Squarespace and AI: Building the Future

I’ve been using Squarespace for two years and it’s been a smooth ride so far. I created my website for fashion products and it took just about a couple of days to set it up with images, content, and everything.

Two days isn’t a lot for setting up an ecommerce website without any help. But things have become even faster and smoother with AI. I integrated AI in my Squarespace store just a few weeks ago and I’m going to discuss what AI options we have.

Before that, let me introduce you to Squarespace.

What is Squarespace?

Squarespace is a website builder that does everything for you – get a domain name, set up a website, and launch it. You can select your niche and choose a template, and it will give you a draft website that you can edit.

It has a drag-and-drop interface that lets you fit your desired elements into the webpage. There are several templates and layouts to quickly create a website. At Squarespace, you can sell products, services, subscriptions, and a lot more.

As an eCommerce platform, it lets you integrate various payment gateways and helps you easily track inventory.

Emergence of AI in Web Design and Development

Back when I created my website, there were no AI features (or at least I hadn’t heard about them). I had to write the content for my website and come up with the right images. But times have changed now. New merchants have the option to use AI to make things easier.

As artificial intelligence is now integrated into most website building tools, it has made content generation easier. It also helps in writing product descriptions based on the keywords given by the merchant.

Squarespace Integrating AI into its Platform

Squarespace has recently added AI to its list of features. AI in Squarespace primarily focuses on website layout and content generation.

As a merchant, I know that writing product descriptions is a big chore. While the other copy stays pretty much as it is, the products keep changing and need new copies each time. With AI in product descriptions, things have become much simpler.

Squarespace also lets you generate emails for email marketing. As a retail merchant, you might already be aware of the importance of email marketing.

Background of Squarespace

Let’s have a little background of Squarespace.

History

It was founded in 2003 by Anthony Casalena in a dorm room at the University of Maryland. From that day to today, it has grown to a team of over 1760 people.

It has helped millions of people launch their websites. Squarespace has received workplace recognition for its outstanding work over the years.

Current Market Position

Squarespace has over 4.2 million subscribers and has a presence in almost every country. While it’s available globally, it has a large market share in the US, and it’s not surprising that 71.8% of its revenue is generated in the US.

In November 2023, the company was on track to surpass $1 billion in revenue. Squarespace is the fourth most popular CMS platform in the world, covering a 3-4% market share of all CMS websites. Its biggest competitor is Wix which holds approximately 11% of the market share.

Overview of Features

Squarespace is an all-in-one website-building platform. It offers customizable templates, drag-and-drop editing, and e-commerce functionality. So whether you’re a blogger, a photographer, or a retail merchant, Squarespace has something for you.

It provides a user-friendly interface for creating professional websites without coding. With built-in SEO tools, analytics, and mobile responsiveness, Squarespace lets you create and manage attractive websites.

But where does AI fit in? Let’s see.

AI in Web Design

AI is rather new in web design Not very long ago, if you wanted an eCommerce website, you’d have to hire a team of designers and developers. With AI, now you can develop your own eCommerce website in just a day.

From automatic code generation to smart chat bots and from content creation to automated testing, everything is handled by AI.

Benefits of AI in Web Designing

AI in web designing is a blessing. Imagine spending several hundreds of dollars just to get a website up and running. You would have to hire a proper team for this job. With AI and services such as Squarespace, now you can run and manage your website on your own – no need to hire experts.

Just drag and drop the elements onto your pages and your website looks exactly how you want it to look. If you’ve been in the online retail industry for over 10 years, you would agree that times have changed a lot and it’s like magic these days.

Let’s consider a few examples.

Examples of AI applications

There are way too many examples of AI applications in web design to fit in one article, so I’ll list just a few.

Take layout and design optimization. Squarespace does it, Wix does it, GoDaddy does it. So does Shopify, Weebly, and others. They give readymade templates and you just have to drag and drop elements on them. The backend code is generated on its own.

