5 Reasons Why Squarespace is My Favorite DIY Website Builder
Clean, Versatile Templates & Features
When you go to the Squarespace website, you are met with a beautiful, clean interface that is easy going and user friendly. This is a perfect indication of the ease and flow that awaits you when you build your site. Squarespace has a ton of templates to choose from to suit the needs of your brand. The designers at Squarespace do a beautiful job at creating varying templates with unlimited customizable features. You’ll find what you need in at least one of the templates.
Great for DIY users because: The templates look great all on their own. If you need a very simple website with not a lot of custom features, you can simply plug in your content to these templates and not do much else and it will look clean and sharp! This of course is for those of you that don’t mind your site not being unique- someone else will have the exact layout as you when you work from a template. If you want a completely unique and custom site, you can customize your template completely, or hire a designer (recommended)!
Great for designers because: The templates act as a great jumping off point. When I was aspiring to become a web designer/developer, a frequent question that I had often was, “why do I need to spend so much time coding a site structure from scratch when there are DIY platforms like Squarespace?” Now, I’m positive there are great arguments for this, but in my experience, there is just no need to fiddle with all the code to build something that is easily started for you… why reinvent the wheel, amiright?? Because my website building started with sites like Weebly and Squarespace, I’ve always used the available templates to start from and then COMPLETELY customize- no two sites of mine look the same. Customization is where my coding expertise comes in- not with creating a structure that can already be created for you! Work smart, not hard, right?!
Which brings me to my next point...
Do keep in mind that some templates are more versatile than others.
Update: Squarespace 7.1 templates all have the same features.
2. User Friendliness & Client Edits
The most important reason I use Squarespace is so that my clients have the option to edit their own sites post web design. The balance of developer and designer features with user friendly drag and drop tools for first time website builders makes Squarespace #1 to me! New blog posts, photo updates, new employees, etc. do not take coding experience to implement. Whether you built your own website or had a design pro, adding and editing content is user friendly, as it should be. Keep in mind that with anything, there is a learning curve. If you have time and patience to commit to DIY’ing your website, more power to ya! Or, you have the option of hiring a pro with the satisfaction that you chose a platform that will make it possible for you to make any changes you need on your own in the future ;)
3. Support & Updates
Squarespace’s support team is top-notch, as they fully grasp the not-so-tech-oriented audience being drawn to drag and drop platforms. Email, phone and live chats are available to you and I have been very impressed with the response times, willingness to help, and great resources that I have been pointed to. You can pretty much find the answer you are looking for in the thorough Squarespace library guidebooks and videos. There are multitudes of personal blogs of great designers walking you through specific tweaks and features available to you. Side note: if you have questions about custom code, Squarespace is very limited on solutions. If you are looking for advanced site customization that requires code, it is always best to hire a pro!
4. Platform Versatility
If you are reading this blog on a laptop or desktop computer, consider yourself the minority. The age of mobile is upon us. OVER half of site visits are made from mobile devices. This means that the need to create a site that is versatile across all platforms is vital. Luckily, Squarespace integrates this beautifully and having a “mobile first” design approach is the only way to go. So, whether you are viewing your site from a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone, rest assured your site will be automatically optimized for that screen size. New app is now available to customize your site on the go!
5. One-Stop Shop
Another super user friendly reason to use Squarespace is to get all your website needs taken care of in one place. Templates, themes, hosting, and domain names can all be taken care of within Squarespace. Who has time to hunt down different platforms to pull all this together?? Not me! You’ll find subscriptions that you’ll need all in one place. Connecting to your Google and email accounts are a breeze.
Angela
