Squarespace Membership Management

What is the one thing that is common in these popular TV shows from the past few decades: The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Game of Thrones, and Euphoria? Yes, they are all very popular and well-made, but another commonality between them is that they are all made by HBO. And do you know what tool HBO uses to manage its memberships online that brings in the billions of dollars with which HBO finances all these amazing TV shows? It’s Squarespace.

Squarespace is a website creation tool that allows anyone to design and customize professional websites without requiring sophisticated technical knowledge. It also has a feature that allows for efficient membership management in Squarespace. We will be dissecting this feature in this blog post to understand what benefits one of the world’s leading TV production companies sees in using Squarespace to manage its memberships.

What is Squarespace Membership Management?

Squarespace membership management is a feature that allows website owners to create and manage memberships or subscription-based services on their Squarespace websites. In doing this, they can provide subscribed members with restricted access to exclusive content, products, or benefits, and provide tools to handle member sign-ups, payments, and member interactions.

A Step-By-Step Guide on How to Sign Up for Membership Management in Squarespace:

1. Create a Squarespace Account: If you don’t already have one, sign up for one on the Squarespace website. To create your account, enter the required information and follow the steps written on the website.

2. Select a Membership Plan: Once you have created an account, go to your Squarespace dashboard. Navigate to the “Website” area and then to the “Members” menu on the left. Choose a membership plan that meets your requirements. Since Squarespace only allows membership management on its highest paid, $49 per month plan, that is why you can only choose that option and none of the three cheaper ones.

3. Configure Membership Settings: Customise your membership plans’ access levels, prices, and features. You may also customize the style and appearance of your membership pages to fit the branding of your website.

4. Enable Member Sign-Up: Select “Membership” from the “Settings” page to enable member sign-ups. Choose whether to manually approve new members or to enable automated approval.

5. Create Membership Pages: Design membership pages where people may sign up for memberships. Squarespace offers templates and customization options to help you create aesthetically appealing and user-friendly membership pages.

6. Payment Gateway Integration: Integrate your favorite payment gateway to take payments from your members. Squarespace accepts a variety of payment methods, including Stripe, PayPal, and others.

7. Test and Launch: Before launching your membership program, test the sign-up procedure and payment integration to check everything is working properly. When you’re finished, publish your membership pages and begin marketing your membership program to your target demographic.

How to Manage Individual Members’ Profiles on Squarespace?

Managing individual members’ profiles on your platform is key for robust membership management in Squarespace as it offers you key insights into the consumption habits of your members. You can leverage this information to tweak your product to ensure that your members continue enjoying it and, as a result, keep paying for it in the future as well. Members’ profiles can be managed on Squarespace in the following ways:

1. Enable Members Function: Make sure the Members function is turned on on your Squarespace website. Log in to your Squarespace dashboard, navigate to the “Website” area, and then pick “Members” from the left-hand menu. If it isn’t already turned on, enable it.

2. Invite Members: In order to manage individual member profiles, you must invite individuals to join your site. Enter their email addresses in the “Invite Members” box. You may also select each member’s access level (e.g., admin, contributor, etc.).

3. Edit Member Profiles: Members’ profiles will be generated whenever they accept their invites. Go to the “Members” tab to get a list of all active members. To view a member’s profile, click on their name. Here, you can edit their display name, email, and access level.

4. Add Custom Member Fields: You may add custom fields to members’ profiles if you need more information from them. For example, you may request a phone number or a membership ID. Go to the “Settings” tab and then choose “Member Areas.” Fill up the blanks with the custom fields you want.

5. Manage Access Degrees: Squarespace lets you provide multiple degrees of access to your subscribers. For example, you may have basic and premium subscribers, each with differing degrees of access to material and services. Access levels may be changed by heading to “Settings” and then selecting “Permissions.”

6. Communicate with Members: To communicate with your members, use Squarespace’s built-in email feature. You may send updates, newsletters, or unique material to their email addresses.

7. Monitor Member Activity: Keep track of your website’s member engagement and activity. Data like logins, page views, and other interactions may be analyzed to better understand your members and improve their experience.

Why Hollywood Bigshots Like HBO Use Squarespace to Manage Their Membership?

Squarespace is often regarded as simple to use, particularly for individuals with little to no experience in website construction or design. It has an easy-to-use interface and a drag-and-drop editor, making it simple to design and customize websites without any coding skills. Squarespace also offers aesthetically appealing and responsive pre-designed designs, ensuring that your site looks fantastic on both desktop and mobile devices.

But the issue for a lot of companies still is that they find Squarespace to be too rigid to allow a lot of easy customization. In other words, Squarespace can be very customizable for you if you have some coding knowledge that you can leverage for customization, but as a whole, a lot of the templates that Squarespace provides can be a little taxing to maneuver with. This is why, especially for those small businesses who seek greater customization without the added burden of having to hire technical resources of managing the platform’s coding requirements, it might be better to also look into other alternatives like Wix, WordPress, or Weebly.

Even so, a platform like HBO that has deep pockets nonetheless prefers Squarespace over its competitors for its ease of use and, most importantly, the acute way in which Squarespace lets you manage, monitor, and then finally devise insights from your members’ profiles. This allows businesses like HBO to then plan their future strategizing in a better way to ascertain what works and what doesn’t.

The bottom line

Squarespace membership management provides a sophisticated and user-friendly solution for organizations wishing to establish and administer subscription-based services on their websites. This is made simpler for businesses to set up and administer membership programs with its user-friendly interface, broad customization options, and seamless connectivity with payment systems. Squarespace does that by automating the whole process, from establishing personalized membership plans to managing member sign-ups, payments, and interactions.

Squarespace’s appeal among significant corporations such as HBO reflects its efficacy in handling membership management as well as the industry confidence it has earned. While some firms may find Squarespace’s customization choices restricted due to a lack of coding experience, the platform’s general ease of use and sophisticated administration tools make it an ideal alternative for many organizations looking for an efficient and intuitive membership management solution.