Squarespace Refresh 2024 - A new era for entrepreneurs?
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Squarespace Refresh 2024 unveils the platform's newest innovations and updates and sets the agenda for the coming year.
Refresh 2023 rather modestly led with “More Ways to Stand Out and Sell Online”. A year on, Refresh 2024 ambitiously heralds “A new era for entrepreneurs”. Oh yeah.. we Squarespace site owners are all entrepreneurs now. I must have missed that memo.
Squarespace Refresh 2024 highlights
There’s a lot to take in on the Refresh 2024 page.
There’s some great new stuff, some old stuff that’s been given a lick of paint, and a few less sexy features that I’m not going to write about (SOC 2 Type II certification, anyone?)
Broadly speaking there are 3 big themes:
Design Intelligence - Using AI to help humans design faster
Business Guidance - Improving the Squarespace Admin system to make it easier to get things done
Monetization - offering more ways to sell products and services
“A guy once told me that The Queen thinks the world smells like paint, because ten feet in front of her there’s always someone frantically freshening up the walls”
Design Intelligence
Design Intelligence is Squarespace’s way of pitching AI as a tool to enhance and accelerate, not replace, the human creative process. Hopefully, in a way that doesn’t suck as much as many rival AI site builders.
There are 3 main components to Design Intelligence:
Blueprint AI
Layout Switcher
Site Themes
“Design intelligence is built upon a very simple belief that AI should unlock human creativity, not replace it”
Blueprint AI
The original Blueprint was a site template wizard. You could use it when making a free trial to select a template, fonts and colours and get a basic structure to use as a starting point for building your site.
Blueprint AI takes things a step further. As well as building out a core structure it will also write copy and select curated images to make a much more consistent and harmonious starting point.
Could you take a Blueprint AI generated site straight to market?
Squarespace is positioning Blueprint AI as an evolution not a revolution. It’s a better wizard than the previous one, but the AI generated sites still need a lot of work before they’re ready to launch. Think of it as a talented intern who has good design skills but doesn’t fully understand the way you want to present your brand.
At Circle Day 2024, Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena was refreshingly frank about the current capabilites of AI:
“I just think the impact of AI over 10 years is different than the impact over one and two and three years. And we've seen that. Did everything change in a year? No. Is it going to look unrecognizable in 10? Probably. “
He went on to talk about the application of AI at Squarespace
“We're integrating it in intelligent ways. Trying not to be spammy about it. We target it smart, where we think it can really accelerate things.”
Looking longer term, as AI gets smarter how will Blueprint AI evolve? Perhaps one day you will be able to point it at your current, non Squarespace, site and tell Blueprint “this is where I am now - let’s port all the content over and make a better version”.
“We see AI as an augmentation to human creativity, not a replacement... You can focus more on solutions for people versus hacking away at something or fixing a bug.”
Layout Switcher
Another tool rooted in AI, the Layout Switcher helps you seek inspiration by generating variations of your section layouts. It works best on relatively simple sections. Give it too many blocks to rearrange and it struggles.
In my experience, the best way to use Layout Switcher is to put your own section layout together. Duplicate the section and run the layout switcher on the duplicate. That way you can’t screw up your own version and you can easily compare your layout with the AI assistant’s efforts.
Layout Switcher’s efforts are often a bit random looking. The AI that is working behind the scenes seems to be focussed on balancing elements visually without an understanding of their relative importance.
I don’t believe there’s anything in its programming that factors in things like the optimal placement of calls to action to get more clicks. It’s working aesthetically and not analytically.
In a future version, having layout suggestions that are conversion focussed would be a cool enhancement.
Site Themes
Site Themes are touted as a brand conscious style variation generator but really, they’re not the most exciting aspect of the Blueprint AI concept.
Experimenting with site themes is fine as part of the Blueprint AI wizard, before the site design gets locked down, but after that there’s a real danger that site owners entrepreneurs will screw their sites up by playing with the Site Themes feature without taking detailed notes of the original settings.
As an aside, in Squarespace 7.0 we had downloadable style packs. This made it easy to keep a back up of your site design settings. You could even duplicate a site, make style changes on that site and then transfer them to your main site for a painless, risk free, reversable style makeover.
Business Guidance
Business Guidance is buried quite far down on the Refresh 2024 page but I think it’s one of the most useful new initiatives and deserves more visibility.
The stated goal of Business Guidance is to make it easier for customers to develop and grow their businesses on the Squarespace platform, encompassing everything from making their first sale to streamlining complex operations.
This has been addressed by streamlining what had become a bloated back end that was even difficult for old hands like me to use.
“Business Guidance Introduces features like dynamic dashboards and tailored navigation options to better support diverse business needs, making it easier for users to manage and grow their businesses.”
Navigation refresh
Squarespace has grown over the years. It started as a blogging platform, then it expanded to a full website builder. Then ecommerce was added for selling physical products. Today we see a full service offering being built out with email marketing, appointment booking, online courses, monetised blogs, analytics, client invoicing, domain administration.. ..lots of things that need a place on the site menus.
The sheer weight of features was making the back end admin system overly complex.
One of the worst aspects was that most site owners entrepreneurs only use a subset of features but their menus were cluttered with stuff they don’t use.
