- You're listening to the Femtrepreneur Show.
This is episode 36.
In this episode, we're talking about the website
platform we use for our websites,
sales pages, landing pages, and more.
(uptempo surf rock)
Hey everyone, it's Megan.
It is just me on today's podcast.
Mariah is unfortunately sick,
so she is resting, which she needs to do,
but she will be back next week,
so don't worry about that.
And I cannot wait to chat with you guys today,
because we get asked a lot about our website.
We get asked what platform we use, how we use it,
and a bunch of questions, so I'm hoping that this podcast
can be a great kickoff in talking about our website
and answer some questions that you have
about what we use and what we do with it.
So if you don't know, we use Squarespace.
That's the website platform we use.
If you aren't sure what other options are out there,
WordPress, Wix, and Weebly are some pretty common options.
Squarespace is just another website platform
that you can choose amongst quite a few options.
And if you don't know about me, my name is Megan Minns,
and I have been creating websites since I was nine.
Cool kid over here.
So I actually created WordPress websites from the ground up.
I started my business off doing design,
and I offered custom from the ground up templates,
and it was so much fun, I loved WordPress.
So none of this conversation is anti-WordPress
or anti any platform.
It's really just about our experiences
and why we as Femtrepreneur have chosen
to use Squarespace and what we like about it.
So I'm hoping this will be helpful, but again,
it's never really about anti-WordPress.
It's really just why we like Squarespace.
So like I mentioned, I did actually create
WordPress templates from the ground up,
so I feel like I can come from this conversation
from a really knowledgeable perspective.
And in 2015, after I made the switch to Squarespace,
I actually wrote a blog post about it that I will link
below this video if you're watching on YouTube
or in the blog post if you're listening to the podcast,
and I go a little bit more in-depth on why
I personally switched from WordPress to Squarespace.
So if that's something that you're
interested in, be sure to read it.
I dig a little bit more into my background.
But if you wanna know just why we use Squarespace
as Femtrepreneur, I'm gonna go through a few reasons
and then also talk about how we use it
and give you some examples.
So, we love Squarespace.
Squarespace is all Mariah has ever used,
so she is a huge advocate of it, as am I,
but some of the reasons we've both decided to use it
is it saves us time.
For WordPress, for me, I could do anything that I wanted
and I totally acknowledge that WordPress has
amazing capabilities, but I found that I could do the same
stuff that I wanted on Squarespace for way less time.
An example is I wanted to have a slideshow on WordPress,
and I had to spend a lot of money
on getting the right plugin that would do a slideshow,
and it just felt really complicated.
Squarespace has slideshows built in,
so that's just one example of quite a few
that I could think of of ways that Squarespace
just makes things faster and easier.
There's no time searching for the right plugin,
and it's all built in and really intuitive.
So, I love that I can just do
everything I need quicker and easier.
Another reason we love Squarespace
is it allows us to stay focused.
Again, coming from my background, when I was on WordPress,
I kept obsessing over, did I have the right plugin,
did I have the right security setup,
was I doing X, Y, and Z correctly,
is my sidebar the right width?
I would get really into the backend of the site,
and I spent very little time actually creating content.
It was a distracting platform for me.
One of the reasons I found a great benefit
in switching to Squarespace, and I know Mariah
has loved this about Squarespace too,
is it just really allows you to create content.
That's where the focus is.
It's a beautiful website no matter what template you choose
when you're setting up your Squarespace site.
It's gonna look beautiful.
It's gonna have a very modern, minimal,
aesthetically-pleasing, mobile-responsive design
no matter what you do, and it's really about the content
and the words that you put on there to make it your own.
So, I found that once I switched to Squarespace,
it was about the content more than it was about the fancy
banner or the slideshow or the right plugins.
So, I really appreciated that I can stay focused
and create content much faster as well on Squarespace.
And I mentioned security a second ago.
I found myself constantly worrying
about my WordPress site's security.
Was someone gonna figure out my username and hack my site?
Did I have the right security plugin?
