Helping women-owned businesses launch their Squarespace website
Over the years as a website designer I have had the opportunity to help women launch their dream businesses through Squarespace. Some are empty nesters. Some are turning a side hustle into their main hustle. Many are seeking to help others by sharing their own experiences.
“Now that the kids are adults, I finally get to focus on what I want to do,” said one client in our initial consultation call for designing her Squarespace website.
This sentiment is something I hear quite often and I urge you to take action to make your entrepreneurial goals come true. And as the Squarespace motto says “A Website Makes It Real.” That simple statement is true. Without a website that conveys what your brand represents you cannot achieve that trust factor that leads to sales or other actions that you want visitors to take.
I’ve been designing websites exclusively on Squarespace for over six years. Why Squarespace? In my experience, it’s the best-looking and easiest to update website builder in the marketplace. The only time I wouldn’t recommend Squarespace is when you want a site with a primary focus on e-commerce. As of now Shopify offers more features for that purpose.
But for most businesses starting off, Squarespace is ideal to launch your business or grow your brand. One of my clients is a professor who teaches the Bible as literature as opposed to a religious text. She dreamt of gaining the accolades that some of her peers had gained. At the time we met, she did not have a website or social media presence.
With the launch of her site JeannePetrolle.com, she has launched a podcast and now has a homebase online to showcase and share her work. Her website is her headquarters, giving her a centralized location to share her work.
Ease of use
One reason why I love Squarespace so much is because it is relatively easy to update and maintain a website built on that platform. The drag and drop nature of the content management system works intuitively.
It’s important to practice. Like most things, repetition develops proficiency. Create a test page that’s hidden so you can practice adding text, photos and moving these elements around a page and start designing.
Simple is effective. Websites that convert customers don’t necessarily have to have flashy animation and meticulously designed graphic elements, the substance has to be there. Is that you are selling solutions to someone’s problem? Is that problem significant enough for the visitor to pay money to take action?
Why it’s important for women entrepreneurs to build a trustworthy website
Many of my clients are empty nesters who’ve decided to focus on themselves. They have a business idea that they want to turn into a reality. Even if you have a social media presence, you still need a website to serve as your central hub. That Linktree has to direct people to a web property that you own. If Facebook suddenly disappears, so does your content on that platform. It’s not yours.
I realize I am making some sweeping generalizations, but in my experience women are more likely to have a personal connection with their audiences. Men I’ve worked with tend to focus more on their hard skills whereas women want to relate their own stories to provide context to their offerings. This is essential to both men and women, but women tend to have a stronger desire to tell their stories.
Telling your story as it relates to your product or service is what separates you from the pack. In his book “Get Different: Marketing That Can’t Be Ignored,” author Mike MIchalowicz writes: “Many business owners are frustrated because they feel invisible in a crowded marketplace. They know they are better than their competitors, but when they focus on that fact, they get little in return. That's because, to customers, better is not actually better. Different is better. And those who market differently, win.”
Just telling your story helps the process of being different because your personal story is unique. Just telling it sets the tone for being different.
Why Squarespace offers the tools for women to launch their side hustle
I am definitely biased, but in my experience Squarespace is the website builder that can allow for the best-looking and easiest-to-use website. That’s it. I cannot stress enough that simple is effective. The faster you can bring your brand to life online, the faster you can work on all the components that make your business successful. Once you start becoming profitable the momentum starts to take hold.
If you’re not sure how to structure your website, I recommend just getting started with the tried-and-true: Home, Services, About, Contact. Services may be the one page that may be different for individual circumstances. If you’re not sure about what you offer, leave it out for now. Move towards a minimally viable website. And when I talk about minimally viable, I do hold high standards to what viable means. Make everything neat at the very least. Clutter is an enemy to clear communication. Using fewer, better words is always better than using too many words that don’t convey you points.
If you are a woman seeking to make your side hustle into your full-time gig, then make sure you take that step to build your website or hire someone to do it. A website is key to credibility. If you are running your store just through Instagram, you are perceived as just that type of business, one that is somewhat committed. It looks like a side hustle. And don’t get me started on the fact that you don’t own your Instagram account, Instagram does. Well, actually Facebook owns your business account. What if Facebook falls out of favor? Those of you old enough may remember when MySpace was the thing. Essentially Facebook is a better version of MySpace and overtook it the market with sweeping momentum. But today it’s easy to see that Facebook’s user interface seems dated when compared to Instagram, which is continuously evolving its feature set.
