6 Tips for Building a Website with squarespace
Starting a website is exciting. It’s also a little overwhelming. Where do you even begin? What goes on the homepage? How many fonts is too many fonts? (Spoiler: it’s three.)
I build Squarespace websites for small businesses, and the same handful of mistakes pop up again and again. The good news is that they’re easy to avoid. Here are my favorite tips for building a website that looks great, feels like you, and actually brings in customers.
Start With a Clear Purpose for your website (and Make It Easy to Contact You)
Before you pick a single color or font, ask yourself one question: what do I want visitors to do here? Call you? Book a consult? Request a quote? Buy something? Pick your main goal and build your site around it.
Then make that goal impossible to miss. Put your contact info somewhere obvious, like your header or footer, and add a clear button that tells people exactly what to do next. Nobody enjoys a scavenger hunt, especially when the prize is a phone number. If someone has to dig for your contact info or figure out what you actually offer, they won’t try harder. They’ll hit the back button and click on someone else.
One more thing: give every page one job. Each page should match what people are really searching for. A quick way to figure that out is to Google the topic you want that page to show up for and see what’s already ranking. Are the top results service pages? How-to guides? Lists? That’s a hint about what searchers expect, so you can build a page that fits and then make it even better.
Keep Your website fonts and color scheme simple
Stick to two fonts, max. One for headings and one for body text works great, and honestly, one font is totally fine too. Once you hit three or four, your site starts to look like a ransom note. In Squarespace, you can upload your own fonts or choose from hundreds of options in the built-in font library, so you have plenty to play with without going overboard.
Next, check your color contrast. That pretty light gray text on a white background might look dreamy, but if people can’t read it, they can’t buy from you. You need enough contrast between your text and your background that everything is easy to read, even on a phone in bright sunlight. If you have to squint, your visitors will too. A free contrast checker (WebAIM has a good one) can tell you in seconds whether your colors pass.
Don’t Be Afraid of White Space for your squarespace website
Lots of people think every inch of the screen needs to be filled. More photos! More text! More badges! But a crowded page is tiring to look at. White space (the empty room around your content) gives your visitor’s brain a place to rest while they scroll, so they can focus on what actually matters.
White space also makes a website feel more luxurious. Think about walking into Nordstrom or Bloomingdale’s. Each brand gets its own section, there’s plenty of open floor, and the colors are coordinated. Now picture a Ross, where everything is packed onto crowded racks and you’re digging for the good stuff. (No shade to Ross, treasure hunting has its charm. It’s just not a luxury vibe.) Your website works the same way. Give your content room to breathe and it instantly feels more polished.
Stick to a Consistent Grids for your website
A grid is the invisible structure that keeps everything lined up: your text, images, videos, and buttons. When things line up, a website feels calm and professional, even if visitors couldn’t tell you why. When elements are scattered everywhere, something just feels off.
So place things on purpose. Decide where your text and images live, and repeat that pattern from page to page. Squarespace’s Fluid Engine editor is grid-based, which makes it a great way to line things up instead of eyeballing it. Dividers can also help you organize your sections and give them clean outlines.
Let Your Personality Show. Without personality no ones seeing you.
Please don’t make your website look like every other website out there. Your site should feel like you, not like a template everyone else is using too.
Two things do most of the heavy lifting here: your writing style and your imagery. Write the way you’d talk to a customer (a polished version of it). If you’re funny in person, let a little of that humor in. If you’re warm and chatty, don’t write like a legal contract. For images, use real photos of you, your work, and your space whenever you can. Generic stock photos make everybody’s website blend together.
Then try this: show your website to a friend and ask whether it feels like you. If they say “sort of,” keep tweaking. If they say “wow, this is so you,” you nailed it.
design for your local community (Especially If You Run a Service Business)
If you’re a contractor, home cleaner, landscaper, or run a mobile service, your customers are almost always nearby. So your website should say where you are, loud and clear.
Mention your city and the areas you serve on your homepage, service pages, contact page, and footer. This goes for your blog too. A post called “5 Signs It’s Time to Remodel Your Kitchen” is helpful. A post called “5 Signs It’s Time to Remodel Your Kitchen in Tampa” is helpful and tells the right people it’s for them. Realistically, nobody is hiring a contractor from outside their city without knowing them first, so write for the people nearby. Showing off local projects and photos helps too.
If you serve several areas, give each one its own page with real, specific info about that area, not the same page with the city name swapped out.
Ready to Put These Tips for Building a Website to Work?
Quick recap: know what you want visitors to do, keep your fonts and colors simple, give your content room to breathe, line everything up on a grid, let your personality shine, and go local if you serve a local area. You don’t have to do it all in one weekend. Pick one tip and start there.
If you’d rather skip the trial and error, that’s exactly what I do at Boxify Web Designs. I design custom Squarespace websites with flat-rate pricing and no monthly fees. Not sure where your current site stands? Request a free Squarespace website audit.