How do you build your own website on Squarespace? In this guide I go step by step through what to remember when building a Squarespace website: where to start, in what order to build it and what to take care of after launch.
Would you like to build your own website for yourself or your business, but are not quite sure where to even start?
Building a professional website is actually no longer difficult. One of my favorite website builders is Squarespace. With Squarespace you can create an impressive, clean and search-engine-friendly website for yourself or your business in under a day!
We have built numerous website and online store projects from start to finish. We have tried and used WordPress (+WooCommerce) and Magento, among others, but in recent years we have almost without exception ended up using two platforms:
- Squarespace for all websites
- Shopify for (almost) all online stores.
In this post I focus on Squarespace and how you can build your own website with it.
What is the Squarespace website platform
Squarespace is a modern drag-and-drop website platform and builder that lets you create a website without technical (coding) skills. Squarespace sites look professional, they are easy and quick to update or edit, and they run as a fully cloud-based service, which means you do not have to worry about technical updates or security. The idea is very similar to the Shopify ecommerce platform.
If you have read my blog, and especially the Shopify posts, you know that a Shopify store is easy to customize, but customization is relatively limited theme by theme. Squarespace, on the other hand, has much broader visual customization options when it comes to elements and features. As an ecommerce platform, however, Squarespace is very limited and does not offer anywhere near what Shopify does.
Start by signing up for Squarespace for free here
Preparing to build your Squarespace website
That's right, we are not jumping straight into the deep end with the Squarespace site; it really makes sense to do a little preparation first. It will save you a lot of time and extra work later.
#1 Define your ideal site visitor (or customer)
A vague idea of who you are trying to reach or serve makes it harder to plan and lay out the site. When the target audience is clear, the site's layout, text content, look and style are easier to put together.
#2 Define your site's goals
When building a Shopify store this is easy: your goal is to get sales and orders in your online store. But when building anything other than an online store, you need to define a goal for the site.
Do you want to collect leads and get enquiries from customers? Do you want to sell your photography services to wedding couples? Is it your professional portfolio site, for job hunting or showcasing your skills, for example? Or do you want to start a cooking blog?
Whatever the goal, defining it clearly makes building your website easier, because you know what you want from your site!
#3 Choose the SEO keywords you want to rank for in Google
When you build your site, you will use and include these keywords and search phrases on your pages and in your site settings, so it makes sense to think about your important keywords right from the start so you can take them into account while building the pages.
#4 Buy a domain, i.e. your site's web address
It would be a real shame if, just before launch, you came up with the perfect domain for your site and it was already taken by another website. Let's avoid this "small" disappointment and buy the domain right at the start.
If you want a .fi domain for your site (especially for Finnish-language sites), you can buy it from a Finnish provider. We have used Hostingpalvelu, among others, for its low prices and ease of use, but of course any domain registrar will do.
If you want a .com domain, you can buy it directly from Squarespace and you do not need to point it to your site separately! Please note that if you pay for Squarespace for a whole year at once, the .com domain comes free, so make use of this benefit.
Tip: When choosing a domain name, also check the availability of social media accounts. It has happened to me that the domain I wanted was free, but the social media accounts were taken. Check Instagram, Facebook and YouTube in particular. Depending on your site's topic, Pinterest, Twitter and LinkedIn can of course be important too.
Planning the visuals and content
Yes, more preparation and planning. From experience I can tell you that if you take the time to plan your website or online store well at the start, you save yourself unnecessary trouble later.
#5 Create a cover page on Squarespace (optional)
A Squarespace cover page, i.e. a "Coming soon" page, is a visually stylish solution for sites under construction. It is easy to create on Squarespace from a ready template and set as the home page.
Update: Cover pages are not yet available on Squarespace 7.1, but they are on the older Squarespace 7.0. Presumably cover pages will also come to Squarespace 7.1 soon (unless they already have by the time you read this).
#6 Create a Pinterest board or other visual plan (optional)
I admit I no longer do this myself, although I often use Pinterest when looking for new ideas. But I know a visual mood board is a huge help for many. If you feel you need inspiration, put together a Pinterest board with colors, logos, fonts and examples of inspiring websites.
#7 Write down your website structure (a sitemap)
Which pages do you need and want? How do they link to each other? By creating a draft sitemap you define this, and when building the website you do not have to think about which pages you need.
If you are building your first website, we strongly recommend thinking about the sitemap in advance. Once you have more experience building sites, you will probably no longer plan the structure in advance; it will come "naturally" as you build.
Please note that here I do not mean the site's .xml sitemap but your own plan of the site structure (an .xml sitemap is generated automatically for every Squarespace site).
#8 Define the content of the main navigation and footer
The navigation structure is also related to point #7. Think about your site structure and which topics and links go into your site's top, so-called main navigation, and which go into the "footer" menu at the bottom of your pages.
Define your most important topics and pages and where they go.
#9 Find or shoot your site's images
One of the most important things on your site is the visual look: it gives visitors their first impression.
