Squarespace has a reputation as being great for DIYers. And it is.

If you want a website up and running in less than two weeks, you should definitely look into building a basic Squarespace website for yourself. You can choose to start from scratch or pick one of their many templates which you can then fully customise to your liking.

What actually goes into a Squarespace website build

But for some, Squarespace can prove difficult. Really difficult.

As a professional Squarespace web designer, I come across just about every type of Squarespace website and I know the platform inside out. That’s why I have put this article together. It will walk you through absolutely everything that you’ll need to know about your site, what goes into getting it built and what you should do if you decide you need help.

Enjoy!

Why build a Squarespace website?

The first question people ask is either “is Squarespace good?” or “is Squarespace easy to use?”. These are people’s main concerns and they are 100% valid. I’m here to tell you (although I’m somewhat biased) that Squarespace is the best of the big 4. The big 4 being WordPress, Squarespace, Wix and Webflow. Each has their own merits, but I truly believe that Squarespace trumps the rest. I’ll touch on this in more detail later on.

In a nutshell though, Squarespace offers a super easy-to-use interface, lots of customisation (near endless if you know how to code!), good SEO capabilities, fantastic customer support and an all round pleasant experience. Not to mention, your site will look slick across all screen sizes too.

Squarespace vs WordPress vs Wix vs Webflow

Squarespace vs the 3 W’s… this is a battle for the ages!

I won’t go into too much detail here, but Squarespace is the king when it comes to being the Jack of all trades. You don’t need any plugins at any point with Squarespace, unlike the others. It can do E-commerce with ease, content editing is effortless and all designs are automatically optimised for smaller screens. That last point is super important, as the majority of your web traffic will most likely be coming through mobile devices.

Whilst WordPress may be slightly better for SEO (debatable), it needs infinite updates and often needs a developer to make even the smallest adjustments. Then we have Wix which is probably the most closely matched to Squarespace. That said, its interface is incredibly busy and you have to design your site entirely for mobile. Not great! And finally, Webflow. Webflow is a platform with lots of potential, but the infrastructure just isn’t there at the moment and the learning curve for DIYers is just too steep. Unless you’re already au fait with web design, you’re really going to struggle with it.

Squarespace vs WordPress vs Wix vs Webflow

Overall, Squarespace offers the best of all worlds. Trust me - it’s why I built my entire business around it.

If you want my whitepaper covering Squarespace vs the rest in more detail, you can grab it for FREE by signing up to my newsletter. You can do that below. Once you’re signed up, you’ll automatically be sent all of that analytical goodness.

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How do you build a Squarespace website?

So, the nuts and bolts. You want to build your first Squarespace website, but how do you start? What do you need to do to ensure everything is set up correctly? Here is your checklist of everything you’ll need to check and do, in no particular order.

General

Basic page setup
Image sourcing
Font selection
Color palette
Set your site spacing
Choose your button styles
Customise the image block styles
Add admins, writers and managers to the site if needed
Create the content to go on your site such as copy and custom decorative elements
General branding and theme
Image optimisation
Add your logo
Log your business information
Insert your social media links
Set up your billing and subscription type
Create your blog style
Set up AMP for mobile blog posts
Add your browser icon
Name all your pages and folders correctly
Give your pages a hierarchy
Purchase a domain
Get an SSL certificate
Link your domain provider to Squarespace (if your provider is a third party such as GoDaddy)
Decide on a sitewide animation style
Create your header
Create your footer
Add your privacy policy and terms of service
Enable your cookies banner
Link all your contact and sign up forms to a marketing provider, Squarespace native campaigns and/or your email address
Add in CSS, HTML and/or JavaScript for advanced customisation of elements that aren’t native to Squarespace. This could be another full checklist in itself

SEO

Add a site title
Add a site description
Keyword research
Keywords scattered throughout your website
Set up and regularly update a blog page
Give all pages a meta description
Ensure all page titles and URL slugs are cohesive
Submit your site to Google to be crawled and indexed
Seek out backlinks
Earn long term backlinks by providing quality content
Give every image an alt tag
Add and publish your location
Create a custom 404 page
Enable AMP
Think about hiring an SEO expert to carry out an audit once done

E-Commerce (optional)

Upload products
Product imagery
Product descriptions
SKUs
Stock levels
Abandoned cart recovery
Fulfilment
Product page designs
Bespoke delivery rates
Related products
Customer account creation and login
Customer notifications
Product status (eg. Limited availability)
Gift cards
Delivery options
In person collection options
Discounts
Voucher codes
Stock alerts
Taxes for every country you serve
Subscribe customer to mailing list option
Variants

Learning

Read the Squarespace starter guide
Traverse their forums
Join Facebook groups
Explore free blogs
Get to grips with various elements of your website and constantly seek to learn how to improve yourself by tweaking

Marketing and analytics

Google site manager
Google Workspace
Custom email (free - at the time of writing - for a year if you pay annually with Squarespace)
Google analytics code injection
Explore your analytics page and learn about traffic sources, keywords and how to identify trends
Facebook pixel setup

Should you hire a Squarespace Web Designer?

Quite a lot, right? So, should you be hiring a web designer to do all this for you?

It depends.

If you are the type of person who loves to deep dive into things and spend your days learning the hows and whys then you should definitely try and take it on yourself. If you want to immerse yourself in Squarespace, learn through trial and error and make corrections over the next 12 months as you notice something you missed or something you’d like to tweak with code, then go for it.

Should you hire a Squarespace Web Designer

That said, if you don’t want to spend your time learning the platform from the ground up, you may be better suited (if you have the money) hiring an expert. An expert can take the strain off you, implementing everything you want and everything you need. The only catch is that you have to pay them! But if you’re comfortable with that, it may be the best investment you make for your business.

Most great Squarespace web designers will do handover training too, so you get a bespoke walkthrough showing you where everything is and how to customise it if you need to. No endless hours trawling forums looking for answers and no expensive hourly updates for even the smallest of things. Once it’s done, it’s all yours to do whatever you please with!

Your next steps

Your next steps are as follows:

Decide whether you want to build your website on Squarespace.
Decide whether you want to do it yourself or hire a professional.
Start your free trial.
Get building.
Or if you hired an expert, get delegating!

Your designer

I'm Sam, an award-winning Squarespace web designer. I have worked with every type of business, building platforms for solo entrepreneurs through to multi-million dollar corporations. If you want to discuss a potential project, you can email on sam@bycrawford.com or get in touch with me here. Alternatively, you can book in a free 15-minute consultation call here.