How SERHANT. Uses Squarespace Enterprise to Scale and Enhance Brand Consistency with Agents
In today’s competitive real estate market, having a strong online presence is crucial for success. SERHANT., a leading real estate brokerage in the United States, understands this better than most. As they sought to scale operations, maintain brand consistency, and reduce costs, they turned to Squarespace Enterprise as a tool for achieving success. We spoke with Ryan Coyne, SERHANT. Chief Technology Officer, to learn how Squarespace Enterprise provided the brokerage with the tools and support needed to achieve their goals while ensuring a seamless brand experience across all digital touchpoints.
Can you please give us some background on Serhant? What would you like our readers to know about you?
SERHANT. was built by the world's top real estate agent to be the brokerage that does things differently in every single way. We’re the world's most-followed brand in the space, and we have members of the team supporting that. We empower real estate agents with the SERHANT. brand so they’re better able to generate leads and become brands themselves.
We strongly believe that you shouldn’t have to purchase leads (something that has become very popular in our industry). We believe that building brand is the number one way to not only prevent people from forgetting about you but also to generate business in your sleep—to become that ultimate authority and the person seen as the most credible and worthwhile to work with.
We're also the kind of business that asks the question, “Are we can be number one without having to have the most agents?” It's very common in the [real estate] industry to just go for having the highest headcount you possibly can. Yet it's us, with fewer than 1,000 sales people, that has the industry’s highest average price point nationally at $2.8 million.
I also think it's important for people to know that there is a shift in where the industry is going in terms of what the “real estate agent of 2030 and beyond” is going to need. We’re aiming to be that brokerage of the future. That's why we work so hard on things like S.MPLE by SERHANT., and it's why we strive to be excellent–not only synonymous with luxury but synonymous with technology.
What drew you to work with Squarespace Enterprise? What were you looking to accomplish?
We were looking for not only the world-class support that Squarespace has offered us through our dedicated rep, Graham White, but we were also looking to achieve scalability, being able to have set templates instead of having to start over every single time—you know, having those authored templates to be able to rapidly spin up additional sites—to be able to have a login for each member of the team that's administratively controllable, that has the audit trail of who does what—and the rest of the Enterprise features.
We were also looking to reduce our costs…. It was creating so much more work for us to manage the volume of sites that we had. We had to have entire blocks of time that our marketing coordinator was dedicating to reconciling what was set to auto-renew. It was this sprawling, endless list of sites that each had their own billing information. It was just chaos. So it definitely was something that [Squarespace] Enterprise was going to streamline our operations, and it has.
“One of the reasons we love Squarespace so much is because all friction is removed—any barriers to entry for our creative team to be able to go from brain to paintbrush, no longer exist.”
What do you enjoy most about using the Squarespace Enterprise product?
The unique team member logins and the centralized, streamlined, and consistent billing. I think those are my two favorite things. Our Director of Marketing might like the templates feature or a dozen other features, but I think that being able to audit who did what and when and that we no longer have these really time-consuming financial roll-ups and check-ins and reconciliations are huge.
I also appreciate having our dedicated account manager, Graham, who we know we can just reach out to, and he's right on top of it. I can think of two examples off the top of my head of times where we were in a real pinch, didn't know what to do, and couldn't figure out a way to navigate.
Both times there was something that only could be done through the backend, and Graham was just outstandingly responsive. I've gotten to be reflexive about it now where now when something comes up I remind my colleagues, ”This is something you can totally message Graham about. We don't have to toil or try to Google it or try to ChatGPT it.” We don't necessarily have to, we do have those options, and we're still very resourceful, but Graham being there for us is invaluable.
What kind of results have you seen after using Squarespace Enterprise?
Increased confidence, increased speed, increased utilization—you know, using it even more frequently than we thought. Now I'm starting different kinds of project discoveries knowing that we're going to be building on Squarespace… So confidence, time efficiency, cost savings, those three things.
How was your experience working with an account manager? Did you find that valuable?
A billion out of ten. This makes all the difference. The customer service aspect is everything. In the world of technology, which experiences the decline of customer service all the time, it is incredible—the experience that we've had with the humans at Squarespace and continue to have.
What did you like most about the way your sites looked?
The thing that I like most is the ability to have fine-tuned control on both desktop and mobile, and to have that confidence and consistency.
What advice would you give to other Squarespace Enterprise customers?
Get in touch with your account manager and make sure to check in and ask about new releases, and the feature roadmap. Have conversations with your rep, even when nothing is wrong. Reaching out to your rep shouldn't only be in times of crisis.
“When it comes to your business’s digital signage and the way that you express your ideas, your products, and your brand… I recommend having the best tools at your disposal and the best versions of those tools at your disposal.”
Other advice is to regularly talk with your team about whether or not they're utilizing the Enterprise features, and whether or not they're also aware of the resources available downstream. You want to make sure that your team is as comfortable reaching out and leveraging all that's available as you are. Encourage them.
What would you tell people who are considering purchasing a Squarespace Enterprise plan?
Do it. There’s a ton that other fluid builders seem to purport in their marketing, but Squarespace has been putting up instead of shutting up for a very, very long time.
I would also tell them that the support is absolutely world-class. There are very few vendors that we have that consistently show up with the level of professionalism, knowledgeable approach, and resourcefulness, and have the fantastically reliable platform that Squarespace does. It hasn't been absent of issues 100% of the time. But those are edge cases. I can confirm that it's just super high quality.
“Going Enterprise means that you’re taking your own business seriously. It means that you’re respecting your own customers in a significant enough way to be proud to say to them, ‘You should have enterprise-level confidence in us because we have enterprise-level confidence in ourselves.”
I would tell people, just do it. You will not be sorry if you include the value of what that support relationship will bring. You don’t even anticipate it until you have it.
Want to learn more about multi-site management and brand consistency best practices? Watch Squarespace Enterprise’s “Brand Authority for Website Teams” webinar.
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