Tiny_Coast

Hi everyone,
Very excited to be here! 
I'm a danish, self employed, allround creative director and photographer. I've spend the past 7-ish years exploring different industries, helping businesses build their brands and grow. 
About a year ago I decided to focus my time on working with clients that share my values and interests; outdoor, food and folk. 
Hands down the best decision I've ever made.
I currently divide my time between Copenhagen and traveling across the Nordic countries, working with hunting, sailing, fishing and a lot of other brilliant things. 
Squarespace has become my go-to platform for clients. Although I sometimes miss having more freedom to create and customize, I keep returning as this tool is just super simple, always ends with a beautiful result, and most importantly: is so easy-to-use for my clients ones I've handed it over to them.

Please feel free to check out my work:
www.mariebrandt.dk
And follow along: @mariebrandt
All the best,
M

Hi All,
I'm Sally Gregg and fairly new to Squarespace! In the last six months, I've launched a website offering my web design services to small business owners, non-profits and inidividuals. I'm a former marketing and communications professional with many years of copywriting experience. Thanks to the help of two amazing leaders in this community - Kerstin Martin and Christy Price - I am gaining traction with this new endeavor and loving the journey. 
I would be thrilled for any of you to take a look at my website and offer up your constructive criticism. 
In the meantime, thanks for the warm welcome to this Circle!

I find anchor links most useful for long-form blog content. I recently wrote this article https://tinycoastdigital.com/insights/2022-web-design-trends and went back and added anchor links when I realized it was a lot to scroll through if someone was only interested in exploring a few of the topics. 
I also use anchor links in a few places on my website to take people straight to a services section and provide a more efficient experience. 

In my experience, unlinked pages work well for creating pages with a very narrow focus that you may want to use for campaigns. Because of the duplicate feature, it is also an opportunity to test performance by creating a few pages with different messaging and creative assets when you are using paid ads. Under the SEO tab for each page, you can also toggle the button to "hide page from search results" if you are running a limited or seasonal campaign and don't intend for the page to show up in search engines. 

Hi Louise,
Well done! I think the website looks beautiful. My only comment (and this is very much a personal opinion) is that I don't love the typing text at the top of the homepage. I would maybe inverse the message so 
"Shetland's Multidisciplinary Engineering Firm (H1)  And maybe list project engineering, domestic contracting, Engineering consulting below (i realize it is a lot of text), similar to how an accordion would look, only if the accordion didn't expand.  OR, 
"Shetland's Multidisciplinary Engineering Firm (H1)  Your one-stop-shop for engineering services  (h2) Button "Explore Services" (anchor link to services)  And the get in touch button moves just below the services? 
Just passing along a thought based on my personal preference for not loving typing text. What you have looks beautiful, and is very intuitive and well designed! 

Thank you for this topic! I find that one page sites that have one main topic with sections are perfect for anchor links. It's not always necessary to have them but when you need them, you need them! No one likes to scroll for long 🙂 Thanks!

Site URL: https://www.vimana.agency/
Hello,
I cannot for the life of me simply get these two buttons to stay together on the same row on mobile.
I've gone through several articles on here and pasted the CSS I thought would work and none of it works. I have no clue why this is the case, can someone please help me before I tear all my hair out? I've figure out much more complex CSS before so this is very frustrating and will probably take someone on here two second 😆

Hey, thanks for asking. I use anchor links a lot too (in french). 
First, I use them for multiple categories on a magazine: so the reader can directly jump to the category he wants: https://influenz.design/magazine
I use them as well as the main structure for a glossary (for the alphabetical sections as well as for the definitions themselves): https://influenz.design/glossaire

Anchor Links are really helpful.  I use them all the time.  Especially on our SquareKicker websites.  The feature page here is a great use case.  Here is a link to SquareKicker Anchor Link Video.  This link will take you to the specific section on the page using Anchor Link too.
https://squarekicker.com/features#anchor-links 

Anchor links or page jumps are a vital component to any website, but specifically important for those websites that are text-heavy or have a lot of content on a single page. In essence, an anchor link is a special URL that takes you to a specific place on a page. They’re useful for letting your visitors skip to the parts of your content that interest them, and they’re a great organizational device that aids readability. As an added bonus, they help with SEO too.
In Squarespace, there are two types of anchor links you can use, depending on the version of our platform you’re using. For example, if your site is on the Squarespace 7.0 platform, you can create anchor links on Index Pages using the steps in the guide Adding index page anchor links. If your site is on the 7.1 version, you can add a small custom code snippet and create an anchor link on Layout Pages. Check out our guide Creating anchor links. 
Before stuffing your Main Navigation with anchor links, there are some considerations you need to take into account. For example, too many items in your navigation can be aesthetically overwhelming and become a hindrance to readers. Links that are too close together can be a problem on mobile, specifically for visitors with limited hand mobility.
How do you use anchor links on your website? Do you have any special practices or tricks? Let us know in the comments below!
 

