A social media bio is incredibly important. It’s a snapshot of who you are (your name/handle), what you do (your bio) and where people can find out more about you (your URL). The problem is, when you have various aspects to your brand, driving traffic to your home page may not yield the best results (i.e. sales or email subscribers). You only have the option to include one link on your social profiles (and you can't add links in descriptions on Instagram), so you should maximize that link as much as you can. Today I will be discussing two ways to maximize the URL on your social media bio’s in Squarespace by creating dedicated social media landing pages.
Squarespace websites are all the rave these days, and rightfully so. I am a graphic designer that also dabbles a little in web design, so I prefer a easier way of creating a website that doesn't involve too much coding knowledge. When I first started blogging 8 years ago and up until last December I was using the Blogger platform. This was reasonable at the time for my DIY and home decor blog because all that I really needed was a clean layout and the ability to customize it, but for my business blog it was quickly becoming a problem since I was limited on what I could do. At a certain point I began to realize that blogger wasn’t going to cut it for me and I needed to choose another blogging platform especially when I ended up having two URLs related to my business. After comparing Wordpress and Squarespace, Squarespace was the winner. Today, after 9 months of use, I am going to tell you 10 reasons why Squarespace became cool with me and the awesome things that it has to offer. 9 months...it's like I birthed a Squarespace baby and am telling you about the 9 month pregnancy journey now :D Before we get started, this is NOT a sponsored post...I just love Squarespace and wanted to share my experience with you all, my boo’s :)
Email Marketing is a huge deal right now. You may have been hearing about growing your list and different strategies to do it, but let's take a step back for a moment and talk about HOW people are actually opting in. Obviously there is some type of form to fill in, but where is the form located? How does it look? Most importantly, are visitors directed away from your site to fill in their forms? I really hope not, because you are setting yourself up for lots of missed potential subscribers if so! It’s a proven fact that sign up interest decreases with each step that is added to the process (humans like convenience!). It's also known that readers are 30% more likely to opt-in when they can do it with a simple click and fill process (AKA two-step opt-in process). Ultimately you want to encourage visitors to sign up and make it as easy as possible.
You may have heard of Leadpages, a lead generating website that offers many types of opt-in forms to incorporate on your site. Unfortunately they don't have a free plan...or a cheap one at that (the standard plan ranges from $17-$37 a month depending on if you pay monthly, yearly or every two years). Fortunately after exploring Squarespace one day, I found out how to make a "Leadbox" type of opt-in form, which is a very popular option in Leadpages. Today I will be discussing how to use Squarespace’s built in features to set up 3 types of opt-in forms that will not direct readers away from your site. If you would like Leadpages functionality in a Squarespace environment or if you want to know how to set up some higher converting opt-in forms, read on!
I have been on the Squarespace train since January and I am still learning new little tricks here and there. One of my favorite things about Squarespace is that you can create unlinked pages. My former website platform (Big Cartel) didn't allow this, so every page that I created had a link that appeared in either the header or footer navigation. This was annoying because I didn't necessarily want visitors to see every page that I created. Once I switched to Squarespace and saw that there was a section of the "Pages" page that was called "Not Linked", I knew that this was the platform for me! As I began building my site, I was coming across various uses for these types of pages, and I keep thinking of more! Today I will be discussing 9 uses for these beloved pages that you may consider applying to your own site. As a note, this is from a Squarespace perspective, but you can create unlinked pages on Wordpress and Blogger as well. I think it may just be easier and faster in Squarespace (especially comparing it to the process in Blogger which was my blogging platform before the switch)!
Squarespace is one of the top website platforms out right now because there is so much that you can do without knowing a lick of code to get it done. My website is built on the Squarespace platform and it was the best decision I made to switch over (read more about my experience with Squarespace here). One of the best features is that you can create a cover page (aka landing page). People use cover pages for different purposes such as sales pages, email list opt-in pages, thank you pages, etc. The problem with cover pages in Squarespace is that you are limited to the type of content that you can add to it. For example, you can’t place buttons where you want them (they can only be on certain locations of the page) and you can only include a limited number of links. Sometimes you just need a blank page to work with so that you can build your cover page using all of the options available when clicking an insert point. The problem is if you create a new page, all of your page links, header and footer contents will appear as well as any announcement bars that you may have set. The purpose of a cover page is so that the reader doesn’t get distracted and stray away from what you’re trying to get them to sign up for, purchase or learn. Today I am going to give you three simple pieces of code that will help you create a landing page free from all of the default header and footer distractions and how to remove an announcement bar from that page on your Squarespace website.