What Will 2013 Will Hold for Squarespace, Inc?

2012 was a huge year for Squarespace. They released Squarespace 6, weathered Hurricane Sandy, and announced the Squarespace Developer Platform. They keep cranking out new features, and new customers keep signing up in droves. If this trend continues, 2013 will be another big year for Squarespace, Inc.

What's on Squarespace's 2013 Road Map?

Squarespace is typically pretty tight-lipped about their future plans. This desire to surprise and delight customers is exciting when new features are released, but those hungry for more information are often left guessing about what the future will hold for the company and the product. Luckily, there are a few clues out there that suggest an exciting 2013 for Squarespace.

Squarespace Careers Page

You can always tell a little about a company based on what jobs they have open. The Squarespace Careers page currently lists 15 full-time and internship positions on the Squarespace team. Here's what we know:

• The five openings on the engineering team suggest a focus on continuing to advance the core Squarespace product, and an open position for each Android and iOS suggest a balanced prioritization of both major mobile platforms in 2013.
• The openings in marketing/business development suggest an expansion of Squarespace-based content on the web, as well as deepening integrations and partnerships with other services on the web.
• Their design openings and internships imply that Squarespace doesn't show any signs of departing from their designer roots any time soon.
• Finally, Squarespace continues to hire in the area of customer service, another historically strong area for the company

The Squarespace Rumor Mill

Squarespace already boasts countless features, but what other changes should we anticipate in 2013? Based on previous company statements and community buzz, expect to see a lot more advances on the Squarespace Developer Platform. Also, will 2013 be the year we see a completely integrated e-commerce platform for Squarespace? 

What changes do you hope Squarespace, Inc. makes in 2013? What advances to the platform should they make? What new third-party integrations should they support? Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments.

Squarespace Hosting Proves Reliable by Weathering Sandy

Hosting on the Internet is foundational to any brand's success, yet so rarely does the underlying infrastructure that runs your website get the credit it deserves.

Squarespace's hosting was put to an extreme test when Hurricane Sandy ripped through Mid-Atlantic states this past week. Despite losing a data center, almost losing the ability to power another one, and a myriad of New York City-wide outages, Squarespace's hosting proved reliable - not a single Squarespace website went down during the storm.

Squarespace Hosting Infrastructure

As a former IT project manager, I marvel at Squarespace's hosting infrastructure. Their shared hosting model houses every single one of the tens of thousands of Squarespace websites out there, providing unique scale and hosting service levels that one would be hard-pressed to find in an individual hosting account.

For as attractive as shared hosting can be, it also comes with a sizable risk. If Squarespace's central hosting solution fails, every single Squarespace website would go down with them. It's for that reason I watched breathlessly as Sandy made her way to Manhattan.

Large IT Operations and Disaster Recovery

Most large scale networks have a disaster recovery plan in place. These plans typically include a secondary set of servers that a company can seamlessly switch over to in the event that the primary data center is compromised.

Squarespace is no exception, and they had to do exactly that when the primary servers at Peer 1 (Squarespace's hosting partner) began to take on water when Sandy hit. Like a textbook move from a disaster recovery play book, the hosting switched over to the back-up servers. But Sandy wasn't done testing Squarespace after the flawless failover.

While the back-up servers were high and dry on the 17th floor of the disaster recovery (DR) site, the fuel pumps that powered the servers were located in the basement. No sooner did Squarespace change over to the back-up servers did they run into a challenge of how to keep them powered.

In a tense multi-day ordeal that followed, Squarespace, Fog Creek, and Peer 1 employees literally hauled fuel from truck up seventeen flights of stairs to generators to ensure that every single Squarespace website remained accessible.

It's amazing to me that despite a modern DR plan, it was the grit and determination of Squarespace, Fog Creek, and Peer 1 that kept my website hiccup free and happily chugging along 1,000+ miles from Sandy's aftermath.

Customer Comfort with Squarespace Hosting

It brings me great comfort as a customer to know that the Squarespace team will do whatever it takes, literally, to keep my website up and running.

Was Squarespace's a perfect disaster recovery plan? Not entirely. Did Squarespace websites continue to run despite a nasty Hurricane Sandy and some unforeseen events? Absolutely.

In retrospect, I'm sure Squarespace will be discussing with Peer 1 whether a DR site outside of Manhattan makes more sense in the future. But in the absence of a perfect plan, I'm confident that by pure hustle and dedication alone that my Squarespace hosting will be in tact and uncompromised for as long as I'm a customer.

Update (11/9): Squarespace emailed its customers with an update on its infrastructure on 11/8 in which Anthony Casalena confirmed Squarespace is indeed working on a geographically redundant DR plan currently, which will be up and running early in 2013. Outstanding!

