Hi there, it’s Matt from Style Factory, the go-to site for website builder reviews
and advice on growing a new business.
In this Squarespace tutorial for beginners, I’m going to walk you through the process
of creating a Squarespace website.
By the end of this video, you’ll know exactly what you need to do to get your project off
the ground.
But before I begin, a quick reminder to hit the subscribe button and click the notifications
bell.
This will give you easy access to all our latest Squarespace, web design and SEO tips.
Right, let’s start building our Squarespace site!
The first step involves getting everything ready.
One - make sure you have everything you need for your website.
Before building your Squarespace site, it’s a good idea to have everything you need for
it ready — this will speed up the process and give you a better looking result.
The key things you’ll usually need are: a logo, a color scheme, a list of site pages,
content for each page and, if you’re building an online store, any necessary product details.
Two — choose a Squarespace template.
The next thing you’ll need to do is select your Squarespace template.
You do this when you start your free Squarespace trial - you’ll find a link to this in the
video description.
It’s important to take your time during this selection process, because although you
can customize and repurpose Squarespace templates easily, once you’ve picked one, you can’t
switch to another one.
So, use all the filters and categories provided to help you find the right template for your
project.
Three – add your business information.
Once you’ve chosen your template, it’s time to enter key information about your business
into your Squarespace settings.
To do this, go to the settings section of your Squarespace dashboard, where you’ll
find quite a few different sections that let you provide Squarespace with information about
your business or project.
The key ones to focus on at this stage are usually language and region, and business
information.
If you like, you can also add the URLs of any social profiles you have in the social
links settings.
Doing so will display the relevant social icons and links on your Squarespace site.
Four — build your site navigation.
With your template chosen and key business information provided to Squarespace, it’s
time to build your site’s navigation.
You can do this by going to the ‘Pages’ section in the Squarespace dashboard.
When you go there for the first time, you’ll usually find some demo pages.
You can delete these by hovering over page titles and clicking the trash can icon that
appears beside them.
Alternatively, if you want to use a demo page’s layout as the basis of a new page, click the
cog icon beside it to access that page’s settings.
Then scroll down to the ‘Duplicate Page’ option to make an editable copy of that page.
To add a new page to your navigation, click the ‘plus’ icon beside the ‘Main Navigation’
heading and choose the type of page you’d like to create.
If you want to create a section in your navigation that contains a drop-down list of pages, you
can use the ‘folder’ option to do so.
Finally, once you’ve set up your navigation, you need to assign one of the pages as your
home page.
Just click on the cog icon beside the relevant page and then, in the settings that appear,
scroll down and click the ‘set as home page’ option.
Five — add a logo to your site.
When you’ve got your navigation in place, it’s a good time to add a site logo.
To do this, go to the ‘pages’ section of your dashboard, click on a page and then
the ‘edit’ button that appears.
Then, hover over your navigation and click ‘Edit site header’.
You’ll then get the option to upload your site logo.
Six — add your content.
With your template, navigation and logo all sorted, it’s time to start adding content.
To add content to a regular Squarespace page, just go to the ‘pages’ section in your
Squarespace dashboard, then click on the page you want to add content to followed by the
‘edit’ option.
Once you’ve done that, click the ‘Add section’ button.
You’ll then be able to choose the layout type that you’d like to use for that section.
When you’ve decided upon that, you can hover over the content blocks it contains to edit
them.
Alternatively, you can add new content blocks to your page.
You do this by hovering underneath an existing block and clicking the plus icon.
Then, you’ll be able to choose what sort of content you’d like to add.
There are a wide variety of content blocks to choose from — just pick the one you’d
like to insert, then add the relevant content.
If you want to move any of your content around your page, just hover over the top of the
content block you’d like to reposition.
When you see the ‘hand’ icon appear, you can click and drag that piece of content to
a new location on the page.
Now, I’ve just taken you through the process of adding content to a regular Squarespace
page.
