The Squarespace Jaunt temlate

There’s a reason Squarespace is the go-to website platform for photographers. Their award-winning templates are beautiful and perfect for artists who want to show off their portfolios. It’s easy and affordable to build your own site on Squarespace, so you don’t need to waste time and money on coding.

But what’s really great about Squarespace is that they are constantly evolving and rolling out new features. The internet changes, and the photography industry changes, and Squarespace adapts. We put together this list of five innovative Squarespace features we love. Some of them have been around for a few years, and others have only been available for a few months. You might not know about some of them, but they’re all factors to be taking into account when building a brand and online presence.

Brine’s Squarespace store

Online Stores

Over the last few years, there’s been a shift in photography sales: people want to buy art online! The online store has revolutionized the way photographers earn money. Prints are no longer the sole domain of art dealers; these days, photography enthusiasts all over the world can afford to build a collection. These days, commercial photographers are getting requests for fine art prints. Even leading photo agencies are jumping on the bandwagon and hosting their own internet print sales. Sometimes we’ll post a photo on our Instagram and people will comment asking the artist how they can buy a print.

The reason so many photographers avoid or procrastinate on building an online store is simple: they think the process will be difficult and time-consuming. That’s why we love Squarespace Commerce (we’re even opening up our own print store soon). Squarespace makes the process of creating a beautiful, professional store painless and quick. No coding necessary.

Squarespace stores also rise above the rest because of their easy-to-use Overview Analytics, which tell you how your store is doing, how much you are profiting, and why. You’ll be able to see at a glance how many people visited your store, how many prints you sold, what these numbers mean. It’s also convenient to ship prints to clients: Squarespace shows you how to set up and calculate shipping rates and streamline the process. You can even print your own labels in bulk using ShipStation.

Over the course of the last few years, we’ve interviewed some photographers about their Squarespace stores. The consensus is clear: they’ve been able to find a whole new stream of income, and they’ve done it with no fuss and no muss.

Commerce App, from the high-end menswear brand Thorne

Apps

Squarespace is the go-to website platform for entrepreneurs, restaurant-owners, musicians, writers, and even hotels. But even as the brand has grown to cater to millions of brands across all kinds of disciplines, they’ve continued to keep photographers at the forefront of their minds. They continuously roll out new features that are clearly made with photographers in mind, including their state-of-the-art iOS Apps.

The most useful app for photographers might be the Portfolio App, which enables you to display your work beautifully on an iPad or iPhone. The App synchronizes your galleries to fit whatever device you’re using, allowing you to show your work to potential clients wherever you are, even if you don’t have an internet connection. Using Squarespace’s On-the-Spot Sharing, you can even email specific images to clients straight from the Portfolio App.

We also love the Blog App because it’s great to read about the stories behind the work. Squarespace lets you build and maintain a blog side-by-side with your portfolio, and the app allows you to edit it and manage comments on your mobile devices.

Additional apps like the Analytics App and the Commerce App give photographers access to their business wherever they are, in the palms of their hands. Squarespace also has specialized apps for Android users.

Domains

Thanks to Squarespace, the days of paying thousands of dollars for a domain name are over. In the fall of 2016, the platform gave users the option of buying domain names directly, eliminating the need of negotiating through a third-party website. You can register one domain for free for one year with an annual Squarespace plan, and additional domain names are affordable at only $20 to $70 a year.

Kombucha Dog for G-Suite

G-Suite

The G-Suite feature goes hand-in-hand with Domains. Squarespace has partnered with G-Suite by Google to give users the option of creating email addresses to match their domain names. For instance, let’s say you get the domain name fineartphotographer.com. With Squarespace and G-Suite, you can also have a custom email address like [email protected]. Additionally, Squarespace users who also use G-Suite will have access to Google Calendar and Google Drive. G-Suite is perfect for photographers who want everything to be streamlined, professional, and easy to access.

24/7 Support

Squarespace is synonymous with outstanding customer service. The Squarespace Customer Care Team has won multiple awards throughout the years, and they’re around 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can live-chat a member of the expert team of developers, and they will walk you through any and every question you might have.

We’ve interviewed dozens of photographers throughout the years about the process of building a website. When we first started asking photographers about Squarespace, we knew they’d tell us about the beautifully-designed templates. We did not, however, expect the huge number of comments about customer support.

In the past, photographers have described Squarespace customer service as great, awesome,  and mind-blowing. One Squarespace user , “Any question, any time of day or night, and Squarespace responds within the hour. The customer service is a dream.”

Squarespace makes it easy for anyone to build a beautiful home online. Try Squarespace for free today! When you’re ready to subscribe be sure to use code FEATURESHOOT for 10% off your first domain or website purchase.

Squarespace is a Feature Shoot sponsor.