Before I move to 7.1, I'd love some advice!

First trip to the forum. Hi!

I designed this site a few years ago (in a very haphazard way) and since then life, work and my website requirements have moved on massively. I'm at the stage where I need to move to 7.1 and to update my site to reflect my business as it is now. I'm a bit nervous though: and would love to be directed towards some good practice before I make the shift.

I've been offered some local business support, and the person reviewing my site was horrified by the following mobile results. (See screenshots below.) In fact, he said he's never seen any so bad. (It was bit embarrassing actually.)

I want to stick with Squarespace. Will all these issues be sorted by using 7.1 and better web design? Or will I still face some of these nasty numbers? Can anyone give me a headsup on how best to approach this?

I have dipped into some of the discussion on Google PageInsights and SEO results and mobile-friendly concerns. I just want to start well and give my business its best chance, if you know what I mean?

Cheers!

Can you share your website URL? Would be interesting to have a look. Overall 7.1 had some good improvements on SEO and page speed, testing results can still be slightly off, but I believe that part of that is the way Squarespace is set up, and testing is therefore not always indicative of the actual experience people visiting your website will have. Keeping your website very clean from the perspective of adding additions scripts and code, as well as doing all the right things with keeping images well optimized and the page size as small as possible. 

I would absolutely recommend 7.1 over 7 for many reasons, your next question is do you jump into Fluid Engine or stick with the classic editor whilst it is still available...

Thanks for responding, Ziggy! Here's the site: https://encompass-id.com/ (I thought I had included it, so cheers for pointing that out. 🤦‍♀️) I've done some training on Fluid Engine (and worked with Elementor on a couple of Wordpress sites), so it would definitely be Fluid Engine that I'd use.

My website is far from 'clean' at the moment. I'm working on  also cleaning up my messaging in the meantime.

You may  find that there is not a lot of changes you can make in 7.1  to change the look of your site that you can't do with the Brine family of 7.0 templates you are using now. The viewer look of 7.1 is inspired by the Brine family of templates, which has 45 of them  compared to 7.1 which is basically one template with 18 starting designs.  The Brine family, many designers, professional ones, still believe it is the best template family that Squarespace has. You can switch from one to the other which you cannot do in 7.1  Before you swtich maybe you should take a look at the other members of the Brine family? You may find one that really works for you and will save you much time and effort to build. 

https://www.sarahhalliday.com/squarespace-tips/the-brine-family-template-index

Thanks Derrick. That's interesting. I did choose Brine because of the amount of flexibility it gave me, but from other forum posts, isn't 7.1 better for performance? Might it iron out some of the issues flagged by the wesbite report above? I guess new isn't always better, but I thought in this case it probably was!

I'm not looking to do a huge redesign, but I do want my site working the best it can, epsecially as I hone my business. Hmm. Not sure about this one.

I don't believe 7.1 is designed necessarily to improve loading times or SEO performance over 7.0, althought it does have some improvements.  It still uses the same CDN (content delivery network) that 7.0 uses with the same library functions. You can easily move blog posts from one blog page to another, a function I would very much like to have in 7.0. 

It is a 90 percent different configuration platform, and it has changed much with FE Fluid Engine which gives drag and drop block placement and sizing, something that 7.0 takes a bit of finagaling to do, by using spacer blocks and other things. I personally have not changed over to 7.1 although I have experimented with it quite a bit. I know my template very well, and it doesn' look much like the default, and my design is much different than it was in 2015 when I built it. I have added quite a bit of code to give it a somewhat unique look. 

my random views

As I said  7.1  looks very much to the viewer like the Brine Family of templates and that is the major differnce between 7.0 and 7.1 , and to paraphrase Jodi Nuefield 7.1 is different in  the way long pages are laid out in sections. In Squarespace 7.0,  you needed to use a template that supported  index pages, as yours does and mine does not,  to achieve long scrolling pages with sections, but in Squarespace 7.1 all pages allow for sections". Jodi has a blog that compares 7.1 to the Brine family. It should help you decide what to do better than I can I bet.  https://www.jodineufelddesign.com/blog/squarespace-71-vs-70?=7.1