11: Squarespace Refresh Review
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00:01 Squarespace has been making a lot of updates lately, and they recently announced a ton of them at squarespace.com/refresh
00:10 There's some new stuff, a lot of stuff we already know about,
00:13 and some stuff that wasn't quite ready by their marketing deadline that still made it on that landing page.
00:18 And that's exactly what we're talking about in this episode.
00:23 Welcome to Think Inside The Square, a podcast full of quick,
00:26 tips and tricks that will help you create a Squarespace website that you're proud of.
00:29 I'm your host, Becca Harpain, creator of Insidethesquare.co, and in this episode,
00:34 we're taking a deep dive into the Squarespace Refresh announcement of October 2023.
00:39 For a transcript for this episode, along with the links to the many resources I'm going to mention, visit Insidethesquare co/podcast
00:48 The term Squarespace is a trademark of Squarespace, Incorporated. This content is not affiliated with Squarespace, Incorporated.
00:58 Before we dive into this list, I do need to mention this is probably going to be one of the longest episodes of Think Inside The Square that's been released.
01:06 I try to keep my content concise and quick and under ten minutes, but they talked about so much stuff in the Squarespace Refresh release of October 2023.
01:16 So again, this is like a high level overview.
01:19 If you want to dig into any of these things, visit squarespace.com/refresh
01:23 And if you want links to any of the resources that I talk about insidethesquare.co/podcast
01:30 All right, without further ado, first thing on the list was Courses.
01:34 Courses is a new type of collection page that was actually released in August of 2023.
01:39 But it's a big deal, so I can see why it's the top of the list.
01:42 This new type of collection page allows us to create lessons inside chapters.
01:47 It has its own internal navigation so we can work our way through these lessons.
01:52 It can be paid or free.
01:54 It can track progress by a profile, all kinds of cool features.
01:58 If you want to learn more about creating a course using this feature in Squarespace,
02:02 I have a free one that you can interact with insidethesququare.co/course
02:07 It's an overview of this new collection page, and it's one where you can click through
02:11 and see what this progress bar looks like and what some of the layout options are.
02:15 I thought it'd be a fun way to share this information, and it's totally free.
02:18 No email required.
02:20 Now, the next thing they talked about on this Squarespace Refresh release were Squarespace payments.
02:25 This is a BIG deal. This is their own payment processing system!
02:29 This will be released to just the United States this October and supposedly other countries next year.
02:36 Now, I'm not sure what those other countries are; they haven't released that information at the time of recording this.
02:41 And I'm also not sure what the pricing will be or if they'll be charging a percentage fee.
02:47 I have no idea how their fees will compare to Stripe or PayPal, but you'll be able to accept payments directly in the Squarespace interface and receive Payouts directly to your bank account.
02:57 These are PCI compliant servers that they're using, so they're safe transactions and it's all going to be built right into Squarespace.
03:04 So you don't have to worry about integrating with Stripe or PayPal.
03:07 Everything's going to be right there in Squarespace, which is pretty cool.
03:11 Next on the list for the refresh announcement was client invoicing.
03:15 This is pretty new.
03:16 I actually helped them beta test it a few months ago and I got to be honest,
03:19 their product development team was awesome about our feedback and already made some really amazing changes.
03:25 Now, this is a great feature for individualized services and high ticket clients.
03:29 It does all your invoicing and client management in the same spot as selling your services.
03:35 So it actually turns Squarespace into a CRM or client relationship management platform.
03:40 You can even send proposals for projects and all of it's linked to your business inside Squarespace.
03:45 So that's a huge benefit right there.
03:47 Now, personally, I don't see myself using this as a website designer because I like
03:52 to automate as much of my business as I can and at this time I can't duplicate a simple project.
03:57 So it's going to make me stick with the CRM I already have.
04:00 But I am going to keep an eye on it.
04:01 If Squarespace is known for anything, it's constantly evolving.
04:05 So I'm positive we'll see more about this invoice project management and CRM improvements in the future.
04:10 If you work directly with clients, definitely check this out.
04:13 Next on the list is Acuity. They are back to their original name and they have an updated logo.
04:19 Now, I've never used the mobile program, so I'm not sure what improvements they've made, but they did announce that they've made some.
04:24 Personally, I love Acuity.
04:26 I have it built right into my website and I very recently started offering strategy sessions again and all of that's automated, so I'm definitely a fan.
04:33 Next on the list for the refresh update are commerce tools. Local pickup is featured, but we've had that for a while. Same with variant buttons.
04:41 I've got a great tutorial on my YouTube channel, so check that out if you want to customize them.
04:46 One new thing for commerce is the RAD ability to - drum roll please -
04:50 edit the mobile layout separately from desktop!!!!!
