Friends Don’t Let Friends Squarespace
Over the past decade, Squarespace has emerged as a very popular platform for individuals and businesses to create websites. It’s a budget-friendly website builder that provides a library of pre-built templates. These templates enable sites to be constructed without requiring Squarespace customers to know how to design or code.
But friends don’t let friends Squarespace. Here are several reasons why you should consider staying away from Squarespace:
1
Steep Learning Curve
Squarespace provides its customers with web-based interfaces and tools to create their websites. There are admittedly many “bells and whistles” to choose from, but this often leads to confusion and decision paralysis for the customer. The platform is difficult to learn especially for folks who have never built a website before.
2
Very Limited Customization Options
Instead of designing a new website from scratch, Squarespace provides a range of pre-built templates to choose from. It is sometimes very challenging to modify certain aspects of these templates, which creates frustration and suffocates creativity. In the end, Squarespace customers have a pretty good chance of ending up with a website that looks the same as many other people’s websites.
3
Difficult To Optimize For SEO
Because Squarespace itself is an incredibly intricate platform, the nature of the platform itself makes it very difficult for customers to optimize their website for SEO. Bad search engine optimization often leads to fewer website visitors. Squarespace’s platform also causes low scores from Google’s PageSpeed Insights, which hurts search engine rankings as well.
4
Squarespace Owns YOUR Website
Don’t forget to read the fine print! Websites that are created and hosted at Squarespace are owned by Squarespace. There is no good reason that a business (or even an individual person) should not retain ownership of their own website. Don’t skip through Squarespace’s “terms and conditions” too quickly.
5
Miscellaneous Gotchas
- Squarespace doesn’t support complex site navigation. Websites are limited to two “levels” of menu/nav items.
- For ecommerce sites, Squarespace is not robust or flexible related to inventory management and integrations/customizations with third-party payment gateways.
- There are no auto-save or revision history tools.
- With the exception of Mailchimp, website forms are almost impossible to integrate with third-party services.
- Squarespace’s limitations make it impossible to create multilingual websites.
- There are many less-than-stellar customer service-related complaints. (Check out these BBB reviews and ratings!)
Hire A Digital Marketing Agency
The recommended alternative to using Squarespace is to hire a digital marketing agency. Agencies have the knowledge, experience and expertise to design and develop highly-customized websites that remain true to your business’s brand and personality. Unlike Squarespace templates, an agency-built website will be unique and not resemble anybody else’s site. Your website should function as the hub of your business’s entire digital marketing strategy, and going all-in on Squarespace is an incredibly risky bet. Just say no.
If you have questions about website design, website development or digital marketing, we’d love to hear from you. Give us a call at 804-577-8679 or complete the short form below.
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About the author:
Christopher Rhines
Partner, Director of Development
Christopher is the Director of Development and one of the partners at Torx. In addition to keeping Torx's Richmond office firing on all cylinders, he can often be found deep in the trenches, building custom content management systems and WordPress-powered websites. He still remembers how to write Basic computer programs on Apple IIs and Commodore 64s.