Hi Leanne, 
I think your website looks great - it is well organized and intuitive - very nice! 
My one comment would be that the copy may be a little lengthy in spots and that could lead to a lot of scrolling, especially on mobile.
My suggestion would be to shorten the copy where possible. For example, under "What Leanne's Co. can do for you" I would consider removing the lengthier description with something like: 
"Translating your vision into high performing branding assets" (this is just a suggestion and needs some work).
Another option would be to use the accordion feature to help break up lengthier blocks of text. 
This is certainly not necessary, just a thought!  Overall, the website is great😊 

Site URL: https://www.leannes.co/
Hello!

I've been working away on my site for the last while and have really enjoyed the ease of building it in Squarespace (bar a few hick-ups that took me about two weeks to figure out the CSS!)

I think it's pretty much finished now but as I haven't shown it to many people yet, I'd really appreciate your feedback on how it looks and navigates.

Thank you 🙏😀

I'm really happy about the accordion release! They are a great tool for cleaning up a page that is text-heavy and providing a better mobile experience. 
I think a "do" when using accordions is to make sure the heading for each tab is descriptive enough or labelled in a way that it will be intuitive for someone to click in and read more. 
I'm using the accordion in two ways and in two places on my website. One is to provide more information on what would otherwise be a text-heavy page, and the other is an FAQ section.  
 
 

The best thing you can do before you start with paid social is to get clear with what you are trying to accomplish. For example, is this a branding exercise? Are you looking for email signups or engagement with a free trial? Or are you looking for someone to make a purchase? 
From there, you can make sure you have the necessary tracking in place to measure what you are trying to achieve. You can also place a dollar amount on different metrics. 
If you are using paid social to drive conversions, but the acquisition cost is more than your product (and margins), paid social may not be worth it.  
A better route may be using google search ads because people have more search intent and are more likely to convert. However, it is always essential to think about your corresponding landing page experience to understand where the disconnect arises if you have a great click-through rate on your ads but aren't seeing the results you'd like.
If, however, paid social is excellent for bringing in people who are eager to do a free trial, and each new client is worth more than the cost of acquisition, social may be a great channel for you.  
In my experience, start with a small budget, and test a few different types of messaging, and creative and see if people are engaging with your creative. Try a few different formats, and landing pages, and once you start to get some traction, you can increase your ad spend. In time, hopefully, you'll have a rough idea how much an email sign up, or download, or purchase usually costs via different ad channels. 
Different types of ads are better suited to branding vs people actively searching out a solution. Before you start with paid social you want to consider: 
1. goals of your paid social efforts
2. your audience (personas?) 
3.  messaging - what kind of messaging resonates? 
4. creative - what kind of ad formats resonate? 
5. social channel - what channel is best suited to your audience (LinkedIn, instagram etc)
6. call to action  - what do you want people to do 
7. landing page experience  and URL (where are you sending people, and does your ad messaging mirror your landing page?) 
8. Cost (is this channel helping your business financially)

The best thing you can do before you start with paid social is to get clear with what you are trying to accomplish. For example, is this a branding exercise? Are you looking for email signups or engagement with a free trial? Or are you looking for someone to make a purchase? 
From there, you can make sure you have the necessary tracking in place to measure what you are trying to achieve. You can also place a dollar amount on different metrics. 
If you are using paid social to drive conversions, but the acquisition cost is more than your product (and margins), paid social may not be worth it.  
A better route may be using google search ads because people have more search intent and are more likely to convert. However, it is always essential to think about your corresponding landing page experience to understand where the disconnect arises if you have a great click-through rate on your ads but aren't seeing the results you'd like.
If, however, paid social is excellent for bringing in people who are eager to do a free trial, and each new client is worth more than the cost of acquisition, social may be a great channel for you.  
In my experience, start with a small budget, and test a few different types of messaging, and creative and see if people are engaging with your creative. Try a few different formats, and landing pages, and once you start to get some traction, you can increase your ad spend. In time, hopefully, you'll have a rough idea how much an email sign up, or download, or purchase usually costs via different ad channels. 
Different types of ads are better suited to branding vs people actively searching out a solution. Before you start with paid social you want to consider: 
1. goals of your paid social efforts
2. your audience (personas?) 
3.  messaging - what kind of messaging resonates? 
4. creative - what kind of ad formats resonate? 
5. social channel - what channel is best suited to your audience (LinkedIn, instagram etc)
6. call to action  - what do you want people to do 
7. landing page experience  and URL (where are you sending people, and does your ad messaging mirror your landing page?) 
8. Cost (is this channel helping your business financially)

It is a lot of effort, but I do think one of the best things you can do is offer something of value. That may come in the form of tutorials, discounts, free trials, information, engaging content, etc).
It is important to establish what your audience finds valuable, and when (do they need a free trial to consider purchasing your product, or a discount to encourage them to buy from you again. 
Different people are likely at different stages of the buyers journey and have different interests - so digging into web analytics, social comments, sending out surveys, or doing some of your own experimentation can help you determine what kinds of offers / content to offer your audience at different stages of the buyers journey. 

