6 Reasons Why Squarespace is the Best Choice For Photographers
New to Squarespace and wanna try it out? You can sign up for a free trial here << Yes, that’s an affiliate link - thanks for supporting my book obsession, my kindle and I thank you ;)
Creating and designing a website is hard work! Especially if you aren't a web designer or developer. When I was starting my business, I had NO IDEA how to make a website, what hosting was, what a theme was, how to purchase a URL - the list goes on.
I was clueless.
Once I started researching it, there were so many choices for everything - and everyone had their own opinion about 'what was best' - it was completely overwhelming.
I had no idea where to start, what I needed or how to do anything.
So I get it. I really do.
You started your business because you wanted to be a photographer. Then you realised you needed a website and you went down the rabbit hole of research, too many options and despair.
And because you have too many options, figuring out what platform to use for your website has probably fallen to last place on your to do list. But I'm here to kick that bad boy back up to first place because I have 6 Reasons Why Squarespace is the Best Choice For Your Photography Website.
So let's get into it:
1. It's Easy To Use
This has to be the number 1, most important reason that you should choose Squarespace. You have better things to do with your time (like booking clients and photographing them) then trying to figure out how to use your website.
Squarespace utilises a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor.
That means that you design the pages on your website while you're looking at them. You can add text, photos, videos, whatever block you want onto the page and design how you would like it to look, as you view it.
This makes it so much easier to design your website yourself.
Unlike other platforms like Wordpress where you can't see what your page looks like while you're designing.
It then becomes a frustrating issue to design, save the changes, open another page to see what it looks like and then if something is off that you need to correct, you need to go back again, make the changes, save it, open it in another window etc.
Can it be done? Yes.
But do you really want to be spending your time doing it that way? They answer for me was… No. I’d much rather spend my time marketing or shooting and you’re probably the same.
And with Squarespace, you can do that. They make designing a website easy and painless for us.
And I used to use Wordpress until I changed to Squarespace - so I know what I’m talking about. Once I switched across, I never looked back.
2. You Can Maintain It Yourself
I don't know about you but I want to be able to manage my website myself. If I need to make a change on a page on my website, update photos in my portfolio, change the colour of all my h3 headings - then I want to be able to do those edits quickly and easily myself.
I don't want to be hampered by thinking that I may break something if I change anything on my site.
Or worried that if I update something then it might break my theme or one of my plugins and then I'll have to spend ages trying to fix it, only to realise I need more help and then I have to pay someone to fix it (that's a true story BTW).
Since Squarespace is easy to use, you can maintain, update and change things on your website quickly and easily yourself. With none of the headache.
And anything that saves you time, is a winner in my book.
3. Support
Squarespace provides both live chat and email support to all its customers, which I freakin' LOVE! If you run into any problems, building, designing or maintaining your website you can just pop into a live chat and ask them a question.
Plus they can go into the backend of your website themselves and see what you're talking about when you do have an issue.
This is an invaluable service that I've utilised countless times. It's such a handy feature - to be able to quickly and easily jump into a chat box to discuss a problem and find a solution.
And all of the customer service operators at Squarespace have been really knowledge and friendly when I’ve used their service.
4. Clean Design That Focuses On Images
As photographers, your photos are extremely important. It's why you're creating a website and one of the first things that a potential client checks out when they are looking for someone to hire.
With Squarespace's clean design and minimal aesthetic your photos take pride of place in your website and can be a real showstopper.
They also have built in padding and margins (though you can change some of these) to make sure that your design doesn't become too cluttered and you have enough white space for your work to 'breathe'.
Ensuring that your potential client, when they land on your website, can move around and see everything easily.
Plus they have multiple ways to display your portfolio. You can add a gallery block to your page and decide how you want your portfolio to display. You have the option between: a slideshow, square grid, Pinterest style or single images stacked so that you can easily scroll down the page to view them.
And depending on the template you choose - you also have multiple ways to display your gallery pages too.
5. It’s Mobile Responsive
Let's face it, people are more attached to their devices than ever in this day and age. I know that over 60% of people view my website on a mobile device. So if your website isn't set up to be mobile responsive, you are losing out on a big percentage of potential clients viewing your work easily and without frustration.
Have you ever been on a website where you have to zoom in to read the content? And then because you can only read it zoomed in, you have to scroll across the page - back and forth - to read a paragraph.
What do you think most people do in those situations? Stick around to endlessly scroll back and forth?
Or click out immediately?
Yeah, that’s right. No one’s sticking around your website if it’s hard to use or to read.
And honestly, why would you want them to have that first impression of your business anyway.
There have been studies done that say we have less than 15 seconds once a viewer has landed on our website to grab their attention, before they are gone.
15 seconds - staggering isn't it.
So it doesn't matter how great you think your website is, if it makes it hard for your viewers to see, navigate or is frustrating for them to use.
That's why Squarespace is great. All of their templates are mobile responsive and adapt to whatever size screen your potential client is viewing it on.
6. It Just Works
What do I mean by that? Well, it means that everything you need to design and manage your website is built into Squarespace.
You don't have to worry about changing any code (unless you want to), adding plugins, installing a theme or anything breaking down because you updated something.
All the updates are done for you. Squarespace has a team of developers and designers working out all the kinks before it ever gets to be a problem.
It's such a relief knowing that when you open up your website to do some work, you aren't inundated with pop ups and notifications telling you what you need to do or update. You can just log in, change what you need and log out.
Squarespace makes it very simple and everything 'just works'. Which makes it perfect for the less technically savvy.
So if you would like a website that's easy to use, easy to maintain, has multiple ways to display your images and portfolio, has a clean design, is mobile responsive and just works - then Squarespace is the platform for you.
Plus you can get a free trial for 2 weeks to test it out and see if you like.
So give it a whirl and see how you go. Plus if you get stuck you can take my Square Basics course which will walk you through the Basics of Squarespace, making it even simpler for you. Learn more here.
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Have I made you curious? You can sign up for a free Squarespace trial here << Yes, that’s an affiliate link - thanks for supporting my book obsession, my kindle and I thank you ;)
