5 of my favourite Squarespace features and how they help Coaches
If you are a Coach looking to elevate your coaching business, then you truly can’t go wrong with Squarespace.
With so many powerful features and tools, Squarespace effortlessly helps streamline your processes, showcase your expertise, sell your services, and connect with your audience; giving your business the ability to scale to the next level.
Whether you’re a business coach, life coach, health coach or other type of coach, I am sure you will find this article insightful and help you enhance your coaching services and better serve your clients!
Together we will break down the following 5 of my favourite features on Squarespace, specifically tailored to you:
Fluid Engine
Acuity Scheduling
All-In-One
Security
Multilingual
So grab your coffee and settle in as we get ready to enhance your coaching business.
1 - Fluid Engine
For those that haven’t heard, in July 2022, Squarespace released one of their biggest game-changing updates to date: Fluid Engine.
Fluid Engine is their new editor and is a HUGE deal because the old editor used to place content in rows and lines and although you could create stunning websites, it was a little more restrictive with what you could achieve in terms of design layout.
Fluid Engine, on the other hand, is a drag-and-drop editor that allows you to easily overlap content blocks (eg. image, buttons, text boxes, etc), and you can choose where in the section you want that block placed.
The design abilities have dramatically improved and reduces the need for custom coding ever further which is a plus in my book!
With Fluid Engine, there is one factor to keep in mind, and that is being conscious of mobile view.
While the old editor automatically resized and placed your content in order, Fluid Engine doesn’t quite have that ability. Instead, mobile-view is edited separately to the desktop and the content will be displayed in the order that you add content blocks when creating your desktop version of the website.
So mobile-view does take a little extra work and shuffling but it is also a lot more flexible in what you can achieve than you previously could. While it might add 1-2 minutes extra to my design practice, I personally love the extra design capabilities!
There has, of course, been some other design updates released outside of Fluid Engine that are also amazing, such as text resizing, text animations / highlights, text scrolling, section dividers and so much more.
Truly, the ability to create an elevated online presence has drastically improved!
Depending where you are in your coaching business journey, some may choose to invest in a web designer while others may choose to DIY as they start out.
Despite Squarespace’s templates and design abilities, your website, no matter how pretty it is, will struggle to convert without strategy.
Make your design work for you, not against you!
PRO TIP: Your copy guides the design.
2 - Acuity Scheduling
I know there are so many online schedulers out there, and you may already have one that works for you - that is fantastic! I would never try to convince you to fix what isn’t broken.
So if that’s you, I want to quickly address how you may connect your scheduler to Squarespace.
Some schedulers may or may not be able to be embedded into your website directly. If it can, yay!
But if not, the quickest and easiest workaround is to place your direct scheduling link into a button following a call-to-action.
This will seamlessly encourage your client to book a call, however the downfall is that they are taken away from your website to the scheduler.
For those who don’t have a scheduler yet, I love and use Acuity in my own business.
Of course there are plans available depending on the size of your business and what you specifically need, and it did take me a little minute to set it up (I was very new to the online biz scene!)
But once I had a play with Acuity and got it set up, it’s perfect for what I need!
I love that it integrates right into your website so clients don't have to leave your website to make a booking.
You can easily set up different appointment types
Add questionnaires for clients to fill out prior to the call
You can charge for your calls
Set up your availability according to your lifestyle
Some on-brand customisation available to your scheduler
Seamlessly integrate with many MANY platforms like Mailchimp or Zapier
Connect Zoom so meetings and links are automatically sent to the client upon booking
Set permissions for the client to cancel / reschedule
Add the meeting to your calendar!
Honestly, it really makes life so much easier not having to worry so much about multiple emails or DMs finding a time suits you both.
PRO TIP:
I have Acuity connected with Zapier to automatically create a new task / client in my ClickUp account as soon as they book a call. It really is amazing!
3 - All-in-One Platform
Let’s talk POWERFUL.
