How to use Squarespace

How to Use Squarespace: An 11 Step Tutorial

Jacqueline Renouard

» » How to Use Squarespace: An 11 Step Tutorial Our independent research projects and impartial reviews are funded in part by affiliate commissions, at no extra cost to our readers. Learn more Updated on July 17, 2023 Task time: Ongoing

Squarespace is a popular website builder that makes it easy to build your own site. It has 5.9% of the website builder market share along with a total revenue of $867 million in 2022 – because it offers the largest palette of creative tools, the best value for money, ease of use, and help and support we found in our research. In fact, it scores the highest in design functionalities of all the builders we’ve tested with 4.7 out of 5! In this Squarespace tutorial, we’re going to show you how to use Squarespace along with showcasing why we ranked it easiest to use, directly.

1. Get started (with a 14-day free trial)

2. Choose a template

3. Create a login

4. Add/remove pages

5. Edit pages

6. Adjust design and add branding

7. Add site information and configure key settings

8. Preview your site

9. Choose a price plan

10. Integrate marketing tools (optional)

11. Add ecommerce features (optional)

Get Started (For Free!) If you haven’t signed up for Squarespace yet, this is your first step. Don’t worry, you don’t need to pay anything right now – Squarespace has a 14-day free trial for you to start building! When we signed up, we didn’t have to enter payment details, just an email address once we’d chosen our template after setup. To start your 14-day free trial, just head to Squarespace to sign up. You don’t need to enter any details for the time being – just click the ‘Get Started’ button to move on to the next step! Then you’ll come to a set of questions about your business like the type of business, where you can enter whether you’re creating a fashion website, travel, art, etc. Squarespace will ask you about your website goals, if you aim to sell products or promote your brand, and if you want to build with a Squarespace template that you can modify or create your own from scratch. Create from Squarespace's stunning and professionally designed templates, or start your own from scratch! Squarespace's 14-day free trial needs no payment details. VISIT SQUARESPACE Further Information

• Read our Squarespace Review for a closer look at how it performs.

• Check out our Squarespace Pricing breakdown for details on plans, pricing, free trials, and more.

• How does Squarespace perform next to its competitors? Find out in our Website Builder Comparison Chart.

• Or, check out our up-to-date guide on the Top Website Builders on the market today.

Choose a Template After you’ve clicked ‘Get Started’ and entered in your business details. You’ll be prompted to select either creating a template from scratch using Squarespace Blueprint, or one of over 800 professionally designed templates for your website. Squarespace received the best design score of 4.7 out of 5, compared to all other website builders tested – plus you can customize both a regular and a Blueprint template as much as you like, so that it still remains unique. If you choose to build from scratch with Squarespace Blueprint you’ll be able to create a more tailor made template in just five steps, ideal for those who don’t know how to design a site. But if you love browsing templates and discovering the perfect fit then the template option is for you. You can browse by industry (everything from ‘Online Stores’ and ‘Restaurants’ to ‘Weddings’ and ‘Photography’), or by popular designs. Here we’ve selected food to show you the top three results. But not to fret, if you don’t like them then just keep scrolling through as there are over 800 templates on Squarespace to look at. You can filter templates by category and preview designs to help you choose. Click on the image to choose your design. Hover over a template and select ‘Preview’ to take it for a spin. The template you pick will act as your website’s design springboard, so it’s worth previewing a few to find the one that feels the most ‘you’. For this article we'll be using the Troutman template, where you can hover over and select preview to see the template properly. A bit of advice at this stage: Squarespace’s designs are nice. In fact, the best we’ve ever tested – it’s maintained its excellent design score since last year’s research, showing its reliability over time. This is obviously great, but can also make it hard to settle on one template – you’re really spoiled for choice, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed and give up altogether. But here are our top tips for picking your template:

1. Stick to your industry – this is a simple way to narrow down your options, and also make sure you’re following industry best practice.

2. Scope out the features – different templates will come with different tools, like whether it has a map for your restaurant, so check it has most of the features you need.

3. ‘Favorite’ your favorite templates by clicking the heart – these will then be saved under the ‘My Favorites’ category for you to come back to with fresh eyes.

4. The ‘wow’ factor – when you look at the template, would you buy from it? Does it entice you to read the blog? Does it market an expertise well? If it’s yes to your website’s specific goal, then it’s a yes to pick it!

5. Final decision – just know that whichever template you choose, you can customize it however you like, so don’t get too hung up on your decision at this stage.

Once you’ve chosen your template, hover over it and select the option ‘Start with [template name]’. We’re going to go with the template Troutman from the restaurant category. Squarespace is perfectly equipped for all this. In our research testing the best website builders for the restaurant industry, Squarespace scored a 4.8 out of 5! We'll be selecting the Troutman template with a fresh-looking site for Vietnamese food. Once you've previewed your template, click the "Create A Site Like This" button in the bottom right to start creating. You can hit the edit in the top right corner and start shaping the text to match your business. What I love about editing with Squarespace is the grid layout that comes up when you move elements on the page, helps to create a neat homepage. Squarespace is the winner for the design category. SEE SQUARESPACE Further Information

• Love to know more about Squarespace’s template designs? Check out our Squarespace Template Review.

• Check out our news page for the latest Squarespace template, celebrating 20 years in the business of building sites.

• Discover the Success Story of Spanish and Go, and how they used Squarespace a to create their blog, a podcast, and an immersion retreat.

Create a Login At this point, you’ll need to sign up with an email address, or log in with your Google account. Don’t worry, you still don’t need to pay anything, and Squarespace won’t ask for any payment details – you’re just starting your 14-day free trial by creating an account: