3 Reasons Why Squarespace Deserves to be Part of Your Marketing Strategy

WordPress is wonderful; don’t get us wrong. But for some businesses and for some people, WordPress doesn’t quite meet the mark. Whether it be from a design standpoint, usability, power, customer service, etc. there are other platforms out there that are growing in popularity and can give you choices. Squarespace is a great one.

Squarespace is definitely a preferred platform when it comes to company webpages, brand websites, and e-commerce stores. When you begin to think about ways to optimize your marketing strategy, having a streamline website/blog base is key. An effective website can absolutely make or break the way that your brand is perceived and how successful you ultimately are. We’ve outlined 3 reasons why Squarespace could be the ticket to your marketing success:

1. Website & Blog Building for Professional Appearance

It is critical that your online presence looks as professional as possible in any online arena, and this really starts with your website and blog. This can be a difficult task if you have the wrong website builder. With the importance of a great web presence for your online marketing strategy, it is important that you can develop an appearance that looks clean, professional, and visually appealing without all of the hassle that other website builders can bring-on.

Squarespace is extremely design-oriented, but it also gives you a lot of freedom to design and manipulate without having the knowledge of coding that some site-builders require. There are so many templates to choose from and you also have the option of developing cover pages-which are single scrolling page layouts that can be used as a standalone website.

Below is an example of a Chicago-based Photographer who has utilized the cover page feature of the Squarespace platform to showcase his work in a professional way (with an infinite scrolling homepage to show several portfolio images):

More Pros on Squarespace as a Site-Building Platform:

• Responsive templates
• Automatic re-size to optimize viewing experience on different devices
• Extensive styling options: adjust the fonts, colors, image opacity, sidebar width, background images, sizes, spacing / padding, etc.

2. Measure Referral Traffic and Other Analytics Directly with Squarespace

Squarespace can be considered a jumping-off point for great marketing because it is really an all-in-one platform. In one case study, a user created a website and started a blog on Squarespace. Weekly, she posted her site’s articles to LinkedIn and after 9 months she had 72 new organic connections and had gotten 1000 new users to her website in a week from LinkedIn traffic alone. Look at the Squarespace metrics that you can use directly on the interface (from the Sweet Blue Bird study I referenced above):

As you can see from this screenshot, 71.25% of the new traffic was from LinkedIn alone! This goes to show that Squarespace is a great platform to construct a blog—and then from there, promoting it on various social media sites (such as LinkedIn) can lead to an increase of traffic. What this study really shows is that the analytics that are incorporated into Squarespace allow you to directly measure where traffic for your blog and website is coming from. As a Marketing Company we deal directly with clients interested in Analytics, so it’s crucial to have this functionality incorporated.

If you operate an e-commerce site, the functions and analytics are also fully integrated into the platform. Click here to learn more about why Squarespace is an ideal platform for e-commerce sites specifically.

The fact that it is both streamline and user friendly, especially when it comes to analytics, is why it should be considered in your marketing strategy.

3. Squarespace is Ideal for Marketing Features

There are some important website features that good marketers include on any brand’s site. Squarespace incorporates theses in a streamline and user-friendly manner and also has a lot of options to allow you to present them in a visually appealing way.

Every good website should include:

• Social Media Buttons
• Call to Action features
• Mobile Friendly design (you can check the layout and mobile view from the desktop interface)

With Squarespace, it is easy to build the kind of site that is going to engage your social media platforms and allow your marketing efforts to tie back to your primary website and blog.

Setting Up Your Website

1. There are a few different billing options depending on what you are looking for in a site builder, so choose the one which best works for your marketing needs.
2. Get a domain name (Either from a third party or for $20 on Squarespace) Go to: the Squarespace website to follow the links to purchase a domain name. If you already have a domain that you are looking to transfer to Squarespace, unfortunately they are not going this yet, but you can register to get notified once they start accepting this transfer.
3. Include a keyword that describes your brand.
4. Figure out your site layout and decide on what pages you will need. You shouldn’t include more than 6 pages on a website. You can always use a secondary, drop down page (or pages) if you need more than six for your company’s layout.
5. Choose a template.
6. Add e-commerce at no extra charge. Squarespace also has videos that make it really easy to learn these features and set up shop.

Some Downsides to Consider

Of course, there are always downsides to any online product. A lot of people think the pricing is a little high (compared to other cheaper or free website builders). Integration with Google Analytics, Facebook Retargeting, and other Google Webmaster tools are a little buried within the platform. See the screenshot below:

The Takeaway

Good marketing starts with a good website. In order to have a website that fits well into your marketing strategy, you need to have a site builder that allows you to develop all of the features to connect to social sharing, measure responsiveness, and make your online presence look as professional as possible. While there are some downsides to the platform, when compared to other site-builders Squarespace is hard to beat for marketing strategy development.

Do you currently use Squarespace? What are your thoughts on Squarespace as a launching-point for good marketing? Let us know in the comments section below!

About The Author

Jason Hawkins / http://www.themiamiseocompany.com

Jason Hawkins is the CEO & Co-Founder of The Miami SEO Company. He has over ten years of experience in search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization and lead generation. His core responsibilities include identifying ways to increase value of services rendered, training staff on advanced SEO topics, and A/B testing internal processes to consistently improve client return on investment.