Squarespace levels up with Online Courses
Squarespace has entered the online courses market, releasing a new product to users in late August 2023. Described by the website design platform as a "new way for entrepreneurs to turn their knowledge and expertise into income", Squarespace claims the product means "anyone can easily create and sell a professional online course."
Courses allow creators to:
Turn expertise into a passive income stream.
Easily upload videos, design lessons, and offer students the best online learning experience.
Look like a professional right from the start with flexible course layouts that fit their brand and can be customised with the drag-and-drop editor.
Upload videos to create engaging multimedia lessons.
Encourage students to track their progress through your lessons and chapters.
Sell lifetime access to your content with a one-time fee or sell subscriptions.
After taking (and admittedly not finishing) many online courses and working with a client to develop a very successful Online School of Bridge in 2017, I was very interested to see the features of Squarespace's Courses. Fortunately, the product release lined up perfectly with my own launch of the Candidate Template, allowing me to offer an online step-by-step guide for template users.
What you can do with Squarespace Courses
Squarespace currently offers a couple of course layouts. Powered by the design tool Fluid Engine, both the Course Overview page and individual lessons can be fully customised to fit your brand and needs.
Content can easily be organised into lessons and chapters featuring text, images, videos and buttons to link to downloadable resources. For Squarespace website owners, creating new lesson layouts and the overview page is a familiar, easy experience.
Importantly, Courses can easily be monetised. Creators can add the courses to existing Member Sites or add them to a Digital Product pricing plan. The pricing plans allow you to offer different payment structures, such as one-off cost, split payments or even subscriptions.
How I used Courses
My Candidate Template is a Squarespace website template that political candidates can quickly and easily personalise into their own campaign site. I have used the Online Course to provide a step-by-step guide that walks users through the editing process.
I've allocated each stage of the process a lesson - with a video and notes ensuring template users know what they have to do. The course format allows users to mark off each lesson as they complete it to keep track of their progress.
There are two significant advantages of using an online course to provide instructions for a website template. First, I can update the course content and make it instantly available to users. This means if Squarespace updates a feature or I want to add more information in response to user feedback - I can.
The other benefit is that the content is locked and only available to users who have paid for the template. Unlike a PDF that can be easily downloaded and shared - this content is secure and protected.
Seamless Integration
For Squarespace website users, the big advantage of Online Courses is its seamless integration with the platform. Rather than directing users off to a third-party course site or using an integration like Memberspace to add a paywall to the content, this site allows you to manage the whole process from one place.
Your branding remains consistent across the site, and you can use the same video and image assets in your course or elsewhere without uploading duplicate files.
Payments can be collected using Stripe or Paypal in Australia, with notification emails and receipts all handled in Squarespace. Users can log into their online profile to access course content, billing details and receipts and reset their password if necessary.
The cost
Courses are considered a digital product and can be sold on any Squarespace website plan except Personal subscriptions. Creators looking to reduce the rather hefty 9% transaction fee can subscribe to an additional Digital Products plan. These add-ons increase the number of hours of video you can upload to Squarespace while reducing the transaction fees for Digital Products.
While the additional monthly charges can more than double the cost of running your website, Squarespace developers claim this is a cheaper alternative than paying transaction fees for popular creators. The developers stress they have worked hard to provide options for creators to choose a payment option that works for them.
The verdict
Squarespace Courses may make creating an online course a little easier - but it’s still a significant endeavour that takes a lot of time and effort to create.
What Squarespace can offer is a platform that feels familiar, brings everything together into one hub and allows you to easily experiment with new offerings and income generation.
Interested in adding a new income stream to your website?
I can help you create an online course, exclusive members section or other digital resource.
