Why We Moved our Website from WordPress to Squarespace: Guest Blog by Herd It Here Creative
Gone are the days where you can simply commission a website to be built and leave it dormant for years at a time. With the fast-moving worlds of blogging and ecommerce, websites are working harder than ever. Which is why you need a content management system (CMS) that works for you!
At Herd It Here Creative, we knew we needed a web presence that reflected our business and one which was agile enough to adapt to our ever-changing offerings. After being in a committed relationship with WordPress as our CMS for many years, we recently took the plunge and launched our newly updated website using Squarespace.
It wasn’t an easy decision as there are pros and cons to each platform, so we’ll give you a rundown of each and then you can make up your own mind!
WORDPRESS
There’s a reason that WordPress is currently used on 41% of websites. It is highly customisable, with almost 4000 commercial themes and sixty thousand plugins available at WordPress.org! This makes almost anything possible if you have the right knowledge.
Integrations are made easy thanks to the aforementioned plugins. WordPress has been around a long time and there’s a way to integrate almost any application that you may be using in your business.
For the price conscious, if you shop around, it is possible to get hosting for your WordPress website from as little as £0.99 per month. Plus, the WordPress software itself is free and open source so getting your website up and running can attract a low initial cost.
However, with all that customisation comes a hidden cost. Whether monetary or time, the costs of getting your WordPress site from concept to live can quickly mount. If you’re considering the DIY route, be aware that the learning curve is steep if you have no experience with websites or coding. A skilled developer will be able to build a bespoke site for you but be prepared to invest in these services.
With such a vast choice of plugins, security is a valid concern, how do you know whether a plugin is trustworthy or not? It’s also not uncommon for plugin developers to cease support for older plugins so don’t rely on them being around forever.
Similarly vital to keeping your site secure are updates, which means going in regularly to make sure all plugins, themes, and WordPress itself are up to date. Behind the scenes of a WordPress site isn’t the most user friendly and therefore it’s easy to break things if you have admin access but don’t know what you are doing!
If your website is built by someone else; it can be even harder to understand where everything is and what makes things work. So, if you are going to take over managing your website after commissioning someone else to build it for you, make sure you are prepared and trained on the essentials.
Which brings us on to the other contender....
SQUARESPACE
In comparison to WordPress, Squarespace has a relatively small market share – 1.6% of websites in fact. But that market share is rapidly growing, especially among small businesses and in the creative community. Why is there so much buzz around it?
Usability.
What Squarespace has going for it is a much more user-friendly approach. We’ve seen first-hand how easy it is even for the most non-technically minded user to start building or managing a Squarespace website. Their ethos is to provide an interface where any user can build a website. This means it is much harder to “break” your Squarespace website and you can feel more confident when updating content. You can also integrate things such as Google Analytics, or that all important Facebook Pixel, with ease!
More powerful custom coding options are available on certain Squarespace plans, so if you want to commission a web designer, such as EQuerry, to build a site for you they will have the tools at their disposal to build something a little more “outside the box”.
If you have the time to sit and read through the exceptionally helpful Squarespace guides you may also figure some of it out yourself with a little time. If you want to create a more customisable and functional website, and you are prepared to be more hands-on with it then WordPress could be for you. But if you want a website that looks good and one that you’re not too afraid to update, then Squarespace might be the answer.
Squarespace websites are also beautifully mobile optimised which is hugely important as mobile usage now accounts for more than half of web traffic! There is nothing more frustrating than nailing a layout on a new web page only to realise it looks awful on mobile. Oh, and not to mention the colour schemes tool that takes your brand palette and turns it into multiple easy to use schemes. Squarespace certainly ticks the visually appealing box!
One big caveat to all of this is that you must have your branding in place before embarking on a website build. Having colours, fonts, imagery, and wording that is unique to you is what will truly help you to stand out from the herd. If in doubt, seek advice and recommendations before committing to any web platform to ensure it is the right one for you!
SO WHY DID WE ULTIMATELY CHOOSE SQUARESPACE OVER WORDPRESS?
Despite over a decade of working with WordPress, a conversation with Christine at EQuerry drew our attention back to Squarespace. They have massively upped their game in the last few years to offer improved integrations, SEO, and analytics. With ease of use at the forefront of Squarespace’s offering we saw an opportunity to cut down the time spent managing our website – rather than battling with updates and endless spam comments, we could spend this time better elsewhere.
As Charlotte (a former die-hard WordPress lover), likes to say, “Squarespace is to websites as Apple is to computers. It looks good, it doesn’t let you meddle too much, and it just works!”
