Upgrade Your Squarespace Website and Get Better Results and Why it’s Time to Shift from 7.0 to Fluid Engine
About the episode:
Are you still using the old version of Squarespace? If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your Squarespace site this is the perfect episode for you! I LOVE Squarespace but let’s be honest, the old version left a lot to be desired. That’s why I’m so excited to share about the new version of Squarespace and all the changes they’ve made with the release of their drag and drop editor, Fluid Engine. I talk about some of the key changes that the new version has and how it cuts your design time in half while still getting that custom look you want. I go over some common hesitations people have when thinking about upgrading and so much more. Maybe now is the perfect time to upgrade your old Squarespace site and this episode can help!
What you’ll hear:
Dive into the transition from Squarespace 7.0 to Fluid Engine and the unprecedented changes it brings to web design
Understand the newfound design flexibility in Squarespace 7.1, allowing you to break free from template constraints.
A quick list of amazing changes Squarespace made for 7.1
The 5 most impactful changes that 7.1 offers that makes your design easier and more beautiful
Discover the SEO upgrades in Squarespace 7.1 and why Google favors these sites, giving your website a competitive edge
Answering questions and hesitations some people have when thinking about upgrading
Two options for how you can make the switch over
Episode resources:
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Hey guys, welcome back. I hope you're doing so well today. I hope you're having a great week so far. I am excited to be chatting with you today. Today is sunny outside. It's freezing cold weather here in Kansas City, but I am loving it because Christmas decorations are out and the Christmas music is on. And this is just the best time, I think. And so I hope you're having a good start to your week and just having fun with the season that we're in.
Today, we are talking all about Squarespace. This is a platform that I absolutely love. I've been designing on it for years and years, and I'm so excited to be talking about how to make the change if you're on the old version of Squarespace, how to jump to the new version of Squarespace. We're talking about what kind of changes went into from 7.0 to 7.1, also called Fluid Engine.
And if this is already sounding a little bit technical, don't worry, we're gonna keep things super simple, easy to understand. Non-technical jargon, so don't worry, we're gonna make sure it's easy for everyone. But I'm so excited to be talking about this because there's a lot of people I know who are on the old version of Squarespace. They want to make the leap to go to the new version, but maybe they have a little hesitation or questions about it, so we're gonna dive into all that today.
And let me know also, if you have any questions, you can always email me or DM me on Instagram. I would love to clarify anything you have question wise when it comes to Squarespace. Okay, so if you did not know, there are two versions of Squarespace. The older version is called 7.0, and the new version is 7.1, and it also houses Fluid Engine. So when Squarespace came out back in the day, the way you designed a site was within a template your whole site could be set up in one template, your whole site could be set up in one template such as Brine, Bedford, Pacific. If some of these are ringing about, you remember the old templates that Squarespace used to have. So it was similar to WordPress where you had themes. You kind of had that template and you were stuck with the template. You couldn't really change and you were confined to certain restraints within the template. There were certain things you could do in some templates, but you couldn't do in others. And that was just how it was for a long time. I remember taking a course that was like how to make your template look like you wanted to look. That's not the name of the course, but it was about using code and how to use that code to make your site look, you know, specific to how you wanted it to look. So that's kind of how it was back in the day. It was it was harder to design in, you had to move blocks around with spacers, you had to readjust the spacers. It was just a little bit tricky. And the reason I chose to be on it back in the day, out of all of the platforms that were available at the time, I found that it was the easiest to use. And it was, it still had some restraints, because if you've ever been on a platform like Showit,
It is awesome because you can design everything to the pixel, but it's also hard if you maybe don't have an exact vision of how you want it to look or you just want a little bit of like...
I think it's great because you have all of that freedom, but with that freedom, there's just a lot of decisions you need to make. And sometimes for me, I find that it's so nice to work within, like start with a template and then design from there. It kind of gives me a starting point. And so for, I was designing on Show It for a little while, and I went all in on Squarespace a few years ago, and I'm excited that I did that because it really helped me get really good at one platform and that's what I really wanted. I wanted to be like an expert in one platform. And so with Squarespace, the old version, there was just not a lot you could do. Even though I did my best and I took courses and did things trying to make it how I wanted it to, it was difficult to use sometimes. And so Squarespace has been great because they really take their customers' feedback and they make changes accordingly.
And so enter Squarespace 7.1. This came out in 2019, and it was a whole new design layout and it completely changed everything because no longer were you stuck within one template. Now, whenever you create a page, you are given a lot of page template options. So every single page has probably, you know, 10 to 20 design page options. And so if you're designing the homepage,
So for example, if you're designing an about page, you can click on the about page section and it'll show you all the about page templates. And same with like the services page, the contact page. So you just have a new way of doing it where you're not confined within one template. You can mix and match between a whole bunch of different ones. And I just love it because it's so much easier to design and you don't have a lot of those constraints that you had before. And fast forward to July of 2022, and they released, fast forward to July of 2022, and Squarespace released Fluid Engine, which is their drag and drop editor. And it is totally different to what Squarespace used to be. It's truly awesome because it's similar to Showit it in a way, because you do have that capability to move things where you want them to move, not to the pixel, but you are able to kind of get the look you want with the drag and drop feature. They do have it where it's laid out on a grid so you can kind of make sure spacing is correct. You can see like the sizing of things. You can also change the sizing of the cells. I don't wanna get too much into it.