But if you have a website it is your evergreen property. Evergreen is a term I learned in my newspaper reporting days. We would pen certain articles that weren’t tied into a particular season or date and would be relevant on any day of the year. Your website should be your evergreen property, always relevant and ready to present. While I can’t predict the future, I can guess that the Internet is here to stay and that we’ll always have a way to hold a little piece of the Internet as our own for our business or personal use. The format may change, but definitely make sure you claim your piece of real estate on the world wide web. The general format of having a central hub where we share information globally isn’t going anywhere.
Important factors for women presenting themselves through their Squarespace website
My number one rule is: be yourself online. Those who like who you are will flock to you, and those who don’t like you or don’t identify with you aren’t good prospects for you anyway. You can’t please everyone, so you should present yourself in a way that attracts like-minded people.
Rule number two: Take the time to figure out how to express who you are. A mentor of mine asked his clients to answer these three questions: So what? Who cares? Why you? It’s a great exercise to arrive at copy that will help inform others why they should work with you. Be honest with yourself when you answer. You don’t have to use anything you write down verbatim.
Rule number three: Choose a color and font set that evokes the feeling that you want to offer your audiences. If you don’t have a design bone in your body, just draw inspiration from what’s out there. I once saw a photo on Instagram of an outfit consisting of a brown outfit with bright blue accent colors. I ran with that for my website colors for a year at least. If you need a tool to identify the exact colors, Google “color picker from image” and you’ll find free tools to upload an image and get the hex codes (color code) needed to input into your website.
For fonts, look at fonts pairing you like on other websites. Are you bold and modern? Or are you more classic and academic? There is a Google Chrome browser extension called What Font that can help you get to know fonts and you’ll start discovering what you like for your brand. Whatever you do, don’t just settle for the font pairing that Squarespace offers you out of the box. They may be fine, but changing all of your style elements from the base set goes a long way from making your Squarespace site not look like a Squarespace site.
Just get started
I myself, like many, struggle about waiting for the right time to get started. The truth is there is no good time for anything, so take the first step and start today. Just make a decision and do it. As one Instagram post I saw and will paraphrase here: Your first blog post will be horrible. Your first podcast episode will be bad. But keep going and you’ll make tremendous progress over time.
Trust me, one weekend I decided I was going to learn how to use Squarespace. It was not easy to learn. Or I should say it was not easy to get the program to do what I wanted to do. But many years later since that day I decided to try something new, I am now considered an expert on Squarespace. Looking back it did not take that long and if I didn’t get started I would not have added anything to my skill set.
Speaking of Instagram, I took the advice to use social media as a tool. I fill my feed with content that educates, entertains and inspires. So even when I want to “waste time” on social media I usually absorb content that energizes me. Energy is so precious. Conserving and wielding it well is key.
If you are a female entrepreneur your time is now. Invest in yourself. I have spent thousands of dollars on online courses. I was hesitant at first, but that investment in myself has made me so much more valuable to help others with confidence and proficiency.
Sign up for a Squarespace account. Pick a template and start playing around with it. If you don’t know how to start you can check out my tutorials or start searching on YouTube if you like learning with video. Set small goals and get one component of setting up your website done. I like to create the pages I envision for the website first. So, Home, About, Services, Contact can be the framework to build upon. Don’t stress about this either, you can easily change what those pages are named and what content is contained on those pages. Just build and keep building. Clean up what you perceive as a mess later.
I liken the process of creating a website to pottery. You need to throw down that ugly slab of wet clay before you can start shaping it into something beautiful. Get messy. Copy and paste your thoughts from your Google Doc. Don’t get caught up in perfection. Write from your heart and gut.
Do you need help? Consider booking a 1:1 coaching session with me. In one-hour I will work with you to get on track to fulfill your dreams of starting a thriving business where you are your own boss. And being your own boss is very much a major part of feeling happy. Even if at first you work more and earn less, the freedom to choose how and when you work is a feeling you will embrace. Don’t hesitate. Sign up with a website builder. Commit. Commitment takes guts, but taking that action step will change your entire outlook on what’s possible.
