Why I’m sharing business tips

I’ve established my business as a consultant, speaker, facilitator and ICF coach over the last few years. There are so many products I wish I’d used from the very beginning. They would have saved me so much time and energy, in addition to boosting my productivity and streamlining the processes I use. In this Business Tips blog series, I’m going to share examples of helpful resources for other entrepreneurs who encounter similar challenges. All product opinions are my own; no-one is paying me to promote their product.

Today’s recommendation: Squarespace to build your website

Most businesses now require a website as a matter of course. My previous websites were always created using WordPress. I always found WordPress very clunky and difficult to use. I had to rely on someone else to build or adjust the website, which was of course much slower than being able to adjust things quickly myself. I’m pretty computer literate but it too me two full days to create two new pages.

The problems it solved for me

I wasn’t ever a fan of WordPress but my major issue with WordPress happened when I updated a plugin which wasn’t compatible with the newest version of WordPress. My whole website had a meltdown and vanished, leaving me with just a white screen. I had to pay a tech expert hundreds of dollars to get the site up and running again, which was frustrating, to say the least. When the site was online again, the formatting looked dreadful.

How I use it

On the whole, using Squarespace is a very smooth experience compared to WordPress. I’ve used Squarespace to build my website myself and the whole process took less than two days (compared to the two days it took me to make two pages on WordPress). Initially, I answered questions and then Squarespace gave me a customised template. Alternatively, you can select from a wide range of pre-existing templates.

Benefits of using Squarespace vs WordPress

There are so, so many advantages to using Squarespace that I know I’ll be writing about it more on future blogs. I absolutely love it and can’t recommend it highly enough. Here are just a few of the advantages I discovered early on in the wesbite building process:

1. It’s very, very easy to use and you don’t require any technical knowledge of coding or website building to create something beautiful and user friendly

2. There are tons of online videos which walked me through 98% of the tasks I got stuck on while making my website.

3. For the 2% of tasks I really could not work out I contacted Squarespace’s amazing customer support team. They’ve replied to every email, including links and videos where possible to show me how to solve the challenges.

4. You can build your whole website using the free trial, so it’s all designed and ready to go live as soon as you’re finished.