Again, this is another example of how I spent hundreds
of dollars buying the best security plugin on WordPress
and I haven't had to do that with Squarespace.
Now, I'm not naive.
No platform is completely bulletproof
or impenetrable and I don't pretend that it is,
but I have not had to worry about Squarespace's security
nearly as much as I found myself constantly worrying
about my WordPress site's security.
So, no matter what platform you may be on now
or that you've had experience with,
I've had no problem with security on Squarespace,
and this rolls into my next point,
if I did, Squarespace has amazing customer service.
They have a live chat that you can just pop on
and ask any type of question, get any help that you need,
and they also have a really quick
and responsive email system as well.
I don't think they have a phone number anymore.
I'm not 100% positive, but I've never had to use it.
I've probably had five moments
in the past three, two years
where I've needed to reach out to Squarespace,
and their live chat was perfectly helpful, and it got
resolved within 15 minutes at most, if not instantly.
So, it's been wonderful, and I have really appreciated
that I don't have to go dig around a forum
to get the answer I need.
I can go straight to the platform that I'm using
and get some help.
So, that has also eased my mind.
If there is a security issue, I feel very confident
that Squarespace's support team would help me out.
Another reason that we love Squarespace, and I know
this is one of Mariah's favorite things about Squarespace,
is you can do things quickly.
If you have a great idea, you can very quickly
bring it to fruition in Squarespace.
It's very easy to create new pages,
set up new, add text, adding images, add an opt-in,
it's all very, very, very easy and fast in Squarespace.
So if you have an idea and you wanna launch it tomorrow,
you could do that.
We've had people that actually launch websites
on Squarespace that follow my trainings
that do it in an hour.
So Squarespace makes it that simple,
and this kind of all rolls into each other,
but one of Mariah's favorite reasons, and one of mine too,
is that you as a business owner should have complete control
over your website, and Squarespace allows you to do that.
You don't have to wait on a designer
to custom code a new page for you or tweak things.
It's really easy to just go in
and create a new page for yourself.
I know Mariah says she's not tech-savvy,
and this is one of the biggest fears she had
when she started doing her business was with the website.
She didn't wanna have to wait on someone to do this for her,
and even to this day, when we have a team,
when Mariah wants to make a tweak to the sales page,
she does it all on her own.
She creates the new page, adds the image, adds text,
and it's very simple and easy to do,
so there's never a moment when she can't do
what she wants to do on our site
because she's waiting on an expert to do it for her.
So, as the owner of your business, we fully believe
that you should be able to do that, not that you have to,
but that if you're ever in a pinch and something's broken,
or you need to add a new page, or you forgot
to add an opt-in, or you want to add an image,
that you can do that yourself,
because your platform makes it easy for you.
So that's one of the reasons we love Squarespace.
So, I hope that was helpful and insightful.
I'd love to answer any questions you have further
about why we use Squarespace,
but I wanna transition now into talking about how we use it,
because I think this is what really takes a basic
website platform and kinda blows your mind a little bit
is what all we can do so Squarespace,
and I do think a myth people have with Squarespace
is that you can't do these things,
so hopefully this will be eye-opening
if you've ever thought you can't do some of these.
And if you're listening to the podcast,
I wanna encourage you to actually go to our blog post
that accompanies this, because I will have examples
and screenshots of each of these so that you can kind of see
what I'm talking about instead of just hearing it.
So, go to thefemshow.com/36 to actually see some
visual examples of how we use Squarespace.
So, the first example is our website,
so our website and our blog are on Squarespace,
so that's a basic example.
Then the next example is sales pages.
We do every single sales page on Squarespace,
and we have gotten so many compliments
about our sales pages.
People love the way they're set up.
They love the design.
They can't believe it's Squarespace.
They assume it's WordPress or another platform
that specializes in sales pages, and I'm so proud to always
say that it's Squarespace and that's it's easy and quick.
All the benefits of creating a website on Squarespace
apply to sales pages, and it just makes the process
so much more enjoyable.
