Are you trying to launch a website on Squarespace, but not sure where to start? Don’t worry, this article is the perfect place for you. We’ll help make your Squarespace experience as easy and painless as possible we put together this Squarespace website launch checklist that will walk you through all of the steps it takes to create a beautiful site that will be up and running in no time!
Style & Design
Add a Title and Logo to Your Squarespace Website
The first thing you’ll want to do is add a title and a logo to your site. The title of a site should be added so both users and search engines can quickly know what your website offers. The logo should also be prominent, so that site visitors immediately recognize your brand from a quick glance at any one of the pages on your Squarespace website.
Choose Your Brand Colors for Your Squarespace Website
Next you want to pick your brand colors for your Squarespace website, and you can find them in the Design Settings. It’s also a good idea for your logo to match one of these colors to make it easy for people to recognize you on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.
Add a Favicon to Your Squarespace Website
Add a favicon image. These are the little icons you see in bookmarks, tabs, and other places on a browser. Your favicon should be an image that’s visible at small sizes that people can clearly make out even if it’s not exactly the same as your Squarespace website logo.
Squarespace Pages
Set a Homepage on your Squarespace website
Set a homepage on your Squarespace website. The homepage is the first page you see when viewing your site, and it should include a description of what your company does, any recent announcements you want to make available on the site and links to other pages.
Set Up Your Squarespace Website Navigation
Set Up Your Squarespace Website Navigation so that visitors can easily find what they’re looking for if you have a lot of content on your website. You could do it by category, date or alphabetically. Use the Squarespace navigation menu to create a clear structure across your site so visitors can quickly and conveniently get where they want to go without having to search through all of the pages on your site.
Create a Custom 404 Page to Your Squarespace Website
Create a Custom 404 Page. A custom 404 page is an opportunity to show visitors that they have tried to access an unreachable page without having them encountering an indecipherable server error. It’s also an excellent way of apologizing if the visitor has reached a dead end on your site, so they don’t get confused and leave.
Add an About Page to Your Squarespace Website
Adding an about page is an opportunity to share your story and values with visitors. It’s a chance for you to inform your visitors about your business and the people who work there, so visitors have a better understanding of what you offer and why they should care.
Add a Contact page to your Squarespace Website
A contact page is a chance for you to provide visitors with a way to reach out to you. It’s a great way to stay in touch with your customers, and a great way to get customer feedback.
Add a Privacy Policy Page to Your Squarespace Website
A privacy policy is an opportunity for you to share how your company handles personal information. It’s important that this page be easy-to-find and well written, as visitors typically want reassurance that their data will remain private and secure when they interact with your website.
Add Social Media Links to Your Squarespace Website
The most important thing you can do is connect with your current audience, and then you’ll want to take the next step and reach out to new potential followers by adding social media links in your header, footer, or sidebar. It doesn’t matter where you put them as long as they are clearly visible, and they you encourage visitors to like and share your content.
Domains & Integrations
Use a custom Domain with Your Squarespace Website
A custom domain that you own will help to establish your company as a legitimate business. It’s also a good idea for search engine optimization purposes since subdomains don’t get as much SEO love from Google
Squarespace offers a free domain with every annual hosting plan, and you can purchase additional custom domains for $20 to $70 per year.
Check all of Your Squarespace Integrations
You want to be sure all of the integrations that you have set up on your site are functioning properly. This includes social media widgets, custom extensions, and third-party integrations. Plus, make sure to double check that your Squarespace website is linked up with the services you’re using so that everything works seamlessly in order to avoid any glitches when you launch your website.
Business Information
Add Your Business Information to Your Squarespace Website
Next you’ll need to make sure that all of your business information appears on your Squarespace website. This includes your address, contact information, phone number, and any other pertinent information, such as your hours of operation.
Visitor Tracking
Add Google Analytics to Your Squarespace Website
Are you using Google Analytics? You might not know this, but Squarespace allows for seamless integration with Google Analytics. This means that as soon as your website goes live, the data from Google will start flowing in automatically so you can see how people are interacting with your site and what type of content is resonating most with them.
Click Here to Learn: How To Add Google Analytics to a Squarespace Website
Enable Your Cookie Banner
One of the most important things you should do before launching your Squarespace website is to enable a cookie banner. This will let all visitors know that they are visiting a site that uses cookies, and encourage them to read about how this impacts their privacy online.
This is especially important if your site gets a lot of visitors from European countries that follow the rules and regulations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Security Settings
Enable SSL on Your Squarespace Website
Enable SSL on your Squarespace website for greater protection of your site and its visitors. This is one of the simplest security steps you can take to protect a Squarespace website from hackers, spyware or other malicious software that may be trying to steal personal information from your visitors.
Having a secure site is also important for search engine rankings, since Google ranks sites higher in the search results if it detects that a site is serving SSL protected content.
Miscellaneous
Remove the Squarespace Badge from Your Website
The Squarespace badge you see on your website might not bother you, but it does make a Squarespace site look a little less professional. Don’t worry though, it’s easy to remove. Just go into your Squarespace account and head over to the “Design” tab in your dashboard. In that section, scroll down until you see “Squarespace Badge”. Check the option next to hide the badge across your whole site
Remove the Date From Your Blogs Post URLs
This is a useful tip for those that don’t want to keep track of the date and time they published their content. In order to remove the date, head over to your Squarespace account’s “Settings->Blogging -> Post Url Format” tab in your dashboard. Then scroll until you find “Blog Post URL”. From there you can modify the permalink structure, so it doesn’t add the date to your blog post URLs.
Publish Your Site
Make Your Squarespace Website Public
Once your site is ready and you have gone through all the steps in this checklist you can set your Squarespace website to be public. To do this, head over to “Settings->Site Availability” then select Public and click save.
Once your site is live visitors can access your pages and search engines can start to crawl and index your site.
Conclusion
Now that you have a checklist of what to do before your Squarespace website launch, it’s time for the fun part – getting traffic to your site. We’ll be following up with more posts on how to optimize your site through SEO plugins and content marketing so stay tuned! In the meantime, take some time to read our Squarespace SEO Plugin Guide if this is an area of interest or contact us anytime about any questions you may have.
