Is Squarespace Good for Real Estate Websites?
If you own or manage property and want to promote it using a website, you’ve likely pondered which site builder to choose. Squarespace, with its specific features, stands as one of the top site builders in the market today.
Squarespace is suitable for building real estate websites featuring a limited number of properties (1 - 100). For individual property owners or small agencies, the platform should suffice. However, creating a marketplace site with numerous properties necessitates a more customized approach, including advanced sorting, filtering, searching, and other features. At this level, Squarespace’s infrastructure may not adequately meet such demands.
Still, let’s dive in and see what Squarespace offers in terms of key features you’d need for a real estate site.
What Should a Real Estate Site Have?
Let’s think about it from the client’s point of view. I bet you, like most folks, have gone house-hunting at some point, right?
We won’t get into the nitty-gritty of money stuff here because that’s not really about how the website looks or feels. Instead, let’s focus on features that help make real estate shine for potential buyers or renters.
So, besides the basics, any good real estate website should have:
- A nice media gallery
- The ability to show documents
- Maps
- A way for clients to get in touch, like a contact form or questionnaire
Squarespace Media (Images, 360 Images, Videos)
Squarespace Images
What’s the first thing you want to see when you’re checking out a property? Yep, photos! They give you a feel for the place and help you decide if it’s worth a visit.
Fortunately, Squarespace provides great Image Galleries. There are available these variants:
- Grid: Simple, Strips, Masonry
- Slideshow: Simple, Full, Reel
Squarespace 360 Degree Images
Photos are great, but you know what’s even cooler? 360-degree shots! They give you a real feel for the space, like you’re there checking it out in person.
With Squarespace, you can add these by simply adding the Embed Block, then upload the images to your Google Drive (or any other cloud service), navigate to the target page and add the embed block and use the Google Drive link.
Squarespace Videos
Why stop at photos? Videos can add a whole new dimension to your property listings. You can either host them yourself or embed them from third-party platforms.
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Video Hosting. It may cost you a bit extra, but the video completely belongs to your site and there’s no need to use any third-party services.
Click on the area where you want to add the video, add a new Video Block type, and upload the video file from your computer. Squarespace supports a variety of video file formats, including MP4, MOV, AVI, and WMV. Once uploaded, you can customize the video settings such as autoplay, looping, and thumbnail image.
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Video Embedding. On the other hand, you can host your video on other platforms, like Youtube or Vimeo.
Let’s say you chose Youtube, after you upload the video, click on the Share button, then the Embed one, and copy the provided embed code. Navigate to the Squarespace target page, and add the Embed Block withe the code from Youtube.
Squarespace Documents Embedding
So, you’ve got your images and videos, but what about all the other details?
Sometimes you want to provide stuff like floor plans or specifications. Such info is normally presented as documents (.pdf, .xls, .txt). Similarly to 360 images, store the documents on Google Dive, and embed it in minutes using the Embed Block I mentioned before.
Here are guides that can help you with that:
- How To Embed A PDF In Squarespace
- How to Add a Google Sheet to Squarespace
- How to Embed a Google Form on Squarespace
Squarespace Map Blocks
What is the easiest way to let your customers know the property location? Well, just add a few lines to the description and let them find it on their own on an external platform.
Is it good or not? From my point of view, not really. There’s no way to keep your visitors forever on the site, but you should try to reduce things that might help them leave early.
So, in our case, we want to have a map block on the property details page with only the property location.
To add a Map Block, navigate to the target page, edit it, click Add Block, select Map, add the location pin and customize the map appearance.
Squarespace Forms
As with any business website, yours must have a contact form to get in touch with clients.
It can be a basic form containing name, email, phone, and message fields. Or it can extended with a questionnaire to collect a client’s expectations regarding the property.
By getting the questionnaire data, you can prepare some options beforehand.
To add a Form Block, navigate to the target page, edit it, click Add Block, select Form, and customize the form appearance, filed types and their positions, submit button etc.
A basic contact form and questionnaire are good enough to get inputs from clients, however interaction with them can be improved by embedding a scheduling feature into your website. You can read more about it in the Online Appointment Scheduling article by Squarespace.
Summary
If you’re not trying to build the next big real estate marketplace and you’ve got a manageable number of properties, Squarespace is a solid choice. It gives you all the tools you need to showcase your offerings and connect with potential buyers or renters.