Last updated on June 27, 2014
by Jeremy Wong in Squarespace Related
We don’t have to try to convince you that Squarespace templates are some of the most professional looking designs amongst website builders. You just have to look at a few of their templates and you will agree with our conclusion.
You can tell that they have dedicated and invested a lot of time into crafting the templates (to help you look good), the templates are also responsive – meaning that they will automatically adjust to the viewing device (desktop or mobile) give your visitors the best website experience.
So what else is impressive about Squarespace templates? Here’s a list:
- Mobile preview
- Live examples
- Categorized for you
- Template user guides
- Video workshops
All the items above are designed to make your life easier when using Squarespace, especially when it comes to picking your template and learning how best to use it.
One thing to mention before getting started below, Squarespace is not only catered to the everyday average Joe/Jane, their customers also include some very well known companies as well!
1) Squarespace Templates – Mobile Preview (and Our Little Trick)
Since mobile is growing to be such an important part of website surfing experience, and that Squarespace templates are specifically designed and built to provide the best experiences, Squarespace has built in a Mobile Preview function to allow you to see exactly how their templates are viewed on a mobile device.
You can play around with their mobile view, and see for yourself how your visitors will experience the template. You can access each mobile view for each Squarespace template here by clicking on the “Mobile View” button.
Although the mobile viewing function from Squarespace is helpful, here’s what you might also be thinking – what about mobile phones or tablets that have different screen sizes?
This is where our little trick can help you get comfortable that no matter what size the desktop or mobile screens your visitors are using, that Squarespace templates will adjust accordingly to give your visitors a great experience.
As we mentioned in our full review of Squarespace, the fact that Squarespace templates are responsive is one of the bigger benefits of using them.
2) Squarespace Templates – Live Examples
A lot of website builders out there will give you a long list of templates to choose from. What they don’t do, is show you how other real users are using the templates to build their websites.
It is so natural for you to ask the question, “how are other people using this template?”
And you deserve to ask this question for a few good reasons:
- Curiosity
- To get comfortable that you are picking the right template
- To get reassurance that Squarespace works
- To get design inspirations from others
So Squarespace thoughtfully placed a lot of example websites below each template to demonstrate how other users are using the template, not only so that you can see it working, but also to show that you can also create something similar.
Here is also a collection of Squarespace customer websites for you to check out – some of them are very well known companies as well!
3) Squarespace Templates – Categorized for You
One of the challenging aspects of website builders is selecting the best template for your website. A website builder can provide you with polished, professional templates such as what Squarespace has done, but let’s face it, if you can’t pick the best, most suitable template for your website, it just won’t work out too well.
What Squarespace has done is categorize their templates into 5 categories so you can focus and narrow down your search (saving you time):
- Businesses
- Portfolios
- Stores
- Restaurants
- Personal
We found this to be a nice touch as it’s always easier when the “pros” make a few recommendations. You can narrow your final choice of Squarespace template from there. Just remember that you can always change your template to another one later on if you need to.
This isn’t a mind-blowing feature, but a thoughtful one nevertheless. Instead of going through all 20 Squarespace templates, you can save time by considering only the recommended ones.
4) Squarespace Templates – User Guides
Speaking of thoughtfulness, here’s another “over delivery” from Squarespace. What they have done is create user guides to walk you through how to use some of their more popular templates.
The guides are created to help you navigate through customizing and using Squarespace templates, and includes topics such as:
- Structure and style (site title, menu, sidebar, footer, social icons)
- Gallery
- Blog (features, excerpts)
- Mobile display (navigation, design)
- Special features (these are specific to each template)
Here are a few examples of these user guides:
Squarespace templates are powerful and elegant, so this guides are excellent to get you and your website started.
5) Squarespace Templates – Video Workshops
Squarespace also offers you free workshops to get you started with your website, and to also give you some inspirational ideas to consider.
There are a few video workshops that you might find helpful:
- Creating a Portfolio site
- Squarespace Commerce
- How to prepare Images for showcasing
- Blogging with Squarespace
While these workshops will not build your website for you, they will get you started in the right direction, and hold your hand and walk you through the some of the basics. We can only hope that they continue to produce even more video workshops in the future.
Squarespace Templates – Conclusion
Squarespace templates are not only professional and polished, they are presented to you with a lot of thoughtfulness to help you pick the best one for you, and to also get you started.
If it’s one thing that Squarespace does well that a lot of other website builders don’t, is that they make things easier for you, by categorizing their templates into different industries, creating desktop and mobile previews for each template, showcasing real / live examples of other users using each template, and providing you with template user guides and video workshops to get you started.
It’s the attention to details and user (you) experiences that really impresses us about Squarespace. You can tell a lot about a website builder by their attention to details.