04:55 I'm super excited about this and I'll tell you why: this is the first collection page to have this option.
05:01 If you hop into edit mode for your online store and you click on the mobile version, you can actually choose the number
05:08 of columns that display products and you can choose to have an add to cart button under the products specifically on mobile.
05:15 Two new design options we've never had.
05:17 Now, I am personally pumped about this because it means the design team at Squarespace is looking at mobile design features for collections.
05:25 I hope other collection pages will have similar updates in the future.
05:28 I'll definitely share those updates the second they happen, so keep an eye out for that.
05:33 But as of right now, we can officially update the layout and the online store specifically on mobile.
05:40 Way too awesome.
05:41 Next on the refresh update list was email marketing campaigns. Got some neat new features, not the ones I was dreaming of.
05:48 We're still a little limited on fonts and other style options, but we have new automations like automatic
05:53 product recommendation emails, and they released a few new templates, so that's always inspirational.
05:58 I love seeing what their design team creates, so check those out.
06:02 Let's move on to AI, one of my favorite topics these days.The Squarespace AI features are still fairly new, and I do have some tips on how to use them at insidethesquare.co/tryai
06:14 They've integrated it with their Blueprint website builder, and they've been making improvements to the text editor AI.
06:19 Nothing was specifically shared in this update.
06:22 Like, we don't know what they changed, but improvements is a good sign that their AI model is learning.
06:27 So yay that I'll be sharing some more AI awesomeness actually later this month here on this podcast, so look forward to that.
06:34 Biosites was next on the refresh list, and personally, I can't speak to this update because I don't use Biosites as a Squarespace enthusiast.
06:42 I feel kind of bad saying that, but I've always made my own landing page for my social media traffic.
06:48 But if you have any experience with Biosites, definitely check out the updates. I guess they've made some changes there.
06:54 All right, Usability and expressability was next on the refresh list. We have a lot to cover here, so buckle up, my friend.
07:01 Direct header editing. We now have a more intuitive way to rearrange links to the website menu that should be released fairly soon.
07:09 Section Dividers made the refresh announcement release, but we've been using those for a while now.
07:14 Style previews for website templates are coming soon. You'll be able to add a style to a template before you pick it.
07:21 With the new people who are excited to use Squarespace, those style previews will probably be pretty cool.
07:25 Fluid Engine improvements made the list.
07:27 They've actually made some behind the scene changes over the last few months, some specifically for mobile resizing groups of content blocks and aligning them, which is pretty great.
07:37 But if you've edited a Fluid Engine section within the last month, there's really nothing new there.
07:42 Asset Library was next on the list and we now have a trash can.We also have a new feature that I just used myself called Folders.
07:50 When I was updating my Squarespace course, I was literally able to create a folder
07:55 for all of the images I wanted to use inside the course section.
07:58 I just dragged and dropped my images from my computer there and I was easily able to find them without having to search through all the other images on my site.
08:06 They were right there ready to go, which I thought was awesome. So Folders is a new feature in the Asset Library, and it's awesome.
08:13 Platform Navigation refresh also made the list, and I'm not going to lie, this one's been rough.
08:18 This was a release that happened a little while ago where they changed the name and locations of things inside Squarespace.
08:26 Now I have a tutorial about it insidethesququare Co Update because one of the big changes was moving CSS.
08:34 We no longer have a design option. We no longer have a Pages option.
08:38 You have to click Websites, select Website Tools, then select Custom CSS.
08:43 And if you want to edit the design of your site again, there's no design option on our main menu anymore.
08:48 You have to click the paintbrush icon on the top right hand side of the screen to open up your Site Styles menu.
08:54 So one other pro tip here, if you're looking for something on the new internal navigation and you can't find it,
09:00 hit the forward slash button on your keyboard to pop up a menu search.
09:04 This is how I get to CSS when I'm not recording my screen for a tutorial.
09:08 You can move through the Squarespace platform faster, and it's definitely a fun trick to know.
09:12 All right, next on the update list. Sticky scrolling supposedly coming soon. This is a cool feature that I'm pretty stoked about.
09:19 I'm not sure if it's just sections or if it's content blocks, but that's one coming soon, and the second it's out there, I'll definitely release a tutorial on it.
09:27 Image Overlay is next on the list.They released this a few months ago.
09:31 You can add a color or a style overlay to images I used on a landing page recently, and it's pretty cool.
09:36 There are also some new image effects. They don't really work with my design aesthetic, but check it out if you're curious.
09:42 After that, we had form block refresh. It says Coming soon, but any Circlers out there already have access to it.
