Squarespace Website Features

Why Your Next Website Should Be Built on Squarespace

Bulletproof Architecture (Security Without Updates)

• Unlike WordPress and other website platforms, plugins are not required.  Functionality is built in protecting your site from the 340,000 + malware releases that go out daily and eliminating the time spent updating your sites software.
• Scalable enterprise level hosting and a content delivery network is included and handled on a grid of servers that already serves millions of hits per day. You'll never need to worry about hardware failures or server load speed.

Portfolio Management (Your Work as a Design Priority)

• Add, edit and sequence your images instantly by dragging images directly from your desktop into your design
• Get found online with image Search Engine Optimization tools that enable file names and alternative tags.
• Aviary image editing tools are built-in allowing you to crop, resize, adjust brightness and contrast within the website.
• Add a portfolio anywhere on your website with hundreds of presentation options, including slideshows, sliders, and grid layouts as well as hover and transition effects.
• An integrated lightbox allows for full-browser-sized imagery that can be enabled with just one click.
• All gallery collections allow for mixed media presentations, including video and audio content in addition to images in the same gallery. 

Connected Services (Smart Marketing Easily Shared)

• Squarespace is designed for content marketing with built-in customizable galleries, picture viewers, blog pages, e-commerce, video, podcasts and a variety of third party software like meeting schedule calendars.
• Connect social media accounts so visitors can follow you or share content on all major social media platforms. Save time by auto-posting your content by authenticating your social profiles.
• Build a contact list of visitors to your site using a form builder that supports over 15 different data types (addresses, emails, text, etc...) and save form submissions to Google Docs, MailChimp, and have information sent to an email address.
• Email marketing that is brand consistent is a snap with MailChimp. MailChimp is an email service provider that enables time-saving automated email marketing workflows and blog publication.
• Broadcast ideas using audio by podcasting on iTunes and Soundcloud with custom tagging.
• Allow visitors to search your website for the information they want fast. An internal search engine provides accurate results in a fullscreen overlay.  It works on both your website and within your CMS.

Built-in Visitor Analytics (Know Who Visits and Why)

• Use the built-in analytics tools to measure and collect the data needed to answer business questions and drive change. Know where along your buyer's journey you are losing customers or moving them towards a sale.
• Monitor visitor counts, know where visitors are coming from, and what keywords are leading visitors to your website. This allows you to increase organic SEO as well as identify and replicate high performing content.
• Segment data by device to determine your website's performance. Track mobile or desktop visits, as well as operating systems and the browsers, users are using to view your website.
• Determine how people using your website on different days of the week and hours in a day behave differently. 
• Understand the performance of each of your marketing channels to improve the results. 

Content Management System (Keep it Fresh, Quickly)

• WYSIWYG - Never guess what the final page will look like. Press the escape button and edit content directly from your website with built-in editing overlays. View what your site looks like on a phone, tablet or desktop computer while you edit.
• Your Brand Your Style - With an infinite number of customizable settings, including thousands of Adobe Typekit and Google fonts, colors, and page configurations, the style editor ensures your website remains within brand and is unique to your firm.
• Create Call To Actions - Provide downloadable information in exchange for contact information. Use the contact information to send interest based email marketing. 
• Inject custom code in your site's header or footer on a per-page basis, or under each blog entry on your site to enable custom sharing links. Add tracking code for Google AdWords and HubSpot in seconds.
• Password protect your entire website or individual pages to keep certain areas available only to clients.

• Limit your website management to certain tasks. Permission based access levels include Administrator, Content Editor, Billing, Reporting, Comment Moderator, Trusted Commenter, and Store Manager.

