The Ideal Digital Ecosystem for Squarespace Websites
When doing a website rebuild, it doesn’t just matter what platform your website is built on. For maximum efficiency and use, you want your entire digital ecosystem to seamlessly integrate. Now that you know you are building your website on Squarespace, what other platforms are recommended that will make your life easy?
As a disclaimer, technically, everything can integrate with Squarespace: many platforms offer embed codes, Squarespace offers data export methods, and Zapier is always there to create some handy zaps that will connect the two platforms. But what platforms require the least amount of maintenance and manual work?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Hueman’s recommendations: Salesforce or Hubspot
Your CRM will help you manage your “customers” (even if you aren’t selling things). The main facet your customers will interact with on your website that requires an integration to your CRM is via any form, like a contact form. Using a Jotform integration via Salesforce or Hubspot Forms, you can create a form within your CRM that can easily be embedded within a Squarespace site using a code block. We find that building contact forms directly wherever you want the contact to live is the easiest way to transfer information.
However, Squarespace’s default form block allows you to store the form submissions within Squarespace Contacts, Google Drive, or connect to Mailchimp. Squarespace Contacts can be exported as CSVs/XLSs and uploaded to your CRM to avoid manually having to add contacts.
Email Marketing
Hueman’s recommendations: CRM (Hubspot), MailChimp, or Squarespace Email Campaigns
Email Marketing is a great way to send out news, updates, sales, etc. to your audience. Depending on how your site is set up, we might recommend a couple different solutions.
If you are collecting contact information for your mailing list via the Squarespace newsletter block, the storage sync options for Squarespace Contacts apply. By syncing to MailChimp or using Squarespace Email Campaigns, your contacts seamlessly transfer over. MailChimp and Squarespace Email Campaigns both offer stylish templates, design flexibility, and analytics options, however, we have been hearing from some clients that MailChimp has gotten quite expensive. If you already have a Squarespace account and don’t need any fancy automations, the Squarespace Email Campaigns add on is worth looking into. Plus, your brand is already built in to the site styles, making picking a branded template easy.
If your CRM also offers email marketing, like Hubspot, then our recommendation would be to just keep everything centralized and in one place. Instead of using a Squarespace newsletter block for sign-ups, opt for a Hubspot embed code.
Event Management/Calendar
Hueman’s recommendations: Acuity or Google Calendar
For businesses who manage event sign-ups (like classes or volunteer events), Acuity is a great solution. You can connect existing calendars, add form fields to sign-ups, and more robust automations.
To display events, if you are already adding these events to a calendar (say a Google Calendar), we recommend just using that embed on the website. Squarespace does have a calendar block that syncs with any events built on an event page, but we have found that clients who have frequent events (so multiple times a week), don’t like doing double the work and manually adding the events to the event page. A Google Calendar embed may not look the cleanest, but there are tools like ElfSight which offer customization options to allow you to implement your site styles onto the calendar. ElfSight also offers different views and layouts, like carousel or cards.
Giving Platforms
Hueman’s recommendations: Lots of options
We don’t have any specific recommendations when it comes to picking an easily integrable giving platform. Most offer code embeds for campaigns, so it is all about which one you prefer. However, there are some platforms that offer greater ease of use, style customizability, and user experience. These might be things to look for when shopping around for giving platforms if you have a concern for how it will work with your digital presence.
The more you scale your business or organization, the more tools you will need in your arsenal. While a lot of tools can satisfy multiple needs, there isn’t one tool that does it all (or does it all well). By choosing tools that speak and cooperate with each other, you are increasing productivity, enhancing operations, and saving a bit of your sanity.
