It is a very common situation for a small business owner (be it a creative venture, a healing profession or any kind of entrepreneurial adventure) when they look around on the website market they will come across this debate: WordPress versus Squarespace.
I love how Squarespace looks
First of all, I love Squarespace. I love the design, I love how they advertise (Keanu Reeves was gorgeous on his motorcycle, there is no debate on that). They always come up with cool creative persons in their advertisements that make me feel like, I want to be one of them!!! And I want to have a website they have!!! Yeah well this is the whole goal of advertising, right?
I like the simplicity of the admin area of Squarespace and it is truly optimized for the user. You don’t have to decide what payment service you will use, it is all there!
WordPress can be a mess. Not all themes are good, so if you choose a bad one you might experience hard times. And there are all those plugins, so a lot of decision has to be made. Well yes, WordPress is an open-source system, so a lot of people are involved in the development. It can be messy, that’s right.
It can be messy, but it can be clear as well if you know what you are doing. And also any design can be achieved with WordPress, so it can look as clean as a Squarespace site. Well actually a Squarespace site, if it is not set up properly, can look messy as well. No magic bullet, these things only work if you know what you are doing.
I am not going to go into details about the two platforms, you can find good articles about that, so let’s get to the point: I am going to give you my honest opinion about when you should use WordPress. I am talking about the self-hosted WordPress, so wordpress.org and not wordpress.com. WordPress.com is a service where they provide the hosting and limit the options with WordPress. WordPress.org is where you can download the whole WordPress solution, host it yourself, and enjoy the flexibility: as it is highly customizable with thousands of themes and plugins.
When you should choose WordPress over Squarespace
you need more than one website (it is more affordable with WordPress to manage more websites).
you need to be flexible and add special functions to your website. With WordPress plugins, you can add almost any function to your website, for example, see the draw a card page on my website. This page shows a random image and it was set up with a free plugin and I didn’t need to hire a developer for this or write custom code.
It is highly scalable: better for larger or more complex sites.
You want to keep your costs low, but it requires more expertise to do that.
When you should choose Squarespace
Choose Squarespace when you need one standard website to showcase your talent, products, and services and won’t need any special functionality. It is ideal for beginners with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. You can try it out for free, look around, and see for yourself if this is something you are ready to do. The monthly cost might be a bit higher, but it doesn’t need special maintenance.
If you want simplicity and ease of use, go with Squarespace. If you need flexibility and customization, choose WordPress.
In this article, I will cover how you can start creating your own website or blog. I suggest using WordPress, but why? If you look at the statistics WordPress is the most widely used website builder and it means more opportunities, more tools, more flexibility and a bigger community around it.
Advantages in a nutshell:
You have more control over your website and add functions as you need for your business.
It is more likely you will find the help you need because a lot of people are involved with WordPress.
It is easy to find the right tutorials If you want to do it yourself.
Disadvantage:
it comes from the advantage: it can be confusing. If there are too many options it is harder to make a decision about what to use. It is not easy to find those tutorials that really best for you and your goals. My aim is to help you with that.
Create your own website with WordPress
The first step is to have a good hosting
I recommend two hosts.
If you are just starting out and not sure about how your business will grow online, start with them: Namecheap. They provide excellent service and it is perfect for starting out.
If you want to jump right in and grow quickly, I recommend SiteGround. They provide stronger performance options for a bit more expensive, but good price.
Both of these services have very good support. They are not just providing an answer for you, but they usually make the necessary changes for you. Good to feel that you are in good hands!
Find your domain name
First of all, don’t get too caught up with the decision of your domain name. These are the options to get started:
Your name
Your name + the word of the field your work in (for example: yoga, coach etc…)
Your business name
If you want to serve clients globally go for .com if it is available. If not you can still think about adding some other wording to your name, like: the, yogawith, studio, designs etc…. If you want to stay local, you can choose your country as well, like .co.uk.
Look here, to see if your preferred domain is available: Namecheap
There are a lot of solutions to host classes, workshops, group coaching sessions, webinars online. My intention is to keep things very simple so I am going to list here one solution. I think it is the best solution when you are starting out. You might just need a small class to start with and you don’t want an expensive solution. The good thing is that this platform is actually suitable for big classes as well as you grow.
ZOOM: video conferencing, online class, workshop, webinar platform
Zoom is a very popular solution that is widely used for video conferencing, webinars, workshops and online classes. You can record the live call and send it out easily as recording as well. There is a free account to start with, but it has a 40 minutes limit on group classes. If you want to start a class for a group of people longer than 40 minutes, you can start an account for around $16 with the Pro plan.
Get payed
Zoom is a very powerful platform, you can even connect it with PayPal and set up payment for your class, webinar, workshop. People will be able to register and pay for your workshop. Check out this article on how to set this up: Configuring Zoom Webinars with PayPal
Keeping participants informed
If you would like to add your participants to your mailing list, you might need to use Zapier for the integration. Here you can find some info about how to use Zappier to add your Zoom participants to your Mailchimp account. Zoom + Mailchimp integration. Create a Mailchimp group in your list before you start the integration, so you can send a letter to them separately.
