Feedback on non-profit site

Site URL: https://www.nafc.org

Hello, 

I work with a small non-profit that provides education and support for people suffering from incontinence and other bladder and bowel related conditions. I'm hoping to get some feedback on our site, as well as thoughts on platforms. 

We have been using Squarespace for several years, and while there are certain limitations, we've been fairly happy with it.  However, our site has grown as we have added more and more resources, and is now very large and a bit clunky. Our page speed is very poor, especially on mobile, and certain functions are breaking due to custom coding we have added which enable us to make the site the way we want it (but apparently break the template and make some functions, like the search box not to work properly). 

We've been told by 2 "experts" that we should switch to Wordpress, since it is more customizable, better for SEO, and will greatly improve our speed and site ranking. I wanted to see if anyone here has run into the same issue, and has switched to wordpress, and what the result was? Or if the reverse has happened:  moving a large site from Wordpress to Squarespace successfully. 

Would love any insight anyone has to offer. Our non-profit is only 3 people and none of us are very tech savvy so we are nervous about making a wrong move here!

Thanks in advance! 

www.nafc.org

From my experience, Squarespace is the best choice for most websites. "Experts" usually like Wordpress due to its customization options (which is its biggest strength), and those people are often tech-savvy or have used the platform for a long time. 

As a developer myself I still prefer Squarespace all day, as it is so much easier to maintain a website here. In Squarespace you have one platform for everything, where in Wordpress there are installations you have to make, plugins to connect, updates to maintain and domains to connect - it takes so much more effort to maintain a Wordpress website.

To conclude: If you need much customization and have knowledge in the technology - choose Wordpress. For anyone else - choose Squarespace. However, this is just my experience, would be interesting to hear what others say😊

On 4/15/2021 at 9:53 PM, sarahj said:

Our site has grown as we have added more and more resources, and is now very large and a bit clunky. Our page speed is very poor, especially on mobile, and certain functions are breaking due to custom coding we have added which enable us to make the site the way we want it (but apparently break the template and make some functions, like the search box not to work properly). 

We've been told by 2 "experts" that we should switch to Wordpress, since it is more customizable, better for SEO, and will greatly improve our speed and site ranking. 

Hi @sarahj

I agree with @RasmusM.

You can build a site with great SEO on both Squarespace or WordPress. Although the platform can influence the performance of the site, WordPress isn't the miraculous solution that your "experts" have suggested and it won't wave magic wand over a site. 

The site's content and structure will play a major part in determining SEO. The Squarespace SEO guides here and here are good places to start.

The other two things to consider are the code you've added to your site and the template you are using. Some templates are more configurable than others and by swapping template, you may not need additional code to achieve the same thing. The Five template you are currently using is one of the oldest available (2012).

Regarding code, it is really easy to get into difficulties by adding code - on any platform. Removing the unnecessary code from the site may make a huge improvement to your site, and do you really know what it's doing? For example, the www.nafc.org site is unnecessarily loading two large jQuery libraries, both of which are old and have security vulnerabilities.