09:50 We have some really cool ways to customize form block design, so get excited about that one.
09:56 Double click on a form, click on the design menu to see if you have these new options.
10:01 The next announcement they had was a thread social icon has been added, which is great.
10:06 And I know that after this Refresh announcement came out a few days later,
10:10 they let us know that they've also updated the Twitter icon to be an X.
10:14 So if you use social media, icons on your site, threads is there, and the Twitter icon is now an X.
10:20 Shape block improvements made it as a part of this release. Shapes can now have borders and drop shadows.
10:25 This came out a few months ago, but it's an update I'm pretty excited about. No custom code required for those changes.
10:31 Two more things on the list here new and improved website templates. I love to take a look at those to see what creative new designs are out there.
10:38 There are a few, mostly for courses, but a few others. So if you are interested in creating a new site or even just a new page on your site, check out some of the new templates they designed. Always good for inspiration.
10:49 And the final thing on the list of usability and expressibility said the SoC two audit passed, and I've got to be honest, I didn't even Google it.
10:56 I honestly don't know what that means, but Squarespace is proud of it. So yay Squarespace !!!
11:01 All right, we're almost done with this list. Stick with me here.
11:04 Squarespace mentioned Domains, and Squarespace had released the intent to purchase Google Domains and supposedly will happen by the end of the year. I mentioned that in a previous episode of Think Inside the Square.
11:15 But one cool thing that they've done is they've updated the interface for domain management.
11:20 We have some cool WHOIS features and other things to help you keep your domain data in check. Very excited to see these improvements.
11:27 Squarespace collection was a big thing that made the Squarespace refresh list. They hired six famous photographers, had them make a Squarespace website,
11:35and you also had the opportunity to have these folks critique your photography portfolio.
11:40 I am definitely not a professional photographer, so I have no idea how exciting this collection is for photographers, but I'm sure it's a pretty big deal.
11:49 So to check out the sites that they created, the templates they've built based off of these artists,
11:54 and how to potentially apply for the critique, check out collection.squarespace.com
11:59 You can find all kinds of cool information there.
12:02 Three more things - almost there. The next thing on the list were extensions.
12:06 There are four new extensions to check out in the Squarespace extension shop. An e commerce one, a tax one, a charity one. Check those out if you like to integrate extensions into your site.
12:15 They also made a few changes to the Enterprise level of Squarespace. I think 99.99% of the Squarespacers I work with do not have an Enterprise level subscription, including me.
12:27 So I'm not even going to guess what these new features are. But if you use Enterprise, you should probably be aware of some changes.
12:32 And last but not least, we have some Tock updates. Tock is a restaurant reservation software that integrates with Squarespace.
12:39 Now, I've never worked with a site that has it, but if you're a restaurant who needs this, check it out.New stuff for you.
12:45 All right, that was a lot! Let's do a quick recap before we call this episode a wrap.
12:50 Kind of new stuff: Courses, client invoicing project management.
12:54 Updates to stuff we already have: form designs, shapes with borders and box shadows, images with overlays, and other image effects.
13:02 You can change size and alignment for multiple content blocks in a fluid engine section. There is a threads icon and a new Twitter icon.
13:10 The Asset library has a trash can and folder options you can drag and drop in the header very soon. Not released yet, but that's coming out soon.
13:18 Oh, and we can have two columns of products on mobile and an add to cart button if you want to enable that.
13:24 And AI is getting better every day. Keep an eye on this podcast for an updated episode about Squarespace AI. I've got some sweet training ready for you, so get excited.
13:33 Domain's got a new dashboard, there's some new extensions available. Enterprise and Talk got some new stuff too. So did Biosites.
13:39 The moral of the story is Squarespace is a work in progress and I for one am happy about that.
13:45 Their teams are busy! They are constantly making updates and adding new features to make Squarespace be everything we could want it to be.
13:53And I think that that is really exciting. Now, again, we went through so much in this episode. This was a BIG release;
14:01 Squarespace refresh was a huge announcement. and if you want links to all of the resources I just talked about to dig into any of these
14:09 for more information, check out the show notes at insidethesquare.co/podcast
14:15 Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Think Inside the Square.
14:18 I have a lot more tips and tricks to share with you about making an amazing Squarespace website that's uniquely yours.
14:24 So be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you happen to be listening to this episode.
14:29 Thanks again for listening, and most importantly, have fun with your Squarespace website.
14:33 Bye for now.
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Official refresh announcement: squarespace.com/refresh
Free Course on Courses: insidethesquare.co/course
Internal navigation update: insidethesquare.co/update
Squarespace AI Info: insidethesquare.co/tryai
Squarespace Collections: collection.squarespace.com/
