Very helpful thank you! What do you use for email marketing and automations? I am thinking of using square space for my courses as I currently use them for my website but their email marketing really isn't great at the moment!
You can use mailchimp, flodesk or convertkit. They all have their pros and cons. For mailchimp and flodesk, you'll need a third-party integration tool like make.com to do the e-commerce integration. For ConvertKit, they have a great Squarespace e-commerce integration, however you need to be on the advanced Squarespace plan to use it. Hope this helps!
Super helpful! how do you set up payment? I mean how do you get payed?? They fill in their information (paypal or credit card) but how does this info connect to my bank??? thanks!
I'm getting ready to launch my class on Squarespace...can you tell me how I can give a few people free access? I don't want to make my class free, however, I want to give access to a few people who bought this class on a previous platform. I'm switching over. Can you tell me how I could do that? Thank you!
You could either create a free payment plan for these people and send them a special link to a page where they can buy with the free payment plan. Or you could give them a discount code that gives them 100% off the price of the course when they enter the code at checkout.
Great video! :-) but i have one question: 20:16 - "there's no option for dripping content" What do you mean excatly with "dripping content" ? I dont understand this point ... ...
This is for situations where you have an ever-green course, and you want to drip for example: module 1 goes out immediately on enrollment, module 2 goes out one week after they enrol. This isn't currently a functionality that's available.
That checkout UX is awful. I’ve never seen such a silly checkout. It doesn’t follow conventions of any kind. I’m so frustrated as a longtime SS user who recently transferred courses over that this is the checkout. Thanks for the video!
I agree! It is very annoying that potential customers have to create an account before they even get to see the checkout page. This is the only reason I am not using Squarespace to host my course. Do you know if there would be a way to by-pass the Squarespace checkout page? For instance use something like Thrivecart instead and when people purchase using Thrivecart they are automatically enrolled in the Squarespace course.
Hello Alana, do you have any recommendations for doing pre-orders for an ebook through squarespace? Would love to see a video on this. Thank you for your helpful tips!
You could just set this up as a 'service' product in your shop rather than a 'digital product'. People can purchase. Then when you're ready to send out the book, download a list of your customers from the 'orders' section in Squarespace, filter by the ebook pre-order service product and you've got a full list of customers to send out the ebook to.
wonderful video! thank you! So for someone just starting out with online education who is almost done building two courses and considering starting a second "education" website in addition to my main website (wordpress) would you recommend going straight to Squarespace for both the website and courses? I was originally thinking of a SS website and then using Teachable or Kajabi. But, now with the new SS Courses, I'm not sure what might be the best option for me. Thoughts? One more question! Would Courses also be good to use as a space for customers to access opt in freebies? Meaning, if they opt in to a freebie on your website, would you want to direct them to your Courses to access it? Or stick with simple downloads for those?
Squarespace is definitely a great alternative to Wordpress. I wrote an article here which explains the difference well: alanajadestudio.com/blog/squarespace-vs-wordpress As far as courses go, there are some functionalities in Teachable etc that isn't avaialbe in Squarespace courses yet. I mentioned these in the video towards the end. So you'd need to consider what functionalities you need and make sure SS courses caters for those.
That's right. You can drip content by a specific date only though. But In situations where you have an ever-green course, as yet, you can't drip by say "one week after someone enrolls". But Squarespace are working on that.
No, allowed hours only counts if you are uploading videos to Squarespace. If you use Vimeo or UA-cam for example, it wont count to the hours. However, you’ll need to consider video protection. If you upload to Squarespace the videos are protected to only those that have paid for the course. You could also achieve this protection through a paid Vimeo plan.
You can. You can do this with Squarespace email, though it’s a bit limited at this point. Or some mailing systems - like convert kit - integrate with Squarespace digital products so you could create automatons through this system.
I tried the discount code for my online courses but it will only allow me to select one rather than all my digital courses. Ive been trying to find the solution ....😢
Ah yes, it looks like at this point you can only apply a discount code to one course (and it's payment plans). I would suggest reaching out to Squarespace and requesting that they consider adding this feature. They do listen and the more of us that request this feature, the better.
Super helpful! Thank you 😊
Gald it helped!
Very helpful, thank you!
Glad it was useful!
Very helpful thank you! What do you use for email marketing and automations? I am thinking of using square space for my courses as I currently use them for my website but their email marketing really isn't great at the moment!
