How to Get Started With Squarespace 7.1

Getting started on your businesses website can be hanging around on your to do list from longer than you’d like. I know, because I did exactly the same. 

What?

Yes, a web designer with a fear of creating a new website draft and getting started on her own site. It might seem strange but the fear is real. There is something about it being your own baby that make it feel SO overwhelming. 

But, let me tell you, when I’d gone through the following steps and begun to make progress, I felt AMAZING. I want the same feeling of having that massive weight off your shoulders for you too. So today I’m going to guide you through the steps it takes to get started with building your website on Squarespace 7.1, perfect for beginners.

1. Get Strategic

First up, it’s important not to dive into the process blindly. That’s a sure route to wasting time, getting frustrated and giving up. You wouldn’t hop in your car without a destination unless you wanted to kill some time, would you? So, let’s not do this with our website! Instead, begin by getting strategic.

Download my Squarespace Website Planner which guides you through the exact strategy I use with every single website design client. This planner is editable so you can fill it out online - or print it out and enjoy using good old fashioned pen and paper. By the end of this workbook, you’ll be prepped with an action plan for how to strategically create your website with your goals and customers in mind. This will mean you can make the most of your design time and create something you and your customers can fall in love with.

With this step complete, you’re going to feel in control of the process of hopping on to Squarespace. So, let’s head on over…

2. Choose a Template

Head to squarespace.com and click ‘get started’.

To begin with, you’ll be prompted to answer a few questions about you, your goals and where you are at in your journey. Squarespace will use some of this information to help show you a selection of templates that might suit your business and it’s needs. If you don’t want to answer the questions, just click ‘skip’ or ‘I’m just browsing’.

After this, you’ll then be taken to a page that looks a lot like this one and be asked to select a template.

I’ve written a whole blog post on picking a Squarespace template for your website which you can read here. However, the beauty of getting started with the latest version of Squarespace, 7.1, is that each template is exactly the same. You might have heard that picking a template is a stressful task on Squarespace. Not anymore! Each ‘template’ has all the same functions and abilities.

To choose your template, pick one which is the closest to your desired look or feel. Don’t worry about picking one in your ‘industry’. In fact, it will set you apart from your competition if you pick something different!

3. Create an Account

With any account, you’ll have a 14 free trial to test drive the platform. This gives you time to experiments with your chosen template, discover the backend of Squarespace and even get everything ready to upgrade and launch your full site.

After selecting your template, you’ll be prompted to create a Squarespace account. Simply fill in your details to sign up and access your free trial.

Note: After your trial is up, prices start at as little as $12/month which includes your template and hosting. This is great as it means you don’t have to connect external hosting like you would need to do on Wordpress.

4. Fill in you Site Title

Before you dive into your new template, Squarespace will prompt you to add in your site title. This is going to be the name of your business and will appear on your sites SEO. But don’t worry, this can be changed at any time in your website’s settings.

Click ‘continue’ and you’ll be given a super speedy overview of the backend of Squarespace. This includes where to edit pages, create pages and style pages. When you’re ready, hit ‘get started’.

Again, you can skip any of these steps by hitting the ‘skip’ button.

5. Get to Know the Backend of Squarespace

Congratulations - you’re all set to dive into your website.

If you’re new to Squarespace, you’ll want to spend some time orientating yourself around the backend. Squarespace is a beautifully clean website builder and it’s super easy to navigate once you’ve got a feel for it.

All the settings you’ll need to edit and manage your new site can be found down the left hand menu. Here’s a little overview of what you’ll find in each:

Pages is where you can edit, add and organise your website’s pages.
Design is where you can edit the look and feel of your site.
Commerce is where you host your store, if you have one.
Marketing is where you’ll find everything from email to social, pop ups to SEO.
Scheduling is Squarespace’s new tool for bookings and appointments.
Analytics is where you can come to look at data on your website.
Settings is for the nitty gritty of your website such as connecting accounts, billing and domains.
Help is for information, videos and articles to help with your website build.

To the right you’ll find the preview of your site.

Along the top of the preview, you’ll see an ‘edit’ button to open the drag and drop editor to add or change elements (or blocks, as Squarespace calls them) on your website.

You’ll also see a little mobile phone icon in the top righthand corner of the preview. Click this and you can take a peek at the mobile version of your site. Click it again to head back to the desktop version.

Top Tip: If you ever want to search for a setting that you can’t locate, just hit ‘/’ on your keypad and you can search the settings in Squarespace.

6. Design + Launch Your Site

Hooray - we’re at the really exciting bit. Creative hats on, next up we’re going to design your website.

You’ll want to have your Squarespace Website Planner to hand when you get to this point. It’s going to speed up the process of getting your site ready to launch SO much. So many of the tough decisions and hard work has already been done for you!

Head into ‘Pages’ and sort through your demo content that comes with the template. You might want to remove some of them and start from scratch or you could use the demo pages as a base and edit them to include your content.

You can also play around with adding different types of pages to your navigation and moving pages between your main navigation, footer navigation and unlinked sections of your site.

When you’ve got your structure in place, click ‘Edit’ on the righthand side of the screen to open the drag and drop editor for your pages.

Hover over the section you want to edit and click on the black lines that appear between blocks to open the Content Block menu. Here you can select a new piece of content to add to your site before dragging and dropping it around your site to get your desired look.

To edit blocks already in place, simply hover over it and click the pencil icon that appears. If you want to delete a block, click the red bin icon that appears next to the pencil on hover.

There’s a lot to learn in the editor and you may find Squarespace’s help videos and articles useful depending on what you’re after.

Then, I recommend clicking ‘done’ then ‘save’ and heading to the ‘Design’ section in settings. Here, you can change things like colours, fonts and buttons to suit your brand.

And remember, have fun with designing your site!

7. Go Live

And when you’ve finished editing your design, it’s time to upgrade and get that beauty out in the world!

To upgrade, you’ll want to head to Settings > Billing & Account > Billing.

Then, you’ll want to connect your domain. You can manage this in Settings > Domains. You can buy a new domain from Squarespace or connect one from a third party. Here you can also edit your .squarespace.com domain. Once you have a custom domain connected to your account, your Squarespace domain will only be seen by you.

Don’t worry about these steps, Squarespace will walk you through these so it’s not a painful process at all.

Then, head over to Settings > Site Availability and set your site to ‘Public’. Congrats!

I hope this has helped you see just how easy it is to get started on Squarespace. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below, I’d love to help!

And if you’re looking for some professional help with your website build, get in touch to see how we can work together on your exciting project!