5 tips on building a Website from Scratch with Squarespace

Find a notepad, because your going need to take some notes….

As a stay-at-home mom who works part-time, I know the value of efficiency and simplicity, especially when it comes to building a website. Over the years, I've been on quite the digital journey, hopping from Shopify to WordPress, dabbling with Wix, and finally, finding my groove with Squarespace. While building a website from scratch can be straightforward, it does require a bit of work and patience to master a new tool. But let me tell you, it's been a fun and rewarding adventure!

Key Takeaways

• Squarespace is a user-friendly website builder that requires no coding knowledge.

• You can choose from a variety of free or premium templates and customize them to fit your needs.

• Squarespace offers a drag-and-drop editor that allows you to add and arrange content easily.

Understanding Squarespace

If you're new to Squarespace, let me give you the scoop. Squarespace is a user-friendly website builder that allows you to create a professional-looking site without any coding knowledge. Think of it as a digital playground where you can bring your vision to life using a variety of templates that you can customize to fit your brand. It also comes packed with features like e-commerce, blogging, and analytics, making it a one-stop shop for all your website needs.

My Journey with Squarespace

Over the years, I've discovered that purchasing premium templates for my personal website projects has made the DIY web design process a WHOLE lot easier. Etsy became my go-to for templates, allowing me to transform someone else's design into the online business of my dreams. As I honed my skills, I found a personal home and love for Squarespace, especially while doing custom web design work for clients. With limited coding skills—though I'm steadily improving—I truly needed a no-code approach, and Squarespace delivers. Nowadays, I don't rely on templates as much, but I still find them helpful for specific features like integrations, fonts, and formats. Templates are now a foundational tool rather than a plug-and-play solution. Now, I’m excited to share some tips that have helped me build stunning websites from scratch—or really, from a template standpoint!

5 Tips for Building a Squarespace Website

1. Choose the Right Squarespace Template

Choosing the right template is crucial as it sets the foundation for your website's design. Squarespace offers a variety of professionally designed templates tailored for different types of websites. You can also purchase a premium template that's more tailored to specific industries. Start by selecting a template that closely matches your vision and brand aesthetics. Remember, you can always customize it later, but having a good starting point saves time and effort.

2. Use Squarespace Extensions or Integrations

Squarespace offers a variety of extensions and integrations to enhance your website's functionality. Whether you need to integrate social media feeds, set up an online store, or add email marketing tools, there are many options available in the Squarespace Extensions Marketplace. These integrations can streamline your workflow, improve user experience, and help you manage your website more efficiently.

3. Optimize Your Website for Mobile

With more and more people using mobile devices to browse the web, it's essential that your website is optimized for mobile. Squarespace makes this easy by providing responsive templates that automatically adjust to different screen sizes. However, you should still ensure your website's design is clean and simple, with easy-to-read fonts and plenty of white space. Make sure your navigation is user-friendly on a small screen, and your content is easily readable by using short paragraphs, bullet points, and other formatting techniques.

4. Focus on Speed and Performance

Optimizing your website for speed and performance is key. This means using optimized images and other media, minimizing the use of plugins and third-party scripts, and leveraging caching and other performance-enhancing techniques. Squarespace takes care of much of this for you, but there are still some things you can do to improve your website's performance. Ensure your images are optimized for the web, with file sizes as small as possible without sacrificing quality.

5. Follow SEO Best Practices

When it comes to SEO, there are several best practices to keep in mind. Make sure your website is easily crawlable by search engines by providing clear navigation and internal linking. Ensure your content is high-quality and relevant to your target audience. Use keywords strategically, but avoid keyword stuffing. Focus on writing content that is informative, engaging, and valuable to your readers. If you have a physical location, optimize for local search by including your address and phone number on your website, and use local keywords in your content and meta tags.

So, just like my journey from Shopify to Squarespace, building a website from scratch has been a rewarding experience full of trial and error. The more I practiced, the more confident I became, and now I'm able to create amazing websites for clients with ease. It’s all about finding the right tools and sticking with them until they become second nature.

Now, I’d love to hear from you! Have you ever tried building a website from scratch? What tools or platforms have you used, and what was your experience like? Share your tips and stories in the comments below!