Here’s Why Squarespace 7.1 Is The Best Site Builder For New Businesses

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New businesses need to get their online presence up quickly to start generating work for themselves and make sales. Squarespace 7.1 is one of many platforms you can use to create a functional, attractive site for your business.  

We love Squarespace, but we want to give you an honest overview to help you decide if it’s right for you. 

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Squarespace Platform Onboarding 

A big plus for new business owners is that onboarding is straightforward. It involves these simple steps: 

• Signing up 

• Creating an account (no credit card needed to begin) 

• Making the most of your two-week trial period 

The downside is that two weeks is not a long time, but it is enough to dive into the platform and get a feel for it. What’s more, you don’t have to worry about surprise charges since your credit card info hasn’t been collected yet.  

• Try This: After your two-week trial, if you decide you like this platform, start paying for your subscription. But if you’re not sure, start a new subscription with another two-week trial to give you more time to practice and decide.  

Start with any template you like. You’ll be able to make any needed adjustments to get your site to look and feel the way you want. As you get started, you’ll probably notice how smooth the process is and how much you can accomplish with just a few clicks. 

Why Squarespace is the Best for Onboarding 

• Navigation is amazing 

• Connecting a domain is easy 

Daily Use 

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Because information on the Squarespace platform is well-organized, daily use is fairly simple. Of the nine or so main tabs available, most people will use three regularly: 

• Pages, covering content 

• Design, covering site design, fonts, and colors 

• Settings, for all your site settings, permissions, and custom code 

Squarespace is great at taking the complex code behind setting up a body, a tag, a section, a dib, or anything on your site and handling it for you. So what you end up working with are blocks, making the design process much easier for you. Blocks are built into the site, and all you really have to do is edit each one. 

Why Squarespace Is the Best for Daily Use 

• Rarely has downtime 

• Squarespace keeps you logged in, which is convenient for making updates 

• Contributor permission is easy to give, such as giving someone Admin permission 

• Many built-in features are available for SEO, email campaigns, integrations, and more 

Ease vs. Friction 

Let’s dive right into what’s easy to use: 

• Many built-in features are well-organized 

• It’s easy to add videos and photos to pages, blogs, products, portfolios, and more 

• You can create an almost unlimited number of pages for your site 

• It’s easy to duplicate pages and content 

• Squarespace provides beautiful URL and sitemap structures 

• Squarespace sizes images appropriately for you to fit correctly on different devices and screens 

And here are some pain points: 

• Some things are confusing or hard to locate (doing a Google search can help you find what you’re looking for faster) 

• Everything is LIVE on your site, so adjustments that you make show up right away as soon as you hit Save 

• Even though Squarespace is relatively fast, site speed may be an issue for some websites, such as for photographers or real estate agents, for example, which showcase thousands of images 

• If you decide to leave Squarespace, transferring your site over can be tricky  

So in terms of ease vs. friction, the bottom line is that most of the time, Squarespace is easy to use, with great features that are organized fairly intuitively. This simplifies onboarding and daily use. But having changes to a page go live as soon as Save is hit can be annoying (the good news is that there are ways to work around this). 

Switching Platforms Can Be a Challenge 

If you create a site using Squarespace 7.1 and then decide to leave for a different site building platform, be aware that you’ll likely spend considerable time strategizing, duplicating content, and recreating portions to avoid losing important elements. You may run the risk of losing comments on blog posts and reviews on products, for example. Many community aspects that you’ve built up could be lost during the transfer.  

Squarespace export features are somewhat lacking. To be fair, this is the case with most site builders, including Wordpress and Webflow.  

Ending or Pausing Your Subscription 

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Squarespace makes it very easy to cancel, end, or pause your subscription. You can get it done in less than a minute! They don’t hide anything or force you to keep paying. When you decide you’re done, you’re done, and the company seems to respect that. 

• It’s easy to end or pause your subscription 

One thing to note, though, is that you probably won’t get a refund. If you’ve prepaid for a year but six months in you decide to cancel, don’t expect to get any money back.  

Concluding Thoughts

• Squarespace is great for consultants, local businesses, and new businesses trying to get a site up quickly 

• Updates are easy to make 

• Because Squarespace keeps things simple and organized, the user experience for anyone building a site on this platform is excellent 

Feeling Stuck? 

If you need a site up fast but development is not your thing, Launch Happy can start your site for you. We can also answer your questions to help you get started. 

We also have plenty of free resources!

• Squarespace SEO guides covering a wide range of topics 

• Informative newsletter delivered to your inbox each month 

• SEO audit tool to see how your site is performing