Refresh 2024 introduces a navigation refresh that lets you customise your menus, hiding the stuff that isn’t relevant to you. Squarespace web designers and developers can declutter the menus as part of their site handover, making things simpler for their clients from the offset.
Dynamic dashboards & progressive disclosure
Progressive disclosure in the context of Squarespace's Dynamic Dashboards refers to the strategy of gradually presenting information and features to users based on their current needs and actions.
This approach keeps the user interface clean and manageable, avoiding overwhelming users with too much information at once. Instead of being dropped in the deep end, you begin in the shallows with water wings, gradually moving deeper as you gain confidence.
Here’s how it works:
When you first use Squarespace, the Dynamic Dashboard shows you the tools you’ll most likely need. For example, if you're setting up online courses, it’ll show you features related to creating and managing these courses. As your needs change, like if you start selling products, the dashboard updates to show tools for that too.
The dashboard has different views. At first, it helps new users explore what Squarespace can do with a Merchandising View. Then, as your business gets bigger, it switches to a Performance View where you can see important numbers and stats that tell you how your business is doing.
What’s great about this is that it makes Squarespace easier to use. It only shows you what you need to see, which means you don’t get overwhelmed. It also gives you suggestions on what to do next, like setting up a sale or sending out an email to customers.
For example, if you teach cooking online, your dashboard will start by helping you manage your videos and courses. Later, if you begin to sell cookbooks or host cooking classes, it will change to help you handle these new parts of your business.
Dynamic Dashboards are a big step for Squarespace in helping all kinds of businesses, big or small, manage their work better with tools that fit just right as they grow.
Monetization
Pushing transactions through Squarespace Payments is the driver for lots of the new features in Refresh 2024.
With that in mind, here’s an overview of how Refresh 2024 makes it easier to take payments through client invoicing, monetization of blogs, online donations, etc.
Squarespace Payments
Squarespace Payments is a native payment solution that has the advantage of being integrated in the Finance dashboard. This is less hassle than having to pop over to Stripe or Paypal to manage some of your financials.
This is mainly a benefit to businesses with 100% online sales. Bricks and mortar stores will already be juggling between their PoS payment providers, Stripe and Paypal and a switch to Squarespace Payments won’t remedy that.
Payments opens the door for Squarespace to offer things like discounted transaction fees.
What’s New?
Squarespace Payments is coming soon to France, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Ireland. Payments was launched in the US in 2023. Canada and the United Kingdom followed in early 2024.
As well as card payments, Refresh 2024 sees other popular payment schemes like Klarna and ACH (US only) being integrated into Squarespace Payments.
Client Invoicing
This feature has been around for a long while. If you’re fully invested in the Squarespace ecosystem, and especialy if you’re using Squarespace Payments, client invoicing could be for you. However, lots of third parties offer the same service so it would be worthwhile checking around to see which vendor offers the best features and the lowest fees.
What’s New?
Speaking of features, Refresh 2024 sees the addition of Scheduled Send - the ability to.. ..you know.. ..schedule when an invoice gets sent.
Although it feels like it should have already been part of the invoicing flow, I do think it’s a great addition.
I have clients around the world; the ability to schedule an invoice to hit their inbox when I know they are at work greatly increases the chance of it being paid promptly.
Donations
After over a decade of neglect, Refresh 2024 sees a major overhaul of the Donations feature set.
NB. Some of these features are just about to roll out.
What’s New?
To be honest, just about everything is new.
Multiple funds - Today you have a single donation pot. Very soon you’ll be able to set up multiple funds that cater to the specific interests of donors. This is great because:
People are more likely to donate if they can choose exactly where the money goes.
When donors feel connected to a specific cause or project, they're more likely to stay engaged.
Each fund provides a unique opportunity to communicate with donors about specific issues and updates.
Expanded payment options like ACH Direct Debit and Apple Pay make it easier for people to donate
Flexible donation amounts - you can set suggested donations but also (optionally) let donors choose what they want to give.
Recurring donations - donors can commit to weekly or monthly payments.
Content and Memberships
Selling subscriptions for Member Areas and Online Courses has been around for years. Let’s look at what’s been introduced for Squarespace Refresh 2024
What’s New?
Monetized blogs and video paywalls are touted as ‘new’ features here, although they were both rolled out earlier this year.
There has been a big push since Refresh 2023 to expand the functionality of Member Areas and Online Courses. What used to be a relatively sparse feature set is now a pretty engaging offering.
The fees!!
The fees that Squarespace charges for Digital Products are astonishing to me.
If your site was launched before about July 2024 and you don’t subscribe to a Digital Products Plan on top of your main site subscription you’ll be paying Squarespace a 9% transaction fee in addition to your merchant fees.
A new main site subscription structure is being rolled out that lowers the starting fee for digital products to 7% but I still don’t see how it’s justifiable.
In conclusion..
I hope this article has been useful to you. I’ve tried to provide a balanced analysis.
If I had to pick a winner from the Refresh 2024 launch I think it’s probably the thinking behind and implementation of the Business Guidance features. They will improve the user experience for everyone who uses Squarespace on a regular basis.. ..and first timers too.
