I’m back, and this time I’m talking all about coding. Coding and computer science in general can seem very daunting, but I promise that it is not as bad as it may seem. A very basic knowledge of coding and the way it works is important to digital marketers because understanding the way websites are made benefits companies when trying to optimize them.

Codecademy

Codecademy allows people to learn how to code. With a free subscription you can learn basic HTML, Javascript, Python, SQL, and other languages of code. I took a little time to go through and complete the course Introduction to HTML. Throughout the course, I learned how to create a website using HTML. Codecademy taught me how to insert images, videos, create lists, and much more.

Here, Codecademy taught me how to insert an image into the website that is being built. This is important because all websites need some quality images in order to make them interesting and engaging!

In this lesson of Codecademy, I learned how to insert a video. Inserting video allows for consumers to really see exactly what you may be selling. Videos are an important part of a company’s website. For example, on REI’s website, they have product tutorials and reviews that are video’s so that you can see exactly what you’re getting and the benefit from it.

In this lesson, I learned how to create a form. This is vital to a company because it allows for them to collect information from consumers. The form allows for the members to input their information into the form so that they can access their account. All businesses need this especially if they have a loyalty program or something like that.

Further and more toward the end of the lesson, I learned how to make the code easier to understand. By changing some of the tags and headlines, it allows for people to better understand just what you are trying to do with your website and what action needs to be taken next to move forward with the creation of the site.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a company that “empowers people with creative ideas to succeed. Our platform empowers millions of people — from individuals and local artists to entrepreneurs shaping the world’s most iconic businesses — to share their stories and create an impactful, stylish, and easy-to-manage online presence.” And Squarespace does just this. While using Squarespace, I created my own personal website. I found it very easy to use this platform to create a website.

This platform is very people friendly. Squarespace doesn’t really use coding, so therefore it is easy for all people to use. There is the option to us CSS to change the design for the website, but there are also more user-friendly ways to design a website. Instead of coding color, text-size and other things like that, Squarespace allows users to choose using visual editing tools. I inserted a blog that I wrote about music, and it was very easy to do. It was almost like writing this blog post on LinkedIn.

The functional and easy-to-use nature of Squarespace as shown in the photo above, allows you to see the changes as you are making them and it also does not require coding. By simply selecting exactly what you want, it allows for websites to be made fast and easy.

WordPress

WordPress is another platform to create a website/blog. Again on this platform I made a website for myself to compare the user interface between WordPress and Squarespace. The mission of WordPress is WordPress is “software designed for everyone, emphasizing accessibility, performance, security, and ease of use.” I believe that WordPress is much more geared toward large businesses because there is the ability to code in HTML on it as well as really customize your website from a blank page. It also is geared to make apps and other things besides websites.

I personally found it more difficult to use WordPress, especially when trying to use HTML in it. After many minutes of trying, I finally used the code in the first photo to insert the photo of myself in the second photo.

Squarespace vs WordPress

Squarespace’s platform is similar to WordPress because it allows customizable website creation. Squarespace was designed more for small businesses that don’t have entire sections dedicated to their website maintenance. The features of Squarespace are easily accessible and easy to use. This is different than WordPress because since you cannot code the website, it is all from templates, which may have more restrictions to what you want to do with a company. WordPress is more friendly to companies that are larger and have people who know the ins-and out of coding. Bigger companies that have a department full of content creators and coders would be better off using WordPress because of the ability to customize the website and make it as user-friendly as possible.

Are These Tools Useful to Digital Marketers?

All three are useful tools for digital marketers. These are all useful because as a digital marketer, having a good understanding of web development and coding comes in handy for optimizing user experience with your website, content included on the website, and SEO. If you are a small business owner, Squarespace would be a great tool for you to use because it is easy to create very nice and easy to manage pages. There are also built in tools in Squarespace that help to optimize SEO and other digital marketing tools that you may want to use so that your website is running at peak performance. WordPress would be good to use as a digital marketer because it has a lot of tools that are available to you. It is very geared toward people that have more background knowledge on web development but for digital marketing it could be used as a tool to create a website that people find easy to interact with and it may be used to convert more users if used correctly. Codecademy provides a user-friendly platform to acquire these skills at no cost or a small fee to dive deeper into the skills of each specific coding language.

Conclusion

Coding can be very intimidating, but if used correctly, then it is not actually as bad as it looks. I definitely learned the value of coding through my time working through Codecademy. I hope this blog was able to give you a little more insight into the difference between Squarespace and WordPress to help you find which platform works best for you! Lookout for my next blog to see what we’ll tackle next in #wwudigimark!