Blogging (The Very Best Way To Attract Visitors)

• Use every content block feature such as images, galleries, videos, audio, etc... on each blog entry. Everything on an article is extremely flexible, and can be reordered or renamed to fit your firm's brand.
• Create workflows and keep articles in Published, Draft, Scheduled, and Needs Review folders. Scheduling blog articles for future publication allows them to be structured with a strategic marketing intent.
• Publish and attribute blog entries under multiple authors to give credit to each person who writes for your firm.
• Syndicated articles via Real Simple Syndication "RSS" and fully integrated with readers such as Flipboard, Feedly, and Google Reader. RSS is automatically embedded in every blog page for easy reader support.
• Mark articles by specific tags and broader categories. This provides two levels of categorization allowing readers to search for articles they are interested in.
• SEO is built into every blog post. Each has a unique permalink with a properly labeled, clean URL slug that can be customized.
• Save the geographic location of each post. This will help identify your market area.
• Users can anonymously vote for content they like on your site by clicking the heart button at the footer of each post.

Search Engine Optimization (Get Found & Get Hired)

• Get Found In Search - Squarespace websites include all known best practices for SEO without the need for additional plugins. The CMS produces pages with clean HTML markup and URL's that are easily indexed and read by search engines.
• Control Your H1 tags - You have full control over the ordering of your page titles, including the ability to create different title schemes for your all pages on your site. 
• Sitemaps - A proper sitemap.xml, is automatically generated and linked with each new page created. This lists out every single URL on your site with proper priority for perfect indexing by Google, even if the site includes Javascript.
• Image SEO - Images contain proper <ALT>  and  <TITLE> tags, improving search engine indexing. All meta tags for pages and <LINK> tags for RSS feeds are automatically generated. Image descriptions are properly converted to  <ALT> tags.
• The website will generate proper rel="canonical" tags that ensure search engines are picking up the proper versions of your pages when content exists at more than one URL.
• WWW or Not - Given multiple domains, the system will redirect users and search engines to the right domain and use  rel="canonical" to fix these references.
• Facebook Open Graph - Your website generates proper Facebook open graph tags to be used when your links are shared on social services.
• SPAM Killer - That other website system is frequently used by spammers who create hundreds of keyword stuffed sites to attract visitors towards advertising.  Squarespace aggressively fights spam. Don't run the risk of being falsely blocked by search engines for having spam website.

Commerce (Selling Stuff Is No Problem!)

• Cost - Set up a merchant account and begin selling products and services online in 30 seconds. Stripe merchant services gives you instant approval, requires no paperwork and charges 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction. You can begin receiving money for purchases via direct deposit in moments.
• One Interface - Sell any type of product using a single interface. Digital goods are delivered via customized email links that expire 24 hours from delivery. Control link sharing and re-send delivery links.
• Sell Anywhere - Use a Product Block to pull items from your product collection and display anywhere on your website where Layout Engine is supported (blog posts, pages, sidebars, and more).
• Flexible Product Variants – The platform provides a unified inventory management interface with unlimited SKUs, multi-dimensional product variants (such as size and color), sale prices, etc.
• Coupons, Taxes, Shipping – Create flexible coupons that apply to all orders, orders that meet a certain minimum, or for specific products. Full tax and shipping rules by region also help you run your store.
• Order Fulfillment UI – You can quickly sort items across your entire store by stock level, price, or title.
• Order Management UI – Our order management interface lets you easily track outstanding orders, resend customer update emails and print packing slips from a single interface.
• Mailing List Integration – Your customers can sign up for your mailing list during the checkout process.
• Order Confirmation Emails – Order emails to customers can be easily customized.
• Express Checkout Mode – Our e-Commerce websites offer an express checkout mode, which bypasses the shopping cart interface.
• Data Export – You can always export your order data to CSV format for accounting and spreadsheet tools.
• Store Manager – Designate store managers who have control over inventory, but not the rest of your site.
• 3rd Party Integrations – Plug in your Google Analytics or Mixpanel IDs for deeper insight of your commerce transactions.
• Social Integrations – Easily share store news and product updates to Twitter, Facebook, or any other social service supported by the platform.
• Completely Secure – PCI compliant. SSL enabled.

Support (Help is Always on the Way)

• Customer support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Squarespace's a customer care staff typically responds to help request in under 20 minutes. Cant wait? Step-by-step help guides, videos, and workshops are available on help.squarespace.com.