But as we saw earlier, there are quite a few different types of pages that you can create,
including blog posts, event pages, and store pages.
Creating and editing many of these involves a similar process to the one I’ve just outlined,
but check out the video description for more resources on how to create and edit these
other types of Squarespace pages.
Seven — style your site.
When you’ve added your content, it’s time to style it so that it matches your brand.
To do this, click the ‘Design’ option in your Squarespace dashboard, followed by
‘Site Styles.’
Once you do that, you’ll be able to edit the appearance of:
Fonts Colors
Animations Spacing
Buttons Images
Let’s take a look at all these.
The ‘fonts’ section lets you specify the typefaces for the various types of text styles
you can use on your site.
These are headings, paragraphs, buttons and what Squarespace refers to as ‘miscellaneous’
text — for example, product prices and blog post tags.
The key thing to remember about fonts is to try not to use too many of them, as the more
you use, the slower your site will load.
Generally it’s best to use just one or two typefaces on your site.
In the ‘colors’ section, you can define ‘color palettes’ for your site.
These contain color settings for backgrounds, text, buttons and much else besides.
You can format these so that the colors used adhere to your brand guidelines.
When you’re happy with your color palettes, you can apply them to content sections on
your site’s pages.
To do this, go to the Pages option in your Squarespace dashboard, edit the relevant page,
locate the section you want to apply the palette to, and click the ‘pencil’ icon beside
it.
Then, click ‘colors’ and apply the relevant color palette.
Returning to the site styles options, the ‘animations’ section lets you specify
what effects you’d like to apply to your content as it appears on the page.
To ensure that your content loads as fast as possible however, we usually recommend
choosing the ‘none’ option.
The ‘site spacing’ section lets you adjust your site’s width and page margins - you
can adjust the sliders provided to see how your site will appear when different widths
are applied.
Finally, and as their names suggest, the ‘buttons’ and ‘image blocks’ sections give you access
to controls that define how buttons and images appear on your site.
Eight — connect your domain.
Rather than using the standard ‘squarespace.com’ URL that you get when you sign up for Squarespace,
it’s generally best to use a custom domain name for your store.
This will generate more trust in your website amongst your site visitors.
You can purchase a custom domain from a domain name provider – for example Namch eap, Gandi
or Network Solutions.
Alternatively, you can buy one direct from Squarespace.
In fact, if you pay on an annual basis for your website, Squarespace will give you one
for free for the first year of your subscription.
To get a domain from Squarespace, or connect an existing one, go to Settings > Domains
in your dashboard.
Then, select the relevant option and follow the instructions provided.
Nine – prepare your website for launch.
Once your domain is connected, you could technically launch your Squarespace site right away!
But it’s much better to check that all aspects of your website are working as expected first
— and that’s where a Squarespace ‘pre-launch checklist’ comes in.
Key tasks on this checklist typically include ensuring that all your site copy is correct,
there are no broken links on your site, all forms are working correctly and you’ve added
a favicon to your site.
If you’ve added products to your Squarespace site, it also means checking that all the
pricing, shipping and tax information has been entered correctly.
In the video description, you’ll find a list of the key tasks that we’d normally
recommend including in your pre-launch checklist.
Ten — publish your site.
When you’re done with your pre-launch checks, you can publish your Squarespace site!
By default, each new Squarespace website is password protected, and you need to remove
this password in order to make your site publicly visible.
Just go to Settings > Site Availability, where you’ll be able to do this.
And that’s it!
Your Squarespace website is live.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this Squarespace tutorial, but your web design journey doesn’t stop
there!
Check out the Squarespace resource center on the Style Factory website, which contains
a host of useful Squarespace resources, including a really in-depth guide to Squarespace SEO.
See the video description for a link to this.
And, to ensure you don’t miss any of our tips on how to make the most of your Squarespace
site going forward, make sure you like this video, subscribe to our channel and hit the
notifications bell.
Finally, if you have any questions about building a Squarespace website, do leave a comment.
We read them all and will do our best to help.