Generate Endless Blog Ideas Effortlessly with Qualaroo

Done right, the business benefits of blogging are boundless. In fact, 57 percent of consumers report reading blogs and nearly two-thirds of them are swayed by what they read. And yet, so many websites have terrible blogs, or lack them altogether. It's a shame.

Luckily, a nifty feedback tool exists called Qualaroo, and can help generate a nearly endless list of ideas for your blog simply by asking visitors what they'd like to read about. Let's take a closer look on how to bolster your blog idea generation process with a Qualaroo survey on your blog.​

Getting Started with Qualaroo

The best way to create a helpful blog with a lot of readers is to start by asking readers how you can help them. Qualaroo (formerly KISSinsights) facilitates this process by placing simple, non-obtrusive questionnaires on any page of your website. Pricing starts at free and sign-up is limited to a few basic steps.

​Sign up for free website questionnaires at Qualaroo.com.

Creating a Survey to Generate Blog Ideas

​Once you're set up with an account, you need to place the Qualaroo code on your blog. It's a process you only need to do once regardless of the number of surveys you create in the future. The steps listed here are for a Squarespace website, but you can modify as needed for your own blog if you're not using Squarespace.

From the Qualaroo dashboard, click on the View code link in the account listing area.​

Next, copy the snippet of code to your clipboard. As the Qualaroo help text indicates, we're going to paste it into the <body> section of your website.​

​Copy the Qualaroo code to your clip board. This code is asynchronous, which means it won't add to your page's load time when you install it.

Find the area of your website's administrative controls that allows you to insert template-wide code into the <body> section of your site.​ The best place to insert this code on a Squarespace website is by going to Settings -> Code Injection -> Footer.

​Note: You can place the code in the footer of your <body>, not right after the <body> tag like Qualaroo suggests.

Creating a Survey to Capture Ideas for Your Blog

Once your Qualaroo code is on your blog, you can create your very first survey using the shiny green button from the dashboard.

Custom surveys are always an option, but there's actually a survey perfect for generating ideas for your blog straight from the list of pre-canned questionnaires. Scroll down and select the question, "What topics would you like to see us write about next?".

​Qualaroo provides a large list of ideas for other surveys to put on your website in addition to your blog.

Next up, define the pages of your website on which you want the survey to appear. If you want the survey to only show up on your blog, enter only the part of the URL that is common to all your blog posts (e.g., "http://www.bigpictureweb.com/blog/") and be sure to check the box to Show survey on any sub-page in this section.

Tip: Enter "http://www.yourwebsite.com/" and check the Show survey on any sub-page in this section​ to make the survey appear on every page of your website.

You'll want to consider these points as you continue to choose from the many helpful options that accompany each Qualaroo survey:

• ​Don't spam your surveys to everyone who lands on your pages. Be polite and wait for a while (e.g., 30 seconds) before asking for feedback.
• Only ask for feedback once per visitor​
• Consider scheduling your surveys, especially on large sites, to avoid letting too many surveys run at one time
• ​People who complete your survey are engaged visitors. Use the custom Thank you message options to further leverage the attention of your most engaged users.
• Consider how the survey appears on your website and use the options available to adjust accordingly​

Click Finish when you're done fiddling with the survey options to officially launch your new favorite tool for coming up with ideas for your blog.​

Reviewing ​Responses to Qualaroo Surveys

Qualaroo will send you an email when the responses start to roll in, and you can access survey responses for any questionnaires you create from the dashboard. In a few short days you'll wonder how you ever lived without Qualaroo at all.

​Qualaroo survey responses are an ongoing source for new blog post ideas.

Far too many websites go bare because their owners run out of blog ideas. Don't let this happen to you.

Take a few minutes to set up a Qualaroo survey on your website and you'll be receiving your own list of blog post ideas in no time. If you get a suggestion you find particularly helpful, I'd be honored if you'd come back and share it with us in the comments below.

Take the Annual Squarespace Community Survey and Win

Each year we ask the Squarespace community what they think about the web publishing platform and share what we find with the readers of this blog. Last year we received over 100 responses and insights about how people use Squarespace (for example, 75% of Squarespacers surveyed reported using blogs on their websites.).

This year to encourage even more participation, I'll be providing a free marketing/SEO website evaluation valued at over $100 to one lucky person who takes the survey and tweets or talks about it on Facebook or Google+ (be sure to mention me and this page in your update so I can find and reward you.).

Take the survey and tweet, Facebook, or Google+ status it and I'll share what I learn in future blog posts. And who knows, maybe you'll be the one to win the evaluation and start increasing your website traffic as a result.