You’ve started a new job.
You’re getting your head around new systems, new people, new processes and approximately 400 new passwords.
Then someone casually drops this into the conversation:
“Oh, and you’ll be looking after the website.”
Right.
Is there a handover guide?
No.
Did the person who used to manage it leave any instructions?
Also no.
Have you ever used Squarespace before?
Not really.
Excellent. 😂
Before you start clicking buttons to see what happens, I have another suggestion.
Ask your manager if they’ll pay for an hour of Squarespace training.
I don’t need to have built the website. I don’t need to take over managing it. And I’m not going to spend an hour teaching you every single thing Squarespace can do.
I’ll teach you how your website works and how to do the things your job actually requires you to do.
You Don’t Need to Learn Squarespace
You need to learn your Squarespace website.
There’s a difference.
Even if you’ve used Squarespace before, the website you’ve inherited might be set up completely differently.
It could have blog collections, galleries, portfolio pages, forms, hidden pages, dropdown navigation, custom CSS or sections that have been built in a very particular way.
You don’t necessarily need to understand all of it.
If your job is to update the team page, publish the occasional article, change some images and keep the information on the website up to date, that’s what you need to know how to do.
And if there are parts of the website that are probably best left alone?
I’ll show you those too.
Bring Me Your “How Do I…?” List
This is how I like to approach Squarespace training.
Rather than giving you a generic tour of the platform, we’ll work on the actual website you’re responsible for.
Before we meet, have a think about the things you’re likely to need to do.
How do I add a new team member?
How do I publish a blog post?
How do I replace this image?
How do I add something to the menu?
Where do the contact form submissions go?
Why does this page work differently from that one?
What are all these pages under Not Linked?
And possibly:
If I touch this, am I going to break the entire website?
Probably not.
But let’s check. 😂
I’ll work through the questions that are actually relevant to your role, show you how things have been set up and explain the safest way to make the changes you’ll regularly need to make.
I Don’t Need to Have Built Your Website
This is important.
Quite a lot of the Squarespace websites I work on weren’t originally built by me. In fact, I don’t just build websites from scratch. I also help fix, finish and fine-tune existing Squarespace websites.
Sometimes you’ve inherited a Squarespace website and the original designer is no longer around. Sometimes the website was built internally. Sometimes a business has simply had a change of staff and the person who knew how everything worked has left.
That’s fine.
I can take a look at how the website has been put together, work out what’s going on and then help you understand it too.
I recently did exactly this for someone who had taken over responsibility for an existing Squarespace website.
I hadn’t built the site. It didn’t need redesigning. And they didn’t need me to take over managing it.
They just needed someone to show them how it worked.
So we jumped on Zoom, opened their actual website and worked through the things they needed to know.
That’s a very different experience from watching a generic Squarespace tutorial because we’re not talking about some pretend example website.
We’re talking about yours.
Yes, We Can Record It
There’s quite a lot to take in when somebody is showing you around a website for the first time.
So I’m very happy for our Squarespace training session to be recorded.
That means you don’t need to frantically write down every step while I’m talking.
You can concentrate on understanding what we’re doing, ask questions as we go and then go back to the recording the next time you need to remember how to do something.
Three months later when you’re staring at the screen thinking, how did Jodi say I add one of these again?, you don’t have to start from scratch.
You can just go back and check.
Your Boss Will Probably Thank You for Asking
If looking after the company website has suddenly become part of your job, don’t feel like you’re supposed to quietly figure everything out yourself.
Nobody can reasonably expect you to know how a website you’ve never seen before has been constructed.
And even if you’re reasonably confident with technology, you can waste a surprising amount of time trying to work out how someone else has built something.
From your employer’s point of view, paying for a short training session can make a lot more sense than paying you to spend hours Googling the answer to every question.
It’s also considerably easier than having to fix something that’s accidentally been deleted, moved or completely rearranged.
And, perhaps most importantly, it means the website is actually more likely to get updated.
Because once you know what you’re doing, you stop being scared to touch it.
I’m Not Trying to Turn You Into a Website Designer
You don’t need to know everything I know.
That’s why I have a job.
The aim is simply to make you confident with the parts of the website that you need to manage.
I’ll show you the everyday stuff you can comfortably look after yourself.
If I notice something while we’re going through the website that could be improved, I’ll let you know.
And if we stumble across something that needs more than a quick fix, we can deal with that separately.
You don’t have to become your company’s new website designer just because someone gave you the login.
You just need to know enough to look after the bits you’ve been put in charge of.
Inherited a Squarespace Website With No Handover?
Don’t panic.
And definitely don’t spend the next three weekends watching Squarespace tutorials for features you’ll never use.
Ask your manager if they’ll cover a personalised Squarespace training session instead.
Bring your website. Bring your questions. Bring the list of things you’ve been too scared to click.
I’ll show you how your website works, how to make the updates you actually need to make and which bits you can safely ignore.
