Squarespace Basics: everything you need to know about the built-in forms
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When you’re totally new to the website world and your budget is small (or maybe you just have all these new expenses popping up: hello social media scheduler, email marketing, website hosting, custom email address, etc), paying for your site hosting + a CRM (client relationship management) tool like Dubsado is just not in the cards quite yet.
Dubsado* is what I use now for lead inquiries, proposals, contracts, questionnaires & more, but I didn't start out with that because back then $20/mo sounded like a big fat NO to me. And I know they've increased their prices since then, so that “no” is probably even louder for you now if you're new to this space.
Sidenotes:
If ya want to give Dubsado a try, use code DAMN* at checkout to save 20% on your first month or year! They do have a great free plan with access to all features, for up to 3 clients!
Or try Bonsai for free* if you want a more all-in-one approach with a less steep learning curve.
A lot of Bonsai-ers are also Squarespacers, just as a lot of Dubsadians are, and both embed forms on Squarespace sites (or any website builder, for that matter)!
Luckily, Squarespace has thought of that and has your back!
While not anywhere near the functionality of something like Dubsado’s forms, Squarespace forms are actually pretty robust considering it’s a free, built-in feature for your website.
But the new menu design (circa late summer 2021) is a bit cumbersome and not super user-friendly IMHO, so I felt it was time to take a deep dive into the Form block and show ya the ropes.
Prefer to skip ahead to the video? Click here.
Form block features:
What can ya do with this block, natively within Squarespace?
Add limitless custom fields (at least, I haven’t found a limit yet)
Available field types are:
name
email
phone
short response
long response
drop-down menu
checkboxes
radio buttons
survey answers
address
website
date
number
time
currency
twitter
hidden field (techy way to track which URL your form traffic originates from)
line separator
Customize the title
Add descriptions
choose your storage options
simple send-to-email
Mail Chimp*
Google Drive*
Zapier*
Email Campaigns**
Customize the button text
Lightbox the form
*marks a feature that connects to an outside app that has both free & paid plans
** marks a feature that only has paid plan access, in addition to your Squarespace plan
Remember this really handy feature!
When your form has an Email field, and someone submits their email address there (as long as it’s a real address), when you receive the submission, you can reply to that email without starting a new email, and keep the submission data in the email thread’s history! That email address becomes the reply-to address, so when you hit reply to that Form Submission email alert in your inbox, instead of replying to the Squarespace bot that sent it to you, it will forward that email to the address submitted in the email field, with the form submission data below your email signature like a previous email thread.
That is super handy when replying to incoming leads, so you can share the data you received & reply at the same time in one quick & easy click!
Need to see it? Watch the video overview
I get it; I’m a visual person too. Some of those terms pique your interest? Or not sure what they mean, exactly? Take a peek at my video walk-through below & learn how you can use Squarespace forms to the max!
Here’s what the emailed form submission looks like, and an un-styled Google Sheet that can be connected to collects submissions as a backup:
sample Form block (with default fields)
The emailed submission from that sample Form block
The Google Sheet showing submission data from that sample Form block