Like, Mariah and I get excited
when it's time to design our sales page or update it.
It's a really fun process on Squarespace.
Another example is landing pages.
So anytime we have a specific landing page where we want
someone to opt-in to a freebie or anything like that,
we just create all of our landing pages on Squarespace.
We also do webinars on Squarespace,
so that includes registrations for the webinar,
the live page, the thank you page,
it's all done on Squarespace.
So if you've attended a webinar of ours recently,
it was on Squarespace.
And I already said thank you pages,
we do those on Squarespace, and once a year,
Mariah does a three-part video workshop.
It's all about creating your online course,
and this entire process is also done on Squarespace.
So, the registration page is on Squarespace,
and each of the three videos are on Squarespace,
and they look really cool, and again,
people always ask us what we're using,
'cause they just assume it's another platform,
but it is, in fact, Squarespace.
So if you wanna see some examples of each of those,
like our actual, an example of a sales page we've done,
things like that, be sure to check the blog
over at thefemshow.com/36.
So the options really are endless
when it comes to how you can use Squarespace.
Some people actually have their courses on Squarespace,
and they like do password-protected pages.
If you do the e-commerce plan on Squarespace,
you can have a whole shop there.
So you really can do a ton.
If you are a service provider,
you can have your portfolio on there,
so no matter what business you're in,
you're gonna find Squarespace will meet your needs.
My husband is actually in real estate,
and his company uses Squarespace.
One of my clients is a musician,
an old client of mine is a musician,
and she uses Squarespace and has demo reels out there.
So again, the options truly are endless.
This is just how we have used it and why we love using it
is 'cause we can make cool pages like this really quickly.
So if you're interested in Squarespace,
the prices are $12 a month or $18 a month.
The $18 a month plan is called their business plan.
That's what we use.
We like it because you can have an unlimited number
of pages, which, as you can tell, we use a lot of pages,
'cause we do a lot on Squarespace.
And I know that may seem like you don't wanna pay
out the gate, but what I found with WordPress as an example
is that I was ending up spending way more than that
when it came down to my hosting provider
and different plugins I was buying.
I have really found that the $18 a month
has been completely worth it,
especially when I great great customer service as well.
And again, I don't know if I said this earlier,
but this episode is not sponsored.
Wish it was, but it's not.
So this is completely genuine and just how I feel
and I know exactly how Mariah feels about Squarespace.
And I do actual have a brand-new
free video training all on Squarespace.
So I have actually, for a few years, had a free
Squarespace course where I walk you through the backend
of Squarespace, and I've had over, what is it,
over 3,700 people sign up for it,
and I have just now, as this episode is getting aired,
have created a brand-new version.
So whether you've opted in for the old one or not,
be sure to go to thefemshow.com/36 to get the link
for the brand-new, free Squarespace video training,
or you can go to websiteinabox.co/free.
Both of those will take you there,
but it's my brand-new free Squarespace course
that's gonna walk you through the template that we use,
how to sign up for Squarespace, and literally,
every single page on the backend of Squarespace,
what it looks like.
So if you're not sure if it's the platform for you are not,
this training will walk you through and show you
everything Squarespace has to offer and how to use it
so that you can make a decision for yourself
and get a headstart on using it.
So again, go to websiteinabox.co/free
to join the free video course now, or you can always
head over to thefemshow.com/36 for the examples
that I mentioned and a link to that free course as well.
And if you wanna discuss this episode with us
in our community of awesome course creators,
make sure you go join our free Facebook group
at thefemshow.com/community, and if you liked this episode,
please subscribe to the Femtrepreneur Show on iTunes
and leave a rating and a review.
If you're watching this on YouTube,
be sure to leave a comment with your thoughts,
and remember to hit the like button and subscribe.
As always, don't forget to go to thefemshow.com
to submit your questions for us.
We love answering your questions, and we'll definitely
use them to create new podcast episodes going forward.
I'll see you in the next one.
(uptempo surf rock)
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