Fabien Pochez
Circle: What did you do before building websites on Squarespace?
Fabien: I used to manage a website development studio in the late 2000s, working on big ecommerce projects, using open source platforms and other website builders. It was hard work, long projects and quite hard to manage in terms of post-delivery management.
After that, I had a little recess from the web industry for a few years before starting again with Squarespace. I spent a few years being a photographer, director and a DJ in Paris, being a resident in a small cool club, so I partied and traveled a lot.
C: When did you realize you could use Squarespace to build sites for clients?
F: It happened over the course of a few years. My business partner and the Creative Director of Midnight Club, Romain, and I were working together at the time and we started to look at what Squarespace was proposing and thought, this is going to kill our business. The level of design and functionality was getting really interesting, to the point of asking ourselves why anyone would spend thousands of euros in creating a complicated custom project when you could build something beautiful with Squarespace.
A few years later, we started Midnight Club, our little creative studio and digital production company. We still wanted to sell websites because we had the know-how, so we decided to try out Squarespace for our clients.
Squarespace allowed us to reduce the budget spent on creating a new website and use that extra money to create beautiful and engaging content to help clients better engage their audience.
C: How did you first get involved with Squarespace Circle?
F: After following the development of the platform for years, the first project was our own website. It was a way to test out Squarespace and see if we were happy using it for our clients. That was a very quick decision. There was an approach to designing the pages that was so refreshing and easy. It’s kind of a feeling where you’re thinking to yourself it’d be great if i could just move that block here, and then you do it and it works, and you’re like wow, I’m sold. When we combined that with our expertise and CSS skills, we had a really powerful tool on our hands. After doing our first few websites, we received an invitation to Circle and found a great community and amazing support.
“Squarespace allowed us to reduce the budget spent on creating a new website and use that extra money to create beautiful and engaging content to help clients better engage their audience.”
C: Why do you work with Squarespace over some other website building platforms?
F: You guys did an ad with Jeff Bridges and it was beautiful. Seriously though, the interface to build websites is simple and efficient and when we hand websites over to our clients, they’re really happy with the ease of use to update their content. It also allows us to work faster, designing directly within the platform, and mainly, it allows us to create very slick websites at very good prices.
We work exclusively with Squarespace, so our first step with clients is to explain what Squarespace can do. We don’t sell websites—we sell design, customization and know-how on the Squarespace platform. We’re just here to help them use it, design and customize it and organise their content in the best possible way.
C: What advice would you give to someone considering Squarespace as a professional tool?
F: Go for it! It frees you from a lot of the usual hassle of building a website. You have a solid base to build on, with good support that just allows you to focus on the fun part, which is designing. And speaking of designing, the templates are just perfect, it’s really a great base to work on. Client satisfaction is high when they see the level of quality of the Squarespace interface, and that’s key to a happy life.
C: How do you use the community Forum in your day to day?
F: It became quite quickly a huge source of support. There’s a great community of very skilled web designers and coders. So when we need to do something that we never did, in general we always find somebody with an answer to our problem. There’s a lot of very skilled Circle members who are active in the forum and I’m often amazed by the kind of help they provide. I go in at least once a week to see what’s new, to follow the announcements and see how the community is responding to updates.
“Circle and Squarespace in general allows me to be faster on building projects for clients. I believe it allows me better planning, and actually frees some time to focus on other things, like my family.”
C: How does Squarespace’s Customer Support factor into your business?
F: The customer care you offer is becoming a more important part of our business. As websites are not static things and they need updates over time, customer care and upkeep is important. We propose some website upkeep to help clients keep their website alive and updated. We also spend some time providing video tutorials to help them take over and manage on their own. All of this helps keep a high level of customer satisfaction, which is good for business as we work a lot with word of mouth to find new clients. A happy client will return or recommend you.
C: How is Squarespace Circle helping you achieve your dreams or pursue your passions?
F: I like designing websites, it was always a hobby in a way even when it was my main income source. Circle and Squarespace in general allows me to be faster on building projects for clients. I believe it allows me better planning, and actually frees some time to focus on other things, like my family.
Special thanks to Fabien Pochez for sharing his story.
To learn more about Fabien, visit Midnight Club.
