2024 Year in Review: Building Beyondspace's Foundations for Growth
2024 was a year of growth, learning, and laying the groundwork for an exciting future for Beyondspace. It brought both achievements to celebrate and challenges to overcome. Here's a look back at the year and what’s ahead.
Achievements
Diversifying Traffic: From Dependence to Expansion
At the beginning, I was heavily reliant on traffic from the Squarespace forum. While it’s a great platform, I realized that depending on it too much could be risky. What if my presence there reduced? Would my business take a hit? That fear pushed me to diversify my traffic sources.
Here’s how I tackled it:
Blog Publishing: I made a commitment to write more for the Beyondspace blog. Over the year, organic search traffic grew consistently and eventually surpassed referrals from the Squarespace forum by October 2024. The content I focused on included:
Documentation and promotions for paid plugins.
Tips on using Cloudflare with Squarespace.
Understanding Squarespace image delivery and optimization, exploring Webp delivery with Squarespace
Leveraging Squarespace redirection effectively.
Reddit: I began promoting my content more often on Reddit, engaging with a broader audience.
Collaborations: I partnered with industry leaders like Sqspthemes.com, Monocle, and Weekofthewebsite.com. Notably, I joined a mentorship program with Omari from Sqspthemes.com, which was a game-changer. Our collaboration resulted in cross-posts on Sqspthemes.com and features in their newsletter, driving record-breaking traffic.
In 2025, Omari from Sqspthemes.com is expanding his work with The Digital Alchemy Lab into an exclusive unlimited coaching program! If you're looking to take your Squarespace business to the next level, this is your opportunity to work closely with a top expert in the field.
Learn more
Growing Content: Highlighting Plugins and Features
Since my business revolves around Squarespace plugin development, most of my new content focused on helping Squarespace owners make the most of my plugins. Here are some highlights:
Lightbox Studio
Video Lightbox Gallery: A new feature that turns Squarespace Gallery sections into video lightbox portfolios.
Product Lightbox Gallery: A long-standing feature now with its own dedicated landing page to better serve customers.
PDF Lightbox: A recent update allowing users to display PDFs without navigating away from Squarespace.
Introducing Lightboxify URLs concept for Squarespace lightbox, empowering dynamic lightbox feature
Organized the most used features of Lightbox Studio into By Vertical blog series
Squarespace Datepicker
Revamped the Datepicker Playground for smoother usability.
Rewrote documentation for clarity and ease of understanding.
Proposed and implemented a Datepicker integration for Squarespace’s /cart page.
New plugins launch include Source URL helper and Spritefy Viewer
Way of Working: Reducing Refunds and Improving Client Experience
Client feedback is invaluable. While occasional refunds happen, I’ve worked hard to minimize them by improving clarity in documentation, addressing client expectations, and integrating feedback into plugin updates. This approach has significantly reduced refund rates and strengthened client relationships.
In 2024, Beyondspace has:
Reached nearly 150 customer reviews on Trustpilot.
Collected 16 detailed case studies from client invitations.
Embracing Chatbots and AI
Being a one-person business, repetitive tasks like answering support requests and creating documentation can be overwhelming. In 2024, I explored AI solutions to streamline support:
Tried several chat widgets and settled on BoldDesk for its rich features.
Used Docsbot AI, trained on Beyondspace content, to automate customer support. While still in its early days, fine-tuning has improved its accuracy and usefulness. I can also convert user queries into dedicated faqs blog on Beyondspace.
Contributing to the Community
Coding solutions for Squarespace pain points is at the heart of what I do. Some projects that started as personal frustrations turned into valuable freebies over the years:
Gallery Block Workaround: Evolved into the Classic Gallery Block, which brings back Existing gallery feature
Simple Date Format Snippet: Grew into a complete solution with custom format support.
Asset Library Enhancements: Made finding hosted URLs for images and videos much easier.
Draftify Portfolio: Created to simplify portfolio drafting on Squarespace.
These efforts culminated in Ground Control, a centralized tool to manage all my solutions.
New Tools for the web
I launched Beyondspace Utilities, a collection of free dev tools to help web designers, SEO specialists, and developers. Popular tools include:
These tools have increased site traffic and brand awareness, with some achieving impressively low bounce rates.
Underperformance
Not everything went as planned in 2024. My affiliate income efforts, including creation Squarespace Marketplace, Elfsight catalog, and Sparkplugin catalog in late 2023, fell short of expectations. Even my own affiliate program, launched in June, underperformed.
While I didn’t have time to develop more new paid plugins, the year was all about building a solid foundation for future growth.
Looking Ahead to 2025
As I move into 2025, my focus will be on:
Ground Control Enhancements: Embedding plugin’s playground into Ground Control to streamline the process of activating, disabling, and managing paid plugins.
Publishing New Plugins: After establishing a strong foundation in 2023 and 2024, I aim to expand my business in 2025 by both publishing new plugins and pushing their promotion.
Refining the Blog: Optimizing blog content with a table of contents for easy navigation, migrating all video instructions to Beyondspace YouTube channel, and focusing on optimization to increase traffic rather than just creating more content.
Affiliate Program: The newly launched program offers a 30% commission, and everyone is welcome to join!
2024 was a transformative year for Beyondspace, filled with valuable lessons and milestones. I’m excited to take these experiences into 2025 and continue growing and improving. Thank you for being part of this journey!
