Squarespace Help: For Whom is it Optimized?

The things that make you go hmm…

Just chalk this post up to a token weekend fluff piece, but something has bugged me for a while. Squarespace is a platform all about usability. Everyone and anyone can get a halfway decent site up in a matter of minutes. Their customer support is excellent for the most part. But there is one thing (ok, there’s actually a few but this one is bothering me most for the moment) that I just think is so bazaar and silly at times, and that is the Squarespace Help docs.

Break it down..

Yes, they have valuable info, but seriously need a ridiculous amount of searching and clicking to get an answer at times. I think many of these questions could easily be condensed. Some of the questions barely require a sentence, much less a whole freaking page! Let me present you with…

Exhibit A

When I click save can users immediately see my content?

Exhibit B

Can I place my Journal Entries in Categories?

I mean seriously, why wouldn’t you include the illustrated guide on the same page as the question in Exhibit B? Now these are just the first two that struck me today. I’m sure there are many other examples that may even be better examples of this not-so-user-friendly help directory.

Playing Tic Tac Toe…

On a seemingly unrelated note, I’ve been attending and listening to the Squarespace Workshops, one of them being Search Engine Optimization or SEO. During the workshop they recommend SeoMoz’s- Seo for Beginners. So for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been evaluating everything I think I know about Seo, especially the offsite stuff. In general, I assumed there wasn’t much I could do about anything that happens outside my site. I’ve since been enlightened (and not just because of SeoMoz to be clear) and during the midst of all this barrage of knowledge, a lightbulb goes off.

Ding Dong. Who is it?

I begin to wonder if Squarespace had some SEO come in and tell them they need to “optimize” all these help pages so that anything and everything about and pertaining to Squarespace- bam!- puts them in the first several positions of any relevant search. Because there are so many help pages on the same topic, this can take up over half the first page of the SERPs! Perhaps I’m the last one to the party in this realization, but it totally sucks for the real, flesh’n blood user that’s having to click-through 4 pages of “results” to answer a question. I wouldn’t have a problem with this so called optimization if they would at least offer a downloadable pdf or real help manual.

Time to Retreat

So that sums up my conspiracy theory. Maybe I’m right but no one else gives it much thought? Or maybe this has always been obvious to everyone but me? Or maybe I’m completely off base and the help docs are better in itsy bitty bite size piece by piece? But I feel better now that I’ve said my peace

**I did not start out writing this to pimp my big fat affiliate banner for SeoMoz but if you would like to test it out free for 30 days along with me (I just signed up), shoot me an email(holly at foggyphils.com) and perhaps we can review the value of their service for other Squarespace users together. If you’re not ready to try it out yet, I’ll write up a review at the end of my trial.