Creating the Website – Squarespace and LogoMaker
The coronavirus stay-at-home orders have given me lots of time to work on my bookkeeping business. I finally have the website I’ve been talking about for six months, I can bill my hourly customers quickly and efficiently each month, I can run payroll easily, and I can track my tasks and schedule so I don’t forget anything. Each of these items was facilitated by a tool I that I now use on a regular basis. This week, the Website using Squarespace and LogoMaker.
Getting my website up took a little time as I needed to get a new logo, define what kind of things I wanted to do in my business, and figure out what kind of customers I want to attract.
LogoMaker – Logomaker.com I looked online for a free logo maker to create something for my business, and there are a few out there. I selected LogoMaker at random, and it was very easy to use. There were lots of graphics to choose from. Surprisingly, I could even change the colors of the graphic, which I figured would make it more unique. You do not have to buy the logo that you make, but you can buy items with the logo on it like business cards, shirts, pens, signs, letterhead, and more. In the end, I wanted the .jpeg and .png files so I could use the logo on my website and such, for a price of $39.99 which I thought was reasonable.
Squarespace – Squarespace.com I went with Squarespace because I got a discount, so I went with that. If I researched all the website development tools, it would take me forever and my website would never be live! So I just got started. My Squarespace subscription came with a domain name (free for one year) and G Suite (free for one year). Lucky for me, the domain I wanted was available. G Suite is valuable in letting you create an email address using your domain name (myname@mydomain.com) instead of a generic Yahoo or Gmail address. This is another way to let your customers know you are legitimate and professional.
The most difficult part about Squarespace is choosing one template from the variety of templates. This is where you get the biggest bang for your buck, choosing a template that will look most like what you want your site to look like. It does try to help you select something by what type of business you are, paring down the wide selection. You can play with each template in detail, so you can get a feel for how they look and work.
I did not need much on my site, just something to let people know I was legit, what services I provide and how to contact me. I thought I may want to write a blog at some point, so got a template that would include that, so I did not have to develop those pages from scratch. Any pages you are missing can always be added later, but it is easier to have it in the template. You do not have to publish all the pages at once. I saved the blog pages for later, so I could get my site up faster.
Squarespace will walk you through the different options on how to setup your site. It makes it easy to have the same header and footer on each page, and a consistent look. You can choose a color scheme of theirs or make your own. Upload your logo to make it really yours. And you never have to write code or understand it! It uses a WYSISYG (What You See Is What You Get) graphic interface, so you know what it will look like, on any device (computer, phone, tablet, etc.) Just fill in the text for your business, change the pictures to be the ones you want to use and you are done! Delete what you don’t want, and add anything that is missing. Easy-peasy!
Being a former programmer, I could not believe how far the technology for building websites has come. In the past you would write your own HTML, try to set up style sheets, and try to get it all to work flawlessly. A different browser might send it for a loop! If you needed something more complicated like an online store, you would probably need to hire someone to do it for you. Even Wordpress from a few years ago seems like an ancient dinosaur compared to this. This worked flawlessly. In three days, I had my website up. It took so long because I had to decide what my business model was and then write the words I wanted to say.
Squarespace offers a variety of help videos, webinars, and even experts to design it for you if you want. It was easy and pretty intuitive. I did run into a little difficulty trying to format something different from the template, but it all worked out in the end. My son helped me with wording and placements, and the Millennial viewpoint on how it should look and work. Him being a digital native was very helpful. But now he wants me to have Facebook and Twitter. We’ll see about that.
As a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, I get a small discount on Squarespace. The opinions regarding Squarespace and LogoMaker are from my own experience using it for business, and not in exchange for any compensation or consideration.