Squarespace really is all that and more. And honestly, I could talk for DAYS about why Squarespace is amazing for coaching businesses.
Web + Domain Hosting
It is crazy simple to set up your website and domains when hosting is in the one place so you don’t need to remember more passwords or whether you signed up through your Gmail account or if you created an account using your email and a unique password (or is that just me?!)
And you can purchase multiple domains so no-one can take the same domain and confuse you for someone else (eg. I own happenedbydesign.com.au, happenedbydesign.com, and happenedbydesign.au)
GoDaddy is another popular platform for hosting domains and if you were going to host your domain and website separately, GoDaddy is the one I’d recommend because it really is nice and easy to connect with Squarespace.
PRO TIP: If you do purchase your domain through Squarespace, you’ll get 1 for FREE for 1 YEAR
Google Workspace
You can easily set up and create your own Google Workspace account directly through Squarespace - just follow the prompts!
PRO TIP: If you set up Google Workspace through Squarespace, you’ll get 1 professional email FREE for 1 YEAR. That saved me $110AUD when I first started out as a web designer.
E-Commerce | Blogs | Memberships
Yes - to save us all a little time, I decided to combine these features to keep it short.
E-COMMERCE:
Their in-built e-commerce is easy to set up, you can even create multiple different shops if you needed to!
But specifically for you as a Coach, the e-commerce feature is great for selling templates / workbooks and other digital downloads for that little extra passive income.
Some businesses reach $1M months just through templates alone!
PRO TIP: to successfully sell digital products, it will help to have a social or email following to market to
BLOGS:
If needed, you can set up multiple blogs. Some use a blog to feature client testimonials on their home, about and services pages.
Google LOVES content. Content in blogs can be found even 3 years later which greatly improves your visibility and ability to reach new potential clients. Win-win!
PRO TIP: even though blogging is a great way to increase website traffic, if you don’t actually like blogging, then don’t do it. Stick to 1-2 marketing strategies THAT YOU LOVE!
MEMBERSHIPS:
This isn’t a feature I’ve specifically had to use yet, BUT I have been inside memberships. It’s a great way to build your email following - because only when they sign up do they get the exclusive inside scoop that ONLY members receive inside.
You can choose to monetise your membership area for an annual or monthly fee, or keep it completely free - up to you!
Inside your membership area, you may choose to place resources or teachings just as a couple of ideas - the sky is your limit!
4 - Security
Have you ever clicked on a website link and a message from Google / Safari pops up with, “This website is insecure.”
I don’t know about you, but my immediate thought is, “Oh, it’s a scam! Back back back!” (picture me madly clicking the back link to get the heck out of there!)
Even if it is a legit website, I’d rather not risk it - and chances are there are plenty of others who would do the same, which loses that business A LOT of money.
With Squarespace, a secured website is always a guarantee! In fact, they automatically turn on your secure settings when you create your website (but it’s always a good idea to double check)
If you’re not sure if your website is secure, look for the little padlock icon in your browser bar.
A secure website keeps you AND your clients safe in the online world.
But don’t worry! Because Squarespace automatically encrypts your website to prevent any hackers accessing your content and information, so the likelihood of anything going wrong is EXTREMELY SLIM.
In the worst case scenario that your website was hacked, although highly unlikely, Squarespace has 24/7 customer support AND they will take responsibility to help resolve the issue.
While this might seem like a no-brainer to most of us, there are some website platforms who will say that website security is your own problem and leave you to try and sort it out yourself. You don’t want that.
I like the security of knowing Squarespace takes online safety very seriously and that they work around the clock to help their customers.
5 - Multilingual
With so many expats living internationally and working on a global scale, a very handy feature that Squarespace has is using Weglot to create multilingual websites.
This is ideal for the coach who does work with more than one language and better helps you reach ideal clients in a way that truly resonates with them and encourages them to sign up for your offer.