But it's really, really an awesome way to design. And there are so many more capabilities with the new version of Squarespace. So I would love to go through a list of some upgrades that they made in the Fluid Engine editor.
So I would love to go through now a quick list of the changes that now you can do in Squarespace 7.1 Fluid Engine. And so I'm just gonna run through this bullet list really quick. So you're not confined to one template like I just mentioned. All the template options are for every single page. There are true drag and drop editing features. You have mobile isolated design, better SEO, extensive font pack, extensive button options, you can layer images, there are 10 color theme options to expand your branding, a more simple backend, image editing such as resizing within the design, photo library, text design changes within a page design, and so much more. Honestly, there's so many awesome features that you don't have in the old version. So right now I'm going to break down five of the that the new version has, the 7.1 version has, and then I'm gonna go into some questions people might have when they're thinking about switching over. So because there are so many systematic changes from the old version to the new version, you do need to build a new site from scratch and then move your domain over, or connect your domain, or transfer your domain, however you wanna do that.
And while this sounds really daunting, I love helping my clients with this, so more on that later, but there are just so many changes. They couldn't find a way to just like click a button and like switch it over because it just has to do with everything from the template to the page layout to everything. So you do have to start over from scratch, which can be, you know, it can be a detriment maybe.
I think it's a great thing to do because then you can kind of start over. A lot of us have had our sites for a long time. If you've been in business for a while, this is a great way to kind of see what needs to move over, what's really important. Really cleaning things up, just giving your site a refresh. I think it's really helpful. So a few detailed changes. So I'm going into some of the changes in more detail. So number one, no more coding.
This is something I just mentioned, but I took a course that had codes for how you can make the site look how you want it to look. It was a little, I wouldn't say frustrating because you got to use code and that can be fun. But for me, I just didn't want to deal with code, which is the reason I was on Squarespace in the beginning.
So I think that was a real detriment, was using a lot of code, and especially because when I would design sites for my clients, sometimes there was code changes in there, or sorry, code, and when I was designing for my clients, sometimes they would wanna make a change that was actually code, and so they couldn't change it unless you went into the backend and changed it. And so that was always a detriment.
I thought because I want to empower my clients with the website. I want them to feel like they can go in and make a change easily. I don't want them to have to go into the backend update the code. You know, so many of them don't even want to worry with that worry about that, which is why they hire me. And so that was a real problem I had with the old version and you know, having so much code in the old version and feeling like it was, yes, it got me the look I was wanting, but it wasn't like super clean. It just isn't what I wanted it to be. So now you really don't have to use hardly any code for the new version. I feel like you can get the look that you're wanting without code at all. Um, I feel like there's not really, yeah, a lot you have to do when it comes to code because there are so many design options. There are such an extensive design. Um,
You really don't even have to worry about code now and it's so nice to not even give it a second thought because you can get the look you want because there are so many design features that were not in the old version. Number two, small but efficient changes. Some changes I love that have made a huge difference to what I'm designing in Squarespace is, a few things you're able to do is like duplicate objects.
Resize images, you can now resize the image without being constrained to the photo dimensions. So you can make the images fit within the block container size, or you can make an image a shape, which these are small, but these really make a big difference when you're designing for sure. Adding in shapes is now a block, and you can save sections, meaning that a section on your site, like say a section on your homepage that talks about your opt-in,
You can save it and then you can delete it if you want to get rid of it on the homepage for now. But you can always go back into your save sections and find that later. So it's so nice to have that capability because sometimes you need to duplicate a section or you have a great testimonial section somewhere on your site and you want to duplicate it. You can always save it and then add it in a different place later. So some of these things sound really small, but they just save so much time when you're doing the design and if you're doing your site on your own, it saves you a lot of time too. So it could just cut down your time by half or more for sure, with some of these little changes that they've made that I am so pleased about. Number three, a better user experience on mobile. This was something that the old version, they were simpatico. I want to say.
They were the exact same. So if you designed something on the desktop, it would automatically reconfigure in the mobile. And this was nice because you didn't really have to think about it. Like it was, you know, it was fine because you could just do what you needed to do and then it would automatically show up on mobile. But when you are getting more advanced and you are really wanting your designs to be, to really stand out and to be really great on mobile.
Yes, I'm so glad they did this. They isolated the designs basically. So you can design on desktop and it looks a certain way and then you can go into the mobile version and then design and then you can like isolate the design to change how things are looking on mobile. So you can change sizing, you can change, it's not completely separate. So it's not like completely isolated. Like you have images or blocks in the mobile and then those images and blocks are not in the desktop.
But you are able to resize things and change where things are looking so the mobile can be the best user experience possible. And so while this takes a little bit more time in the backend, it really helps because so many people are on mobile now. It's so important that your mobile experience is good for your site in general, but also for SEO. So there's a lot of things that, there's a lot of benefit to this one for sure.
