5 Unique Squarespace Summary Block Hacks
If you’re a Squarespace user, you might have heard of Summary Blocks. Summary Blocks aren’t just for blog posts. In fact, there are so many creative ways that you can use summary blocks to display collections of items on your website.
Squarespace summary blocks allow you to display collections: lots of similar content gathered together using a “Blog page.” This sounds a little strange, but “Blogs” in Squarespace don’t have to be blogs – they’re just places where you can upload lots of similar content. If you’re a brand designer, it might be some images of your latest work.
Summary blocks allow you to display the same collection in multiple ways across different pages of your website. Think of it like a mini showcase – whether it’s for your blog posts or your latest work. These summary blocks also allow you to customise the amount of information displayed, so you can choose to include the images or maybe just display the text.
This “choosing” feature is great because it means we can repurpose the same collection in multiple ways!
Testimonial Sliders
I use the Carousel Summary Block for a testimonial slider on my website. I love this because it allows you to display more than one testimonial on a single page.
You can create the slider by inserting a Carousel Summary Block on your page, and choosing a “Blog” which holds all your testimonials.
When formatting the “Blog”, I make sure that my testimonial is in the title section, and the person’s name is added in the excerpt. When it comes to adding the summary block to the page, I made sure that only “title” and “excerpt” is selected, so that the block displays both the testimonial and the person’s name.
Related Posts Section
Beneath every blog post I include a section called “related posts” which helps to keep my audience on my website and scrolling through my blog posts.
To create this section, I add a Grid Summary Block to the page, and choose my blog as the collection to add. I then make sure the “title”, “thumbnail” and “category” are ticked.
I filter the blog posts by their category so only the most relevant posts are showing on the summary block. If people see another post that’s relevant to the one they’ve just read, they’re far more likely to click on it.
Inline Adverts
Within each of my blog posts, I also include adverts for my freebies. These are created using the List Summary Block because it displays the content horizontally rather than vertically.
Update: I now use Flodesk forms to display my freebies, but this method still works well! Flodesk is my email marketing platform of choice and allows me to add beautiful, on-brand forms so that people are able to sign up for their freebie without leaving the page. Grab 50% off Flodesk here!
For this, I created a new “Blog” which I named “freebies” and added some “blog posts”. Like regular blog posts, these include a title and excerpt, as well as a thumbnail which displays the freebie I’m offering.
It’s important here to create a link in the excerpt text to send people to their freebie. The “read more” button can be added, but this will send them straight to the “blog post” for the freebie, and this may not be where you want them to go.
You can add a sign up form in the main text of the blog post, which will work fine, but I prefer to link the excerpt text so I have more control over where my audience goes. The “Read More” button link cannot be changed.
Latest Work Showcase
I use the Carousel Summary Block to showcase a selection of my most recent websites. For this, I created a new “Blog” which I named “Showcase” and added a selection of blog posts, each with a thumbnail showing a website I had designed.
When I added the Carousel Summary Block, I made sure that nothing was ticked (eg. title, excerpt, read more link) except the thumbnail. This way I could showcase a simple rotation of images without any other distractions.
You could also choose to add titles to your work, and tick the title box on the Summary Block so that they are displayed on the showcase. As always, it’s completely up to you how much information you add and display.
Blog Sidebar
One of my favourite uses for the summary block is a sidebar. You can use it to display your freebies, your most recent work or even your latest products if you offer some. The great thing about a sidebar is that it really helps bloggers to keep their audience on their website, get them on their email list or even make a purchase.
A sidebar uses the Wall Summary Block to display these types of items.
