What to know about Squarespace Refresh 2023
The platforms's annual refresh has arrived with new website building and ecommerce tools
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Squarespace
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If you’re a small business looking to build a website, Squarespace can be your new best friend. The website builder focuses on making the process simple with easy-to-use templates and the Squarespace Blueprint guided five-step system. Websites are totally customizable with the ability to add and remove elements, drag and drop widgets, choose your desired fonts and colors, and even add ecommerce elements. The goal is to help companies increase their visibility online.
Through Squarespace Refresh 2023, the company’s annual release of new products, features, and updates, the website builder is now offering even more exciting options.
What’s New in Squarespace Refresh?
Discover Squarespace's new tools to help brands and entrepreneurs grow their businesses.
There’s plenty coming to Squarespace that's designed to help small businesses truly make their mark online and reach target goals. This begins with Squarespace Collection (formerly known as Squarespace Icons), which involves a partnership with photography agency Magnum Photos. Businesses have access to striking images from around the world that can be used through six signature website designs, all built in Fluid Engine.
Squarespace Payments
The most crucial aspect for any business is, of course, sales. Ecommerce is important, especially with more people shopping online from the comfort of their homes. So, it comes as no surprise that one of the big announcements for Squarespace Refresh is the addition of Squarespace Payments. Currently in the beta phase with plans to roll out officially over the coming months and into 2024, the native payment solution allows businesses to accept payments through the website without having to use a third-party payment provider, and thus incurring the added fees that come with one.
Customers can pay directly on your site, see refunds, manage disputes, and look at charges, all through an intuitive dashboard. With a simple set-up process, you can be up and running within minutes and customers can start making secure payments. Squarespace’s customer support team is on hand to provide help along the way.
This is complemented by new commerce tools to support sellers with an improved checkout experience, tracking of shipping labels and orders, improvements to subscriptions, enhanced shop pages and product listings, and a new add-to-cart feature.
Squarespace AI
Not surprisingly, AI is finding its way to Squarespace via custom Generative AI solutions to make it even easier for customers build a website and get intelligent assistance along the way. One of the biggest challenges in getting a website presence off the ground is having the right content to fill it.
Squarespace AI helps generate polished and professional website content. There’s no worry about writer’s block, trying to hit target SEO keywords, or having spelling and grammar mistakes. You’ll get “nearly final” copy to fact-check and fine-tune. Squarespace AI isn’t limited to just standard website copy; it also works within the website text editor for email campaigns and commerce stores, as well as within Squarespace Blueprint. You get help right off the bat when developing a brand new website.
Client Invoicing
Generate client invoices through the same dashboard and within the same workflow. There are three core new tools that are part of this offering. Client intake forms & CRM allow you to capture important information from potential clients and organize the details into the updated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to start creating a usable database. Create invoices that match your website brand and identity and collect payments as needed. Then, track projects in one place to determine what payments are outstanding and what tasks need to be fulfilled.
Courses
This new tool will allow customers to design and sell multimedia courses to customers.
If your expertise and advice is worth turning into a course to offer customers and website visitors, you can do this easily with the new Courses feature. It’s powered by Fluid Engine and makes it easy to turn content and knowledge into an educational course complete with a fitting layout, video components, and even progress tracking. Some business owners will find this invaluable as a potential new source of revenue.
Scheduling
Businesses that are service versus product-based might need a website presence with functionality to accept appointments for in-person visits. Think a hair salon, restaurant, or entertainment venue. The Acuity client booking experience has been streamlined with the new updates so it’s simpler and quicker for clients to book appointments through a centralized dashboard. Pair this with an enhanced mobile app with tools like mobile payment links, automated email receipts, invoice creation, and management.
Additionally, the Tock solution specifically designed for hospitality management has been enhanced with a new Tock iOS app for searching, discovering, and booking reservations. For Android users, there’s also Reserve with Google integration. Add multiple start times for events, table prioritization, variable ticket types, and pricing. To help reduce no-shows, Squarespace will also be adding credit card holds soon.
Email Marketing
Outreach is an important part of every business and helps drive traffic to a website. With new email marketing tools, you can automate the email process, set up seasonal email templates that are ready to go for launching a campaign, and even edit discount fields on the fly to keep up with changing pricing and special deals.
Bio Sites Pro for Social Media
Create link-in-bio pages for your social media profiles to give your audience more information.
Naturally, social media has become an important brand extension: it’s not enough anymore to just have a website. Bio Sites has been expanded to offer link-in-bio sites for popular social media platforms through the new Pro tier. There are also new features for deeper customization and engagement and, most important, to help companies monetize the content. There’s also a new Bio Sites web editor that can be used to create and update Bio Sites from any web browser.
With all the new tools, features, and capabilities announced for Squarespace Refresh 2023, building a website, running a business, and managing everything from appointments to sales to invoices to customers, will be much more streamlined.
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