My Process for Designing Custom Squarespace Websites (That Rank on Google Page 1)

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I haven’t switched to Squarespace’s version 7.1, and at this point I don’t know if I will or not.

I tinkered around with it and just didn’t see anything that made me want to transition. It seems to me that customization is a lot easier with version 7.0 and since I’m so adapted to that version anyway, why change?

If it ain’t broke…

Maybe something will compel me to switch to version 7.1 one day, but for now I’m very happy with my process of designing custom Squarespace websites for my clients on version 7.0.

The websites I design have a certain style to them, no doubt. But all of my websites are custom. I use a template, but I completely wipe out that template and start fresh with each new project.

Make sense?

Let me explain how I go about the process of designing custom Squarespace sites…

How do you design a custom site using a template?

I figure that clients are coming to me in the first place because they don’t want to paste content into a ready-made template.

They’re looking for something… more.

Despite, on version 7.0 you must choose a template to begin designing a site.

Here’s a little secret: I use the same template every single time. With all clients. It’s my favorite template. We know one another very well at this point ;)

Pedro!

This is the Pedro template.

These are the websites I design.

Do they look like the template?

Not at all.

Why Pedro?

I like the functionality. I never feel anything lacking with this template.

I design custom sidebars into blogs anyway, so a built-in template sidebar wasn’t anything I needed.

Pedro has everything I need to design a custom website.

Start with a blank canvas

One of the first things I do when beginning a new project is delete all demo pages and add blank index pages in order to start from scratch.

From here, I use my SEO research (performed during the first few days of a new project) to fill in all of the SEO fields of each page and to optimize page titles, URLs, descriptions, and so on.

Settle on fonts & colors

Using feedback from my clients gathered in previous communications and the questionnaire, I take some time to choose a color palette for the site and font combinations.

These style elements can make or break a site, so it’s important to spend time getting them just right.

Once the fonts and color palette are satisfying, it’s almost time to begin building out the site!

Optimize Images before adding them to the site

One of the last steps I take before diving in to full-on design phase is to optimize all of my client’s images.

By optimize, I mean:

Resize - no image should be larger than 2500px on the longest edge if used for a banner, and no image should be larger than 1500-2000px on the longest edge if not being used as a banner. This step can be time-consuming, but it ensures the site runs smoothly and has fast load speeds (SEO tip: visitors will leave your site if it takes longer than 2-3 seconds to load).
Rename - I rename all image files using keywords generated during the SEO research phase of the project (step 1!) before uploading to the site. This ensures no junk words get onto the sitemap to confuse Google indexing robots. We only want target keywords on the sitemap.

(You can learn about all of this in my Squarespace SEO Expert Course)

Now it’s time to begin designing

Now that all of the precursor setup stages are completed, it’s time to design a site for my client.

I design custom websites using input from my client gathered prior to the project start date, details of websites they really love, as well as my own expertise and knowledge of best practices and what engages visitors on a website.

This is the fun part!

Once I’ve completed the homepage, I send it over to my client for approval (just to make sure they like the direction I’m going) and then carry on designing the rest of the site.

Within two weeks, we’re ready to launch their brand new custom website that will almost certainly rank on Google Page 1 in the months to come!

Let me know if you have any questions about this process in the comments below, or if you’re interested in hiring me for web design + SEO services you can shoot me an email at tiffany@tiffany-davidson.com — I’m happy to help!

Talk with you again soon,

x Tiffany