If you are just starting out and you expect just a few participants, you can forget about Mailchimp for now. Zoom will send a notification to them anyway!
If you use some other newsletter service provider, Zapier might have a solution for you too, so search for it on their website.
Tools to use
You can start these meetings even from your phone. If you need to be further away from the camera because you want to show some movement, you might want to invest in a wireless lavalier microphone or earbuds, so people can hear you when you step away.
I hope this short info will encourage you to start sharing your knowledge in an online classroom as well.
Picking colors for a business usually part of branding, however for small businesses it often starts when setting up a website.
Does color matter?
According to surveys 85 percent of shoppers base their product purchasing decisions on color. I can relate to that. For me color is a huge factor in deciding if I like something or not.
Color has much more meaning than just visual stimuli. If you are into energy fields you know that our chakras and aura also contain colors and certain qualities can be paired with certain colors.
Looking at a color can make you feel energized or happy.
How to choose colors?
If you are a small business owner or solopreneur, it is definitely going to depend on your personal taste. For a bigger company, it is carefully chosen by branding experts and they will consider color psychology. I think it is interesting and worth look at it. Here is an article about it: https://www.colorpsychology.org/color-psychology-marketing/
What feeling can a color give?
This is the question I would consider when choosing color for a website. The dominant color would represent how I want my visitors to feel when landing on the website. I like using the chakras for choosing colors and consider the meaning of them.
Root chakra, RED: safety, survival, grounding, nourishment from the Earth energy, passion
Sacral chakra, ORANGE: emotions, creativity, sexuality, joy and is associated with water add flow.
Solar plexus chakra, YELLOW: mental activities, intellect, personal power, will, confidence
Heart chakra, GREEN: it is connected with love, relating, integration, compassion and healing.
Let me share with you some tips for writing a good landing (sales) page copy.
Offer value
Your offer has to focus on solving a problem your client has. It needs to resonate with their lives and offer something they really desire. Then go above and beyond with offering valuable things free gifts, money-back guarantees. Break down why they should opt-in or why they should buy your product or service and why it solves their problem. Focus on your copy. When it comes to landing pages, copy and value you give are the biggest factors that influence conversion rate.
Keep it simple
When it comes to landing page design, simple is the best. Don’t overuse images, headlines, colours. Your design has to focus on delivering the right information to your customers to make sure it is not disturbing for them but enables them to focus on the things that really matter.
Show social proof
There are many different types of social proof. They could be testimonials; they could be case studies, it could be results that other people are experiencing, it could even be videos.
Create a video
The video really helps with delivering information. You need a video that explains everything they’re going to get when they opt-in, or buy your product, or sign up for your service. The video should be short and to the point. Under one minute is enough. It should describe everything in a logical order and it should answer to most objections people have before they sign up or buy from you.
The new WordPress editor is going through a lot of improvement lately and it is now capable of building quite complex pages. If you want to make it even easier you can use a Page Builder plugin for building your landing page: read more about page builders here.
Getting payed
If you want to make it very simple, then you can set up a PayPal payment button with your landing page. If you are ready to take your WordPress website to the next level, use Woocommerce plugin to set up a webshop.
When I first started out building WordPress websites I was surprised how it is dependent on knowing some coding (HTML, CSS and PHP is a must for WordPress). We are capable of creating complete magazines without coding, so why should a website be different? I was happy to learn to code as I am an engineer type of person, but on the other hand, I was curious about what other methods out there for building websites. My first project with a page builder was with the Sydney theme. It uses SiteOrigin page builder and I was amazed how much quicker it is to build a website with a page builder. So I made a research and choose Beaver Builder as my first page builder.
Page Builder Pros:
Faster build time
Templates to give you ideas
Easy to create custom-looking pages
Easy to edit
Helpful community
Page Builder Cons:
Messier code
You’ll still need to know some code to make things look truly custom
Yearly license fees
Things I like about Beaver Builder
I like the developers of the product and had great support experience with them
There is a huge community behind it, and you can ask them for help on Facebook.
If you decide to switch off the Page builder, the content remains without any extra code. The format will be lost, so it is extra work to make it look good again, but at least no strange codes.
I could learn it very quickly and it was natural for me to use the Beaver Builder. I know it is very personal and for you, it might not be the easiest and most comfortable plugin.
There are two other very popular page builders on the market such as Elementor and DIVI.
DIVI page builder
Last year DIVI came out with version 4.0 and with it came a function that is really good: theme builder function. This means now you can build not just the content of your page with Divi, but also the header, footer and other parts of the website. It is really powerful and gives great flexibility to WordPress. It is a tool that makes building custom layouts more quickly. Time is really valuable, so it is important. It can reduce the costs of building a website.
As soon as I saw this new feature, I jumped in and now I started to use DIVI for my projects too.
Things I like about DIVI
It is a very smooth user experience with the integrated theme.
Cool design features and you can really fine-tune the style of every element.
Quick workflow and easy to learn.
Smart opt-in tool and social media sharing included.
Big community and tones of smart tutorials about the usage of DIVI.
If you choose the lifetime licence, there is no yearly fee.
