Rearchitecting Squarespace's Block Editors

Chaz Moore

Researcher

Prototyper

UI Designer

Figma

UserTesting

Software

Squarespace is a popular web hosting and website building platform that allows individuals, small businesses, and organizations to create professional-looking websites without requiring extensive technical skills.
Project Details
Redesign all 47 block editors, how users add content to a website, to improve finding settings. We hypothesized by building a consistent editing experience across blocks that creators could more successfully finish their websites, reducing the number of abandoned sites.
Prioritized the most used blocks, redesigning in phases of five blocks per phase
Information Architecture, hierarchy, and settings name overhaul
Alignment of designs across many cross functional partners and teams

Information Architecture

Working closely with Content Strategy and UX Research, I catalogued every setting in the block editors and developed a new structure.
Consolidating all settings into a few tabs, Content and Design

Layout Switching UI Explorations

Exploration using existing system components
Exploration using existing system components
Exploration creating new components
Exploration creating new components

Final Layout Switcher design

Chosen UI approach
Chosen UI approach
Layout switcher applied to other blocks
Layout switcher applied to other blocks

Tree Test –– validating information architecture

2 taxonomy versions: old vs. new image, button, summary, newsletter
45 participants per version (90 total)
Success: did the user select the correct answer? Y/N Directness: did they get to the correct answer directly or indirectly?
Results The new IA showed drastic improvements over the old version, which shows the consolidated approach is mitigating confusion
"Everything was where I thought it was. In the end it was pretty easy find everything. You had everything in the right category.” - Tree Test participant

Final Block Designs

Results from Launch

Released 18 blocks as of 2020
Did no harm: neutral trial/sub, block usage, and page saves
Very positive feedback across all channels (socials, forum, support)
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Posted Mar 4, 2025

Redesigning all 47 block editors for Squarespace's website builder to eliminate tech debt, improve usability, and unblock future improvements.

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Timeline

Aug 1, 2020 - Dec 11, 2020

Clients

Squarespace

Tags

Researcher

Prototyper

UI Designer

Figma

UserTesting

Software

Universe Responsive Website Editor
Universe Responsive Website Editor
Squarespace Undo/Redo: Improving user experimentation
Squarespace Undo/Redo: Improving user experimentation