Why 3 Business Owners Swear by Squarespace
This article was created by BlogHer for Squarespace.
As someone who is indecisive about, well, everything, I can only imagine the anxiety business owners feel while thinking about their website. Understandably so, the stakes are high when your website is also a digital storefront. It needs to look beautiful and provide a seamless user experience. On the backend, it should also be stacked with tools that enhance a business owner’s marketing strategy. The pressure to make a smart decision is real.
And while the success of certain tactics often lies with the person overseeing it, nowadays, anyone can make a beautiful and robust website with an online website builder like Squarespace. The templates are gorgeous, no doubt. But there are also important tools that make the platform a true standout: auto-linked content, an app for Instagram-friendly templates and selling via social, as well as 24/7 support.
What makes the Squarespace experience so gratifying is knowing that it truly works for every kind of business owner. We recently talked shop with three women whose work has only been enhanced through the platform. See how each of these businesses have used their website to scale their brands:
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Reina Gascon-Lopez’s mouth-watering Sofrito Project is a one-stop-shop for recipes inspired by her multiracial background and love for cooking. After leaving her full-time corporate job and beginning culinary school, she needed a website that would serve as home base for her burgeoning blog.
“I chose to use Squarespace because I really enjoyed the interface and overall look of their sites. I also love just how simple it was to set up my site when I first started; the process is very streamlined and easy to use,” she says.
She especially enjoys Squarespace mobile apps because they enable her to create content without having to sit in front of a computer. “Since I’m always in the kitchen and working near the stove, it’s simple for me to share a new blog post right from my phone with the click of a button.”
And thanks to Squarespace’s expansive interface, Gascon-Lopez has also been able to contain the moving parts of her growing business.
“I think what’s benefitted me most is having all of my content available and consolidated within one hosting site. With Squarespace, I’m able to share my recipes and sell my published e-books on my website, can schedule my appointments for virtual cooking classes with their Acuity scheduling program, and use their Unfold app for creating fun story templates on Instagram. Everything lives in one place and it’s great!”
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Live Consciously. Live Purposely. Live Passionately. This is the mantra of Pretti Passionate, a multi-faceted personal development brand for women from all walks of life. Founder Cara Walker is intentional about every part of her work, including the decision to make Squarespace the home for her bold mission.
“I decided to host my website on Squarespace because of the ease in being able to create a beautiful website and having all of the features I need all in one place…while being able to access 24/7 tech support if I hit any issues along the way,” she says. “I can literally find a diverse range of beautiful templates to plug and play so I can create a truly unique design, review my analytics, add in extensions and when I’m ready to open a retail store, I can do that too. It’s a platform that I truly feel supported on as a new entrepreneur and aligns with the fresh look and feel I want for my business.”
The functionality of the template designs is by far her favorite feature because she can “test out a template in a preview mode to see how it would look” without interrupting the live version of her site.
“I also love the wide range of extensions and integrations available in the platform,” she adds. “You can tell that they’ve tested and listened to the needs of entrepreneurs who have accounts with several other platforms and want to be able to seamlessly connect all for a great workflow and consumer experience. Oh, and I love the tools available to optimize my site for search engines.”
Thanks to all of these features, she felt more than confident about presenting the website to her audience and being able to build the site on her own was an added bonus.
“I was able to save money and not have to hire a fancy web developer to create a website, but I also didn’t have to sacrifice being able to truly achieve my vision. I felt empowered because of Squarespace and as a result I was able to build an empowering brand that not only talks the talk, but also walks the walk with a look that is in alignment with that empowering message.”
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Bianca Reyes is a guru of many things including food, fashion, beauty and lifestyle. Oh, So Fashionably Late! is proof of that. On any given day, you’ll find a seasonal recipe, candid product review, unique outfit idea, or right-on-time entrepreneurial advice. In other words, she does it all.
“I decided to use Squarespace to host my website because they were the most user-friendly of all of the options I considered,” she says. “There are so many templates to choose from, depending on your website or business’s branding needs, which you can preview before pushing the template live to your site.”
Her favorite feature is Marketing Campaigns because she can “send, automate, and schedule emails to different email lists so easily.” It also helps that all of her social media and blog posts are automatically linked. If you’re constantly on-the-go and tend to forget those small marketing hacks that make a huge difference, this one is a gamechanger.
“My brand has benefited from the ease of creating content to be displayed on a professional website, where I can also easily handle my business’ marketing needs, to monetize my site and connect with my readers.”
Ready to share your vision or business with the world? Start your free Squarespace trial today (no credit card required) and use code ‘BLOGHER’ for 10% off when you’re ready to publish your website.
