there wasn't any way to kind of mold it into their old way of doing things. So you do have to start a new site from scratch, but it's.
I mean, using Fluent Engine is night and day difference than the old version and like I mentioned, it's so easy to use. So I'm just going to run through a list of five things that really set Squarespace apart from other platforms that I think are huge ones when it comes to what my clients are wanting and what they're needing in a website platform. So number one, ease of use. And I kept mentioning this, but It's just so easy to use. I feel like it's the best of both worlds, because it's not like to the pixel freedom in like and show it, but you have that drag and drop freedom within a grid, which is which is similar. And it's just a little bit easier for the people who are not design savvy or maybe you are design savvy, but you don't want to do everything like down to the pixel. So it's just so easy to use.
so easy to make updates yourself and I just can't recommend it enough for my clients who really want to be in control of their site and they either it's just them or they have one to two team members or like a small group like on the team and it's just really to add permissions for different people, different permissions. You can have a lot of people in the site and it's just so easy to have a team on there and make upgrades and changes. Number two, you can easily make changes yourself. I mentioned this several times, but you can duplicate sections, pages, text boxes. You can move things around. It's so easy to make changes and it's one of those things, like once you kind of get going, it's like, oh wow, this is a lot of fun and I can do this myself.
Number three, blogging is a breeze. I don't know of another platform where blogging is so easy. It's just so easy to do and it looks beautiful and it can look exactly how you want it to look and it's just so nice to be able to feel confident that you can set up the blog yourself, set up everything, plan content in advance and it's just so easy to do.
Number four, you have built -in analytics. I think this is a big one personally because some other website platforms don't have this. And it's just nice to be able to see your web performance. And I do think that it is best to hook up Google Analytics to your website. I do think that's very important. But if you don't hook up Google Analytics, you can get really good analytics just through Squarespace, which I think is so nice. So you can see which pages are top performing. You can see where your visitors are coming from and you can see how they're finding you through which social media platforms or through online searches. So it's really nice to have a really in -depth look at analytics built into your website that you don't have to go through multiple channels to find out how you're doing.
And number five, there's so much room for growth and Squarespace really advertises itself as an all -in -one platform. And it really is. They have in the last few years, they've added in a scheduling feature. They've added in an email marketing feature. You can add in course integration. There's just so many things you can add in as you're growing your brand and business for years to come. And I think it's so nice that it's kind of just all in one spot. You can get your business email through Squarespace. They've partnered with Google Workspace. And so it's just really, really nice because there's just, like I said, it's just all in one and it's just so nice because you don't have to go anywhere. You don't have to go through all these different channels to find what you need. It's all in one spot. So I, like I said, cannot recommend Squarespace enough.
But I think it also goes back to, like I mentioned in the beginning, what are your goals for your business? What is your vision for your website? What are you wanting your website to be doing for you? How are you hoping to interact with your website? Are you going to be pretty hands off? Do you have a team member who's dealing with your site? Do you have a developer on your team? Having all these things in mind is really important when you're making this decision.
But if you are, like most of my clients, if you are a coach, if you are a service provider and it's just you or it's you and a few team members and you just want to be able to handle your site yourself, you want to be able to make updates yourself, you want to be able to blog easily, maybe have a podcast, you know, grow your newsletter list. If you're just wanting to do that stuff, Squarespace is the place for you. And I cannot recommend it enough.
I have something very exciting coming up in the works and I am relaunching my Squarespace template shop and I would love to invite you to join the waitlist if you are curious and you want a special discount for being on the waitlist whenever the Squarespace templates launch. I would love to invite you to join the waitlist. You can do that by clicking on the link in the show notes or you can go to rartspace.com/shop to get on the waitlist and I would love to see you there because so with the website templates I am relaunching because I did have some website templates in the old version But these are going to be in the fluid engine new version. These are going to be expertly designed gorgeous sites where you can templates I should say, where you can purchase them and then you can implement the entire site yourself. You can just purchase the template and then from there you can implement everything yourself or you can hire us to implement everything for you. So you have a gorgeous site at a fraction of the price with this Squarespace template. So I'm so excited to relaunch my shop. It's been a while so I'm really excited to do it.
It is coming out very soon. So I encourage you to like I said hop on the wait list and you can get a special discount for when they do launch if Upgrading your site has been something on your mind on your to -do list. You're like, I've been needing to do this. I want to do this This is a great awesome Opportunity to get it at a fraction of the cost But you can still get a designer site that it has a lot of strategy built into it. I
So I encourage you to hop on the wait list. And if you have any questions in the meantime, please reach out to me and I will definitely keep you posted on the launch of the shop. And yeah, I hope this episode was really helpful in it as I hope this episode is really helpful as you are designed, as you are deciding on which I was gonna say, okay, hold on.
I really hope this episode was helpful as you are deciding on which platform to go with for your business, but I know you'll make the right decision. And like I mentioned, if you wanted some advice or any insight on which platform would be right for you, you can always reach out to me. I would love to chat with you about it and give you just an extra perspective if you wanted to talk through which platform might be best for you. I would love to just be a resource to you, so feel free to reach out to me on my email or through Instagram or something and I would love to connect with you there. Thank you so, so much for tuning in. I truly appreciate you and I will talk with you next week.