Let’s consider chat bots and virtual assistants. Tools like Drift offer chat bots that understand the business’ content and deliver accurate conversations to answer the questions of customers and keep them engaged. So you don’t have to hire teams for customer support.

Introduction to Squarespace AI

Yep, AI is cool – it does so much for you without the need for human intervention. But what does Squarespace offer?

Squarespace has integrated AI to create layouts and generate text on its website. Coming up with text on your website can be a hassle – product descriptions, website copy, emails, and so much more. With AI-generated content, you don’t have to spend hours writing a copy.

Here is what Squarespace AI offers.

Squarespace Blueprint

Squarespace Blueprint is an intelligent website design tool that creates stunning websites with just a few clicks. As the website owner, you just have to make selections by clicking on some choices. Squarespace will automatically assign your chosen template to your website. Or if you wish to create your own template, it will do that for you.

As you make selections, your website will be displayed on the side so you can see how it looks with each click. And in the end, you’ll have a fully functional website that can be edited and used.

Website Onboarding and copywriting

When you create a website, it will automatically have some AI-generated text according to the products or services you offer. You can edit it according to your requirements. Apart from that, Squarespace also offers text block AI content.

Text blocks are among the various elements that you can add to your website. When you add a text block to your website, AI will automatically add text to it. These blocks can be added to headings, lists, quotes, and other text.

Email campaign text

If you want to run an email campaign, you need to come up with text for the body of the email.

With AI, emails are easy to generate and send. You can generate different emails for different purposes (for example, welcome email, cart abandonment email, order confirmation email, etc.).

These are just the basic emails – there are so many others that are absolutely mandatory. How do you come up with the content for these emails? A few years ago, you had to hire people for that. But with AI, you can run an email campaign in no time.

Image block captions

Image blocks are added to blog posts or web pages. These image blocks need captions. With AI, you’ll get automatically generated captions so you don’t have to come up with them.

Image block captions don’t look like a lot. But when search engines go through your images, they recognize them through their captions. With AI, you can make your images more searchable.

Product descriptions

I’ve listed this last but product description is the most important text in an eCommerce website. When a customer has to buy a product, they’ll read the description before buying. With AI, you can just enter the keywords and it will automatically generate the description.

For example, if you’re selling T-shirts, you can enter “organic cotton, white color, loose fit” and AI will generate the full description based on that.

Case Studies of Squarespace

Squarespace is known for creating attractive websites. Let’s look at some examples that were made using Squarespace.

Minna is a website about delicious teas. Another example is Supernatural, an organic food store. Not Work Related is a store of home products. If you check out these stores, you’ll see that they have unique and beautiful designs. That’s one thing about Squarespace – the ability to create eye-catching websites. This feature makes it stand out from its competitors.

Challenges and Limitations of Squarespace AI

Squarespace has just recently integrated AI into its platform. In fact, AI has just started to become popular since January 2023 so most companies are in the beginning stages of adopting AI.

For now, most eCommerce platforms have integrated AI into just the layout and content generation part. There are not many options for other functions of the website for now. Of course, there are third-party apps but if you’re looking for native functionality, it’s rather limited currently.

The Future of AI in Squarespace

There is so much that Squarespace can introduce in the coming years. It has already achieved website layout and content generation. The next could be automatic image editing, where AI will automatically remove the background and sharpen the product images to make them look more appealing.

Another addition could be personalized product recommendations, where AI will learn from user behavior and recommend products accordingly.

There could also be virtual shopping assistants, smart chat bots, dynamic pricing, and so much more. With AI, the Squarespace scenario would be pretty different in the coming years.

Final Thoughts

I believe that Squarespace is going to invest in AI research in the coming years because that’s where the world is heading now. With artificial intelligence being the next big thing, most eCommerce and website builders are heading that way.

For now, most merchants have the option to generate content for their website with Squarespace AI. But as we move ahead in time, I predict that Squarespace will incorporate more AI changes, as I have discussed in the article.

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