Poor-quality or otherwise bad images ruin even the finest visual identity. So it pays to invest in your website's imagery.
You can find images in free stock photo libraries, for example (Squarespace offers a direct integration with the Unsplash library, but always check the image license before adding images to your site).
You can buy images from paid stock photo libraries. Please also read my post and review of the Canva Pro app; it also makes a very good point about stock photo libraries.
If you are a skilled photographer or willing to invest in one, you can also shoot your site's images yourself.
#10 Write your site's content
You can also do this while building the pages, but back when I started building sites, I liked to create the main content texts in advance for our own or our clients' sites, for example in a Google Docs or Word file. Nowadays I do everything directly on the site.
Writing content in advance makes designing the website easier, since you can just copy and paste the finished texts onto your pages and then make visual changes later. That way you immediately see how the changes affect your content.
When writing content, remember point #3, i.e. the most important keywords and search phrases for your site and topic. These should be included in your content (headings, subheadings etc.).
Building the website on Squarespace
Next comes the best part. This is where good preparation following the steps above makes things much easier, since you already have everything ready: the concept, ideas, domain, content, keywords and images.
#11 Create the home page
I always like to start with the home page. It usually defines your site's style and look the most, so at this stage you can test different design styles, layouts and things. If you wrote your content in advance, designing the home page visually is easier when there is already content on it.
Tip: Once you have designed the home page, you can reuse its style on other pages by always duplicating your home page as the base for a new page. This not only speeds up building pages but also keeps the layout consistent.
#12 Create the main navigation and footer
You already planned these earlier (you did, right?), so now you can define and create your navigation structure by adding pages in the Squarespace editor. Since we planned the page content earlier, creating new pages goes faster: just copy the content, add images and make the adjustments needed.
Fine-tuning your website
Before launching the site, it is worth checking a few things and making changes if needed.
#13 See how your site looks on mobile and make the adjustments needed
On Squarespace the view is set for desktop screens by default, but it is easy to switch with the button in the top corner (the phone icon). This is very important to check, since (depending on the site's topic, of course) the number of mobile users will be significant. In fact, on almost all, if not all, of the sites we have built, mobile users are the majority (usually around 70-80%). On some of our sites, mobile users are even over 90%.
So the share of mobile users is significant, which is why this check is important. You will probably need to readjust the spacing and layout of some texts, buttons or images.
#14 Check links and other functionality
It is worth checking the most important links, such as the navigation, footer and buttons on your site. I sometimes leave checking links until after launch, since on Squarespace, for example, not all blog links can be found quickly and easily unless the site has been published first.
Also check other functionality, such as contact forms. It is better to test them yourself before your visitors do, especially if something does not work as it should.
#15 Check your site's SEO features
On Squarespace it is simple to edit your pages' search engine settings, such as the page title and description fields. Check through Squarespace's SEO settings that everything looks sensible, so your site can rank on Google.
Preparing to launch your Squarespace website
#16 Switch on a secure connection
Squarespace offers a secure SSL connection (we covered this in more detail in the Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison). Switch the SSL-secured connection on in Squarespace if it is not on yet.
Besides users and site visitors, Google also values a secure connection, and some browsers no longer even open sites with no SSL security at all.
#17 Add the site title and description (for SEO visibility)
When your site appears in Google's search results, potential visitors see a description of your site, provided you have added one.
#18 Switch on Squarespace AMP
Squarespace AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, i.e. enhanced mobile performance. In practice it makes your site load faster for mobile users, which both visitors browsing on mobile devices and Google like.
#19 Add a favicon, i.e. a browser icon
The browser icon, or favicon, appears as a small icon for your site in the browser tab next to the address bar. Google's favicon is the G logo, YouTube's the red play button. Yours can be your logo or a simplified version of it.
A favicon makes your site more recognizable and gives it personality.
#20 Remove the Squarespace ad
Squarespace sites have the text "Built with Squarespace" at the very bottom of the page. It is just text, and you can remove it. Your site should be yours, not Squarespace's.
Launch your own Squarespace website
#21 Choose the most suitable Squarespace plan
You are almost done! To get your website live on the internet, you first need to choose the most suitable Squarespace plan for your site.
Tip: If you pay for the whole year at once, you get a free .com domain for a year. We recommend taking advantage of this.
#22 Connect your own domain
Once you have paid for your plan, your site is live! If you use a .fi domain, the last step is to connect the domain to your site. After that it usually takes a few hours before your own great Squarespace website can be found by everyone!
Finally
I hope this guide helps you remember all the most important steps that building your own Squarespace site from start to finish requires. Remember that a website is never really finished. You can always edit, update or add things to your site. You can improve your site's findability in search engines by connecting it to Google Analytics and Google Search Console and using the data they provide.
Hi again! 👋 Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and I really hope you use them. 🖤 Clicking a link costs you nothing extra, so feel free to explore the sites and tools recommended in this post. If you end up becoming a paying customer through my link, I get a small commission.
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