Squarespace for realtors (Ultimate Guide for Real Estate Business)
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There are several reasons to consider Squarespace for your real estate website, but before I go there, let me explain Squarespace in its simplest form. Squarespace is a CMS, or content management system, that allows you to create elegant websites without any coding. Squarespace makes it easy for anyone to have an online presence.
It has all you need to run a successful website and doesn’t require any technical knowledge to set up. If you are on a budget, you can set up your website all by yourself using one of the free or Premium Squarespace Templates provided by third-party template shops. The backend is easy to master, and there are tons of helpful Squarespace Tutorials along the way.
When it comes to maintenance, unlike other sites like WordPress, you do not need any technical knowledge or pay a developer to maintain and fix some bugs. Squarespace runs perfectly fine and you can maintain your website at the backend of your site.
And if it seems like something beyond your control, you have 24/7 support and forums where you can ask questions and get quick feedback.
If you are wondering why Squarespace is the best choice to build your real estate website, let me take you through the benefits you stand to gain when you use Squarespace.
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Benefits of using Squarespace for Real Estate Business
affordable Pricing Plans
Unlike other websites, Squarespace plans are cost-effective and come with a lot of important features. The lowest Squarespace plan known as the Personal Plan starts at $12/month and it provides important features such as
Free custom Domain: You do not need to pay for a domain as in the case of WordPress, domain comes with every plan on Squarespace and you also have the chance to connect your domain with the website
SEO features for site visibility: Squarespace was designed with SEO in mind therefore they provide SEO features to increase your rank on Google search
Integration with email marketing tools and CRMs: You don’t have to worry about creating lead generation pages on other websites, Squarespace takes care of that by providing an email marketing tool that you can use to embed forms on your landing pages.
But if you are looking forward to building a real estate website, it would be best you go for the Business plan. When you purchase a business plan, you get access to all the basic features in the personal plan and additional features like
Professional Email from google: You will receive a free google workspace account and professional email for the first year.
Advanced Website Analytics: You will be able to track the traffic to your site including the number of people visiting your site, their geographical location and traffic sources. You will also be able to determine the marketing strategies that are yielding the most results and let go of those that don’t.
IDX integration
As a real estate agent or broker in the USA, you can integrate IDX on your website. Squarespace website can be integrated with the major IDX providers such as Diverse solutions, Ultimate IDX, IDX broker and Displet.
To add an MLS search to your website, you will need to get the code required from your IDX provider input it in your CSS block. It is something you can figure out. If you are not sure how to go about the whole CSS thingy, you can hire a designer to figure that out for you.
It’s easy to use
Squarespace makes it super easy for anyone to design a website from scratch. You do not need to have advanced design skills to start building a website. As long as you can drag and drop, you are good to go.
Squarespace provides tons of free templates and some real estate templates that you can choose from. But if you want to get a ready-made real estate template that requires you changing the texts and elements rather than figuring the design process out yourself, using one of the premium Squarespace real estate templates with be the best option
Even if you are designing using one of the Squarespace templates, it is super easy because - The backend of your website is easy to understand and master.
Squarespace makes use of ‘block’ e.g. text blocks, image blocks etc. that you can drag and drop and edit with just a click
There are tons of guides to help you along the way, and if you need to use CSS or JavaScript to further customize your brand, it is all available for you to copy and paste on google.
Funny as it may sound, no plugins are required. Unlike WordPress and other website builders that depend heavily on plugins to function well, Squarespace makes sure you do not need plugins. No need to worry about the adaptability of any plugin to your website.
When it comes to maintenance, Squarespace is one of the easiest websites to maintain. You can edit and change anything you do not like about your website without any panic.
It is an all in one platform
What if it could be the central hub for your other marketing efforts? I think you’d be open to that idea. That’s why Squarespace has been so popular in recent years. It takes away the extra work of having other websites built and built for specific tasks. Squarespace offers an all-in-one platform, including hosting, email marketing, blogging, eCommerce, appointment scheduling and more! If you already hav a domain, you can even transfer it over to Squarespace.
Templates are top-notch/professional
All free Squarespace templates are well designed. It has beautiful aesthetics and effective layout designs. You get access to over 100 free templates that you can use for your website design. Although the real estate templates are not many, you can still find a professional template to start with.
And if you do not want to go with basic, there are premium Squarespace templates offered by template shops.
SEO Friendly
One of the requirements of any website or website builder is SEO. You need SEO to rank on google for more views and more sales. Squarespace was built with SEO in mind therefore you can be rest assured that with your SEO strategy in place, your Squarespace website will rank.
Some of the important SEO features available on Squarespace are
Meta tags: You can add meta description and title tags to your website’s pages and posts.
This gives you a chance to optimize your meta descriptions for higher ranks
Integration of Google Analytics and Google Search Console: Keep track of metrics of
various websites and how to outplay them in the game by integrating Google search
console and analytics on your Squarespace website
You can make use of Squarespace sitemaps. You can create a sitemap and submit it to Google for indexing.
You have page descriptions, tags and headings that can be optimized for SEO
SSL Security is included
SSL security is one of the most important security certificates required from any website and it has been taken care of by Squarespace. So you don’t have to worry.
SSL security secures online transactions and keep customer information private and also protect your website from any hitches. You get that on every Squarespace website
It’s Mobile Friendly
You do not have to worry whether your website will function properly on a Mobile device. Squarespace is responsive which means it automatically sizes your real estate website to fit different platforms. You can as well check this during editing. There is an option on your website’s backend where you can switch to the mobile and tablet versions.
No coding experience needed
When the word ‘website’ is mentioned, what comes to anyone’s mind is tons of written code. That’s entirely true if you are looking to dedicate a large sum of money and wait for several months for your website to get built. But if that is out of the option, Squarespace is the best platform to build your website without any coding expertise.