Number four, simple backend. The backend is also improved. I remember being on the old version, in the pages tab you had a mile long collection of sections and pages and for every single, so when you're in a page, you had, so say you're doing the homepage, you have like the top banner section, you had the about me section, you had the, you know, a brief about your services section. So there was all.
It was just so long when you were looking at in the back end. It was just you were just scrolling and scrolling because each page like labeled each section. I hope that's making sense. But with the new version now in the pages section, there's just one place for a page. So it says like home page and you click in it and you can see all the different sections rather than it being listed out. So anyway, all this to say it's so much more simple to navigate the back end.
It's just so much cleaner and easier and you don't have to name all the different sections anyway It's also better for SEO which brings me to number five a huge Another big upgrade was that Google now favors the new Squarespace sites, which was a Google upgrade in July of 2021 So due to the speed and the clean coded back end if you are looking to improve your SEO this is a big reason to upgrade because the SEO is so much better on the new version of Squarespace. So some of the common questions I get when people are thinking about moving over or, yeah, they're looking to upgrade, to update. Is there a way to save your old site and still move over to Fluid Engine? In a word, no, you have to be in the...
So some common questions I hear a lot is when people are thinking about upgrading to the newer version of Squarespace. A question I have is, a question that gets asked is, is there any way you can keep your old site but still upgrade to Fluid Engine? And the short answer is no, unfortunately, because I mentioned earlier, like all of those changes that Squarespace made in the backend and the frontend because they're so extensive, you do have to build a new site from scratch. So you won't be able to save anything on the old version. Obviously, there's time that you have until your old site can be deleted. So you definitely have time to get everything you need to move it over. But yes, you do have to start from scratch if you have an older site.
Like I mentioned, I think it's a good thing because so many times like our sites can get a little jumbled there's just a lot going on and it's easy to to not have it cleaned up and so whenever you do go through a refresh or an upgrade You know, this is a great time to clean up the back end really get clear on your services and offerings and that kind of thing Another common question is if you have SEO built up in your old Squarespace site
Can you maintain that high level of SEO if you have really great SEO? And because you are making such a big shift in change, you're moving over platforms, when you are going from Squarespace to Squarespace, you still are technically starting over in a way, but there is a way to minimize that change by doing URL redirects, making sure the site is set up for SEO, making sure all of your keywords are in place, your headlines, your titles, your tags, your meta tags all of that stuff. So there's so many things you can do to make sure your SEO is as good as possible so that when you do make the switch, it will be minimal. But there is still gonna be a little bump in SEO that you will see whenever you change platforms, whether you're changing from Squarespace to WordPress or from Squarespace to Squarespace, you will see a little dip in SEO.
Also, some people wonder because they're not exactly sure if they're on the new version of Squarespace or not. You can easily find that out by clicking when you're in the user face of Squarespace, when you go to squarespace.com and you log in and you go to the top bar of the website interface and you see, if you can see a paintbrush in the right hand corner, you are in the new 7.1 version.
If you do not see a paintbrush in the right hand corner, you are in the old version. So that is a quick way to know if you are and also in the new version, in the 7.1 version, it does tell you when you were in the website tab. If you scroll down, it does say that, it tells you which version you're in. So that's helpful too.
So you might be wondering, how can I make the switch over? It is the end of the year. You know, this is a time where people are thinking about how they can refresh things, upgrade things, if you're wanting to upgrade your site for 2024. This could be a great little task on your list. And I would love to give you a couple ways you can do that. So number one is you can do it yourself. You can think about all the content on your old site, the things that you wanna keep.
And move over to the new site, you can start doing a Google Doc of like, this is what I want my homepage to be. This is what I want my about page to be. And it's kind of building, like I mentioned, it's like building the site from scratch. So you can definitely do it yourself. And the second option is you can hire help. And I love helping my clients with this. I transfer their whole site over. I do all the URL redirects, the SEO. I make sure everything is in place so the change can be as seamless as possible.
And of course, when you hire help, the process goes a lot faster. I know whenever myself, whenever I am doing a website edit or a website refresh for myself, it can drag on for months and months if I'm not careful, if I don't put deadlines in place for myself. And so that is another reason it's great to hire help for this, is because it doesn't have to be something that drags on forever. It can be a pretty seamless process that my process takes about four to eight weeks depending on the site complexity, but it's something I love helping my clients with. And I would love to help you if you are interested in learning more about my process and working together. I would love to invite you to a free discovery call where we can talk about your site, the goals you have for your business, and how we can make those happen with a website refresh. And you can also go to the contact form on my website to fill out of form and get started there and that's at rartspace.com/contact slash contact. I hope this was so helpful that you have some great ideas for your own Squarespace site if you're already in Fluid Engine, some things you could do and if like I said if you're in the old version of Squarespace and you're thinking this would be a great time for me to upgrade I would love to chat with you to see if this is something I could help you with.
And so I hope you have a great rest of your day and I will talk with you again next week.
