Squarespace Mobile Websites and Interior Design Marketing
March of 2015 was a big day in mobile computing. For the first time, mobile use surpassed desktop use. Fast forward to March of 2016 and search on mobile devices use now represents 65 percent of consumer's digital media time. The takeaway, if your interior design firm doesn't have a mobile strategy, you're missing out on potential business.
Squarespace understands the importance of mobile and has incorporated it into their platform. Having a Squarespace mobile website as part of your inbound strategy means that your brand is optimized and visible 24/7 no matter what device a prospective customer is using. Optimizing your interior design firm's website for mobile use can increase sales, generate more traffic, boost customer engagement and deliver a competitive edge to your business. According to Kissmetrics, “Website visitors are 51% more likely to do business with you if you have a mobile site.”
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Let's examine some of the features that affect how your Squarespace mobile website will look.
• Responsive Design and Mobile Styles Defined
Squarespace is a template-based platform. Templates are designed to optimize your site for mobile use. Visitors can easily view your site on any device from desktops to smartphones to tablets. Squarespace templates automatically adjust to the format of any device in two ways:
1. Responsive Design – A web design technique that allows your site's content to automatically resize based on the size of the viewer's browser window.
2. Mobile Styles – Most templates have built-in mobile styles that automatically activate when your site is viewed on a mobile device. Styles typically affect navigation and design elements to keep your site mobile friendly, including on touch-screen devices
• General Rules of Mobile Layout - In general, content stacks vertically for mobile viewing. This means visitors only have to scroll up or down to view your content instead of pinching, zooming and left/right scrolling. Some templates have specific mobile style options you can adjust in the Style Editor.
• Banner Images and Parallax Scrolling - If you use banner images on your Squarespace website they will experience some cropping when viewed on mobile devices. There are some options available to help minimize cropping. You can edit the position of the banner in Style Editor. Patterns work better than words, and you can also adjust the focal point of the image to control how it will appear when cropped.
Parallax scrolling is a special effect where the background image appears to move more slowly than the foreground content. It is available in several different templates.
• Columns and Sidebars - If your website uses multiple columns to display your content they are stacked vertically. Single columns will retain the page's desktop layout. If you use multiple columns, any additional columns will stack directly below the first column. Sidebars display below the content at the bottom of the page on mobile devices.
• Galleries - Squarespace offers Gallery Pages and Gallery Blocks in their templates. How it displays on mobile devices, depends on the format. Remember large image files or too many images can slow down page loads. Each template has its rules for how Galleries are displayed on mobile devices.
• Navigation - How your navigation appears on mobile devices also depends on the template you choose. But in general, the main navigation collapses behind a menu icon. If your template supports Footer Navigation, it is displayed at the bottom of the page and stacks vertically.
Mobile is here to stay, and you need to adapt. Squarespace templates give you built-in mobile compatibility without the need for any additional coding or design. With some minor tweaks (like image sizes for example) your mobile users will experience an almost identical experience on any device!
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About Michael Conway
I'm the owner and strategist at Means-of-Production. My firm builds Squarespace websites, Houzz profiles, and content marketing and advertising solutions for architects, interior designers, design-build contractors and landscape design firms. Our all-in-one marketing tactics attract the right clients with exceptional architectural photography and brand messaging that sets you apart from the competition.