Why?
Squarespace has already taken care of all the coding you may need. All you need to do is create and design your website – which is super easy. Knowing that some website owners would love to customize some parts of the website, they provided an option for CSS and JavaScript codes.
Does that mean some coding is involved? Yes.
Does that mean I have to know how to code? No
All the code-required- customization you possibly want to make has been provided by the Squarespace team and there are tons of websites that offer the copy and paste option. All you need to do is search for the code that is needed on google, copy and paste it on your backend’s CSS block.
To save yourself from all the stress of designing and figuring out codes, there are third-party real estate templates that were designed specifically for your type of website. All you will need to do after purchasing the template is change the text and sometimes, images.
You can integrate your social accounts
As a Real Estate Agent/brokerage, you definitely will like to connect your social media handles on your website and Squarespace makes provisions.
On your Squarespace website, you can easily integrate your social media handles on any page or every page of your website. They made it super easy by dedicating a whole block called ‘Social Media Links’ where you can access all your social media icons, add your URL and add to your site’s pages.
Easily Integrated with other third-party tools
Definitely, your real estate website would need to integrate other third-party tools for maximum operations. You can integrate your website with other tools such as Google Analytics, G suite, Mailchimp, Calender and other productivity tools.
You can also integrate your other third-party tools like
IDX:
As I mentioned in one of the benefits of Squarespace for Realtors, you can integrate popular IDX software to your website and MLS search and listings will be displayed on your website
CRMs:
Another important feature you will find useful as a Realtor is that Squarespace support popular CRM tools such as Zapier, Hubspot, salesmate, salesforce, Zendesk, ActiveCampaign, Airtable, HoneyBook, SharpSpring and Lead master.
It may be a bit challenging integrating other CRM tools apart from the few supported by Squarespace – Hubspot, Salesmate, Zapier and Salesforce. So, you’d need a professional to figure it out. Or if you want to go DIY, you only need a good amount of time dedicated to YouTube and Google.
It’s great for Lead generation
Most times, you would have to create landing pages/lead captures as one of your marketing strategies. Squarespace is a website where you can create landing pages in a few minutes. Yup!
You do not need to pay for a landing page software to create one. You can easily do that using Squarespace.
Here is how to create your landing page in Squarespace
You can also create lead capture forms on Squarespace without subscribing to a third-party service. You have it all hosted on your Squarespace websites.
Squarespace provides you with pop-ups and announcement bars that you can take advantage of. Yes, it all comes with your Squarespace website!
schedule your Appointment with easy
This is super useful if you are tired of going back and forth with client trying to set a suitable time. With Squarespace scheduling, all you need to do is select the time you will be available and send the link to your client or integrate it directly into your website.
Advanced Analytics
Building a website that provides little or no analytics is like being in the dark. You don’t know what works and what doesn’t work. Here is what Squarespace has to say about it
“With analytics, you can get a clear picture of your visitors and their behavior through visual reports on statistics like page views, conversion, sales, referrers and bounce rate.”
You get the traffic sources, geography, search keywords, activity log, form and button conversions, site search keywords and RSS subscriber analytics data on the Business plan. There are additional analytics available on higher plans.
You also have the option to integrate Google Analytics for further enhanced features.
Blogging is easy
Gone are the days where you will host your website and blog on different platforms. If you are interested in creating a blog alongside your website, you can create a blog page on your website without any additional charges.
Besides that, you get all the customized features you will be needing to run a successful blog such as blog SEO, tags, categories, blog settings and so on. If you are thinking of creating a Squarespace blog, you should check out this Squarespace for blog article.
You can protect certain pages with Squarespace Password feature
If you have a page under construction or it is reserved for only a limited view, you can create a password protected page that cannot be accessed by any random visitor.
Looking at it from another perspective, you can use this feature to create VIP listings, exclusive libraries and even a project still in its building phase. There are no limits to your creativity.
You can access Squarespace commerce plan
Another thing Squarespace is known for is its commerce plan. If you are a realtor that isn’t looking to offer any products, then a business plan will be great. But if you want to sell courses or other real estate products, opting for a basic or advanced commerce plan can be considered.
With a commerce plan, you can track your inventory, orders and other basic eCommerce features.
Amazing 24/7 Support
Squarespace does a splendid job when it comes to support. You have access to their customer support on any plan. Whatever may be the issue, Squarespace customer care is ready to assist.
Coupled with their support is their forums. Squarespace has a bursting community ready to help. When you join the Squarespace forum, you will find answers to a lot of your questions and you can also decide to post a question. They also have a detailed YouTube channel and blog.
Professional, yet affordable third party templates
If you are too busy to build your website from scratch, or the free real estate templates are too basic for what you are looking for, you can go for one of our third-party Realtor Templates.
You stand to gain:
Fully designed, specific real estate templates:
You don’t have to worry about complementing colors, text alignment and other design-related problems. When you purchase a realtor template, everything has been designed specifically for your type of website and all you would need to do is to input your texts.
A detailed guide on how to setup:
You get a comprehensive guide on how to set up your purchased templates and some tips about how to make your website effective
Premium support and customization:
If you want a higher level of customization, we are ready to help you achieve that and you also get premium support throughout the journey.
Seems like what you are searching for? Come check out these real estate templates designed specifically for your website.
Building a website doesn’t only depend on aesthetics, you also have to consider the functionality and effectiveness of the website and one website builder that give you effectiveness at its peak is Squarespace. You need to check it out for your real estate website
Need help building your real estate website on Squarespace?
Do you need a new website? Don't have time to build it yourself? Let me build your custom Squarespace website for you, so you can get on with running your business. You can find out more about my web design work here , or get in touch today to discuss your needs, whatever you have in mind for your website.