Squarespace an easy choice for fast and affordable websites
Two friends recently asked me for advice on starting a web-based business. I gave both the same advice: Use Squarespace.
Friend No. 1 used Squarespace and was selling services from a beautiful, fully functional website within a few days. Friend No. 2 hired a web designer who built his site from scratch and began selling his products from a beautiful, fully
functional site several months later.
Squarespace is Software as a Service (SAAS), an all-inclusive website-building, -hosting, and -marketing application in the cloud. There’s no software to download; you build and edit your site using any modern web browser on almost any device.
There are two big differences between the web designer and Squarespace beyond the extra months.
Friend No. 1 pays $16 a month (or $12 if paid annually) plus 3 percent per transaction for a beautiful Squarespace website. Friend No. 2 pays his Web guy a lot more than that each month in addition to several thousand dollars he spent upfront.
Second is ease of updating: Friend No. 1 can edit her site using almost any web browser on almost any device. Friend No. 2 sends his changes to his web guy, and they appear on the site a few hours (or days) later.
Squarespace is easy to use and offers dozens of gorgeous, professionally designed templates for sites of all types — stores, blogs, catalogs, photo galleries and many others. You’re not locked into the template you first select, and Squarespace lets you preview your site in different templates without affecting your live site.
Squarespace also includes tools for maintaining your blog, complete with reader comments and RSS. Furthermore, you can integrate your blog with Apple News (I did), and then every post you make appears in the News app (iOS only).
Speaking of integration, Squarespace also supports most email management providers including MailChimp (my choice). That means you can include sign-up forms with the results sent to MailChimp and added to your list. The built-in e-commerce module is easy to configure and use, so you’ll be able to take credit card orders within a few days of sign-up and have money transferred to your bank account within a few days of each sale.
If you get stuck, Squarespace offers very good help including FAQs, tutorial videos and humans.
I’ve used Squarespace exclusively for years on several sites, and when I needed a site for my new book, “Working Smarter for Mac Users,” Squarespace was really the only choice.
The bottom line is that if you someday hope to sell something online, Squarespace is probably the fastest, easiest, most affordable way. With a free 14-day trial and no credit card required, perhaps it’s time to stop dreaming and start doing.