If you are thinking of setting up your new website? Great! Here are 5 solid reasons NOT to use SquareSpace. And if you are a SquareSpace (SS) employee? HERE is where you can donate ten percent of your yearly profits for the sake of my making you millions in profit after all of these changes have been implemented, or? Consider hiring me to do only 20% of your Q1-Q2 profit margin with employee incentive programs to support the well-being of your staff. Just a thought. But otherwise? With all professionalism inside, “Suck IT.”
Customer Support is mechanically driven and severely lacking. I want to meet one person over the age of 35 that has worked here longer than 4 years. THAT person deserves an immediate raise. If you would like to speak with a customer support representative for a service that you are already paying for? You will have to upgrade to a higher plan rate, or reach out to paid-customer service support. It’s pretty easy to select from a list of categories what problem you are having to source from the SS community, but the problem discussions are simple, basic, insufficient information available. Or? It might go into the ultimate challenges of IT Code-Data sourcing that does not fit my understanding at all. So? A broad expanse of nothingness amidst two polar extremes and PAID-hostage techniques go for NO in my book.
Platform Lacks Critical Designer Capabilities. The SS platform is missing on hyper-performing and advantageous components for its user-base. The design space is limited to exactly what it advertises: squares and space. There is not much of an artistic component to be creatively empowered—no tools for basic user-friendly new accounts, no creative freedom, no use-value. I am not able to implement the type of coding or widgets that a site such as Wordpress.org would have available to their users. Hands-down, the “widget” idea coincides well with the idea of apps on a cellphone. Either way? No chance to land anywhere but up against a brick wall.
Outline Lists for Users is Ultimately Confusing. There are some better terms to simplify things for the sake of being user friendly. One suggestion: shortening the list of ALL of the components that a user has to their advantage to say? Dealing with what your customer (the website owner) cares about most which could be categorized most simply by using the terms MONEY, or what might be more commonly labeled today as, “FINANCIAL,” OPERATIONS and CREATIVE. The lists can likely expand from those three areas, but keep it simple. All of the significant information that is composed within these three broad-stroke terms can be sorted effectively. SS makes the slant very strongly pivoted toward their own sales and growth direction versus thinking about the support that SS could provide its user-base to encourage them to try greater options due to the effective service being provided.
To bolster your company’s sales it would be great to view more customer testimonials. The, “I went from my 9-5 working all day out in the coal mines to, now I’m a big-shot selling candy-canes from my SquareSpace website I set up only a couple weeks ago…” story might seem to be cheesy, but it honestly does inspire more faith in your user-base in at least thinking that the “dream” is possible. I want more examples and I fail to pay attention to the basic layout of the site-info because it lacks anything even remotely creative on it. You want a good comparison? SEARS (Since 1892). SEARS was and still is a great company and offered a retail department store bargain, but the marketing was Talbot’s when they needed VICE, or The Source. Effective marketing makes all of that information placed in front of your customer-base that much more worthwhile to read. How do you get more people interested in your production services? By offering something different from your competitors that can hoist interest and retainment of current customers. Obviously it is my cohort, the group of people paying for your service for a loyal 15 years, who could really benefit from the increased interest, but your snags are too fake-plastic-wordy and inevitably incomprehensible. In short? in spite of the potential use-value? I am not interested in digesting more marketing schemes.
And lastly, but most importantly for MOST users on your site who are “selling everything and anything,” MAKE IT MORE ACCOMMODATING to RETRIEVE FUNDS. I have donations, sales of products and services in this confused summed-up group of money laying somewhere in the site. NONE of it is retrievable. So? I could sell and earn from my site all day, but when I want that money in my actual bank account to say—I don’t know—use to pay for my website host provider? I am not able to readily do so. THIS makes SS without a doubt, hands down, categorically unfit for business professionals to begin their entrepreneurial endeavors. THIS along with very little traffic support and distribution make SS the least likely go-to I would ever recommend to anyone wishing to start their website. The moment I can get an SS representative on the phone to have a helpful conversation (which I can recall having some years back) will be the day this company begins to turn a new leaf and face upward never looking back. Aside from their proverbial “suckiness,” the truth is that SS is there and has been in business I guess somehow for two decades. But so why don’t I leave? Because they have my money held as ransom and an incredible amount of data I do not want to lose, A. And B., because their security platform is fairly respectable and anyone working in that department should get a raise as well.