I mentioned recently here that I use both Squarespace and CiviCRM — which of course means the CRM doesn’t live on the main site.
That raised the questions:
Why don't I run CiviCRM on my main website as most people do?
How do I make that work?
Let's tackle that first one.
The simple answer is:
I'm not a designer, and my designer suggested building the main site in squarespace.
It didn't take much for me to see that that would save me a lot of effort in the long run.
My main site just needs to do two things:
Demonstrate that I’m the right fit for my ideal customers, but showing what I do, how I do it, and for whom.
Present my daily emails as an archive and as something people can subscribe to.
More importantly, it needs to look great and be as frictionless as possible for me to maintain.
Adding the CRM to the main site wouldn't buy me a lot of useful functionality.
But running the site in Drupal or Wordpress could seriously ramp up the amount of time I might spend tinkering with it.
So I run it on a hosted website publishing platform, where someone else gets paid to keep it running, secure, and functional.
I'm sure this isn't an option for everyone.
Many of my clients rely heavily on having live CRM data and features directly embedded in their main website.
So tight integration is the best option for them.
It really comes down to making smart trade offs,
deciding what outcomes truly matter,
and selecting the easiest path that will get you there.
I mean, isn't that at the heart of every smart business decision?
All the best,
A.