When it comes to expanding into new channels, I think it can be very helpful to evaluate your short and long term website / digital marketing goals. 
SEO and content strategy can be a long game, so if you are looking for leads or sales in the more immediate future, you may wan to invest your time and resources into paid ads, while you simultaneously work on growing your discoverability in search engines. 
Once you define your short and long term goals, it can help to do a digital marketing SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) to prioritize your marketing efforts. 
Examples: 
How well do you rank in search engines? 
How expensive are paid ads in your industry? (can you acquire customers at a reasonable cost of conversion?)
Do you have a good social following on all / some channels? (Can you engage these channels. Does a certain type of content perform well? Would it be valuable to expand this type of content to different channels (ie tik tok) 
Is your conversion rate high? (if you increase your traffic, and maintain your conversion rate, could this be very profitable for you?) 
Is your traffic great but conversion rate low? (could you improve your UX / messaging and increase your conversion rate) 
Once you determine opportunities you'll be able to think about your audience and the kind of content that resonates with them and get more tactical with campaign planning. For example, deciding on messaging, CTAs, destination URLs and so on. 

Site URL: https://www.nationalequityproject.org
Would love some input on how others handle past events.
We offer the same courses and workshops multiple times throughout the year and create a new page for each event. 
The problem I'm running into is that older event pages rank higher than new ones and there is no option to hide an event page from search results. There is also no option for code injection. 
Is my only option to unpublish pages for past events?

I wish the accordion block can add image like people auto-layout instead of just text

Been waiting for this feature for years

Yes! Adding images would be fantastic.

I'm very pleased with this option though, since using coding and markdowns was often buggy and the accordion rarely loaded "closed"

Accordion or collapsible menus are considered one of the workhorses of web design for good reason. They’re a versatile tool for text heavy pages on a website, like those showcasing a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), and they also help keep your pages short and reduce scrolling fatigue for your readers. They can solve potential design problems, like too much content or too little real estate on the page, and they can provide an intuitive direction for users to explore the information that they need and collapse the information that they don’t. 
In Squarespace, if you’d like to add an accordion menu to your site you would need to use an Accordion Block. Accordion Blocks have their own styling options that you can customize to get the look and feel you want for your site. If the available customizations don't cover your needs, our community member Tuanphan created a handy list of useful code for the Accordion Block.

Are you planning on using the Accordion Block? Do you already use one on your site? What are your best practices for the effective use of an accordion menu? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below! 
 

In my experience, unlinked pages work well for creating pages with a very narrow focus that you may want to use for campaigns. Because of the duplicate feature, it is also an opportunity to test performance by creating a few pages with different messaging and creative assets when you are using paid ads. Under the SEO tab for each page, you can also toggle the button to "hide page from search results" if you are running a limited or seasonal campaign and don't intend for the page to show up in search engines. 

I'll be honest when I hit my first $14K month with just web design services, it was a milestone that was truly remarkable. I was no longer hoping and believing that I could make this work, I was seeing evidence that this is working. Of course, there are other amazing milestones that are not monetary and mean a lot to me. But to keep going in my business this one metric was absolutely outstanding for me.

The best thing you can do before you start with paid social is to get clear with what you are trying to accomplish. For example, is this a branding exercise? Are you looking for email signups or engagement with a free trial? Or are you looking for someone to make a purchase? 
From there, you can make sure you have the necessary tracking in place to measure what you are trying to achieve. You can also place a dollar amount on different metrics. 
If you are using paid social to drive conversions, but the acquisition cost is more than your product (and margins), paid social may not be worth it.  
A better route may be using google search ads because people have more search intent and are more likely to convert. However, it is always essential to think about your corresponding landing page experience to understand where the disconnect arises if you have a great click-through rate on your ads but aren't seeing the results you'd like.
If, however, paid social is excellent for bringing in people who are eager to do a free trial, and each new client is worth more than the cost of acquisition, social may be a great channel for you.  
In my experience, start with a small budget, and test a few different types of messaging, and creative and see if people are engaging with your creative. Try a few different formats, and landing pages, and once you start to get some traction, you can increase your ad spend. In time, hopefully, you'll have a rough idea how much an email sign up, or download, or purchase usually costs via different ad channels. 
Different types of ads are better suited to branding vs people actively searching out a solution. Before you start with paid social you want to consider: 
1. goals of your paid social efforts
2. your audience (personas?) 
3.  messaging - what kind of messaging resonates? 
4. creative - what kind of ad formats resonate? 
5. social channel - what channel is best suited to your audience (LinkedIn, instagram etc)
6. call to action  - what do you want people to do 
7. landing page experience  and URL (where are you sending people, and does your ad messaging mirror your landing page?) 
8. Cost (is this channel helping your business financially)