You can use mailchimp, flodesk or convertkit. They all have their pros and cons. For mailchimp and flodesk, you'll need a third-party integration tool like make.com to do the e-commerce integration. For ConvertKit, they have a great Squarespace e-commerce integration, however you need to be on the advanced Squarespace plan to use it. Hope this helps!
Yes really helpful thank you! I actually ended up upgrading my plan last night as I already have convertkit that works well!
@@AlanaJadeStudio
Super helpful! how do you set up payment? I mean how do you get payed?? They fill in their information (paypal or credit card) but how does this info connect to my bank??? thanks!
So glad this helped. When you setup your shop in Squarespace, you connect it to your preferred payment processor (either Paypal or Stripe or both).
I'm getting ready to launch my class on Squarespace...can you tell me how I can give a few people free access? I don't want to make my class free, however, I want to give access to a few people who bought this class on a previous platform. I'm switching over. Can you tell me how I could do that? Thank you!
You could either create a free payment plan for these people and send them a special link to a page where they can buy with the free payment plan. Or you could give them a discount code that gives them 100% off the price of the course when they enter the code at checkout.
Great video! :-)
but i have one question:
20:16 - "there's no option for dripping content"
What do you mean excatly with "dripping content" ? I dont understand this point ... ...
This is for situations where you have an ever-green course, and you want to drip for example: module 1 goes out immediately on enrollment, module 2 goes out one week after they enrol. This isn't currently a functionality that's available.
That checkout UX is awful. I’ve never seen such a silly checkout. It doesn’t follow conventions of any kind. I’m so frustrated as a longtime SS user who recently transferred courses over that this is the checkout. Thanks for the video!
I agree! It is very annoying that potential customers have to create an account before they even get to see the checkout page. This is the only reason I am not using Squarespace to host my course. Do you know if there would be a way to by-pass the Squarespace checkout page? For instance use something like Thrivecart instead and when people purchase using Thrivecart they are automatically enrolled in the Squarespace course.
Hello Alana, do you have any recommendations for doing pre-orders for an ebook through squarespace? Would love to see a video on this. Thank you for your helpful tips!
You could just set this up as a 'service' product in your shop rather than a 'digital product'. People can purchase. Then when you're ready to send out the book, download a list of your customers from the 'orders' section in Squarespace, filter by the ebook pre-order service product and you've got a full list of customers to send out the ebook to.
wonderful video! thank you! So for someone just starting out with online education who is almost done building two courses and considering starting a second "education" website in addition to my main website (wordpress) would you recommend going straight to Squarespace for both the website and courses? I was originally thinking of a SS website and then using Teachable or Kajabi. But, now with the new SS Courses, I'm not sure what might be the best option for me. Thoughts?
One more question! Would Courses also be good to use as a space for customers to access opt in freebies? Meaning, if they opt in to a freebie on your website, would you want to direct them to your Courses to access it? Or stick with simple downloads for those?
Squarespace is definitely a great alternative to Wordpress. I wrote an article here which explains the difference well: alanajadestudio.com/blog/squarespace-vs-wordpress As far as courses go, there are some functionalities in Teachable etc that isn't avaialbe in Squarespace courses yet. I mentioned these in the video towards the end. So you'd need to consider what functionalities you need and make sure SS courses caters for those.
you can drip content, you just change the publishing times
That's right. You can drip content by a specific date only though. But In situations where you have an ever-green course, as yet, you can't drip by say "one week after someone enrolls". But Squarespace are working on that.
If you embed videos does that count towards your allowed hours on each plan
No, allowed hours only counts if you are uploading videos to Squarespace. If you use Vimeo or UA-cam for example, it wont count to the hours. However, you’ll need to consider video protection. If you upload to Squarespace the videos are protected to only those that have paid for the course. You could also achieve this protection through a paid Vimeo plan.
are you able to automate an email sequence for the course
You can. You can do this with Squarespace email, though it’s a bit limited at this point. Or some mailing systems - like convert kit - integrate with Squarespace digital products so you could create automatons through this system.
I tried the discount code for my online courses but it will only allow me to select one rather than all my digital courses. Ive been trying to find the solution ....😢
Ah yes, it looks like at this point you can only apply a discount code to one course (and it's payment plans). I would suggest reaching out to Squarespace and requesting that they consider adding this feature. They do listen and the more of us that request this feature, the better.