12 Squarespace Hacks To Build A Site FAST – Transcript

00:0012 hacks to build your Squarespace site fast. We are having no intro, no nonsense. You are busy, I am busy. Let's get into the content. Hack number one, download the start your Squarespace website workbook. Okay, I don't know if this is a hack, but you should do it.

00:13People who built sites for the first time, or even the second, or third, or fourth time, often build useless websites because they haven't done the prep work necessary to build a website which actually works for their business. So, don't just go willy-nilly into the Squarespace editor, go in with a plan.

00:30The workbook will help you do that. Link below for it. Number two, pick your template wisely. If you choose your template wrong, you're setting yourself up for a much, much longer website build. Basically, you want to choose the Squarespace template which has your style and/or color scheme as close as possible to what you want the result to look like in the end. Of course, I encourage you to change up the styles, but there's about 10,000 Squarespace style options. So, if you choose a

00:55template close-ish to what you want style-wise, it will genuinely save you like 10 hours of fiddling with a zillion different color settings and font types in Squarespace later. If you want more on how to choose the right Squarespace template, check out the video linked up above. Number three, set your site styles right from the very beginning, before you actually start building the website. People who are newbies to website building, honestly, myself included at the start, tend to build websites, then change heading three to

01:23fit with the design on that page, and then they build out a few more pages, then they decide, "Oh, I don't actually like paragraph one." And then they change that, and then they continue on, and they dislike the button color there, so then they change that, too. And then they realize that change didn't just happen in the one place, but it happened on all of the other pages. And then they need to go and redo everything and make it all cohesive, and it wastes a ton of time. So, just do me a favor and set all the site styles right at the very

01:50beginning. Number four, write out your color codes and font types in a note on your computer. So, sometimes you want to make that specific blue here, or you want to make that graphic in Canva with the exact yellow, which matches everything else, and it's a pain every time to go and hunt down the color codes in your site styles. So, what I suggest doing is to write out your primary color codes and the font types used in a note, making them way easier to find later.

02:15Number five, write your website words, aka your copy, first before you go to build the website. People do it backwards all of the time. They go into Squarespace and they either first try to fit all of their content into the text areas of the template, or second, they're trying to build the site and design it and style it and write the text, aka the copy, at the same time, which is a massive time waster. So, before you even start your Squarespace free trial, I'd suggest writing out your

02:41site copy in a document, and then go and build your website with the copy to guide you. Copy guides the design of a site, not the other way around. So, don't get it twisted. If you need a hand, I will link my homepage copy template for you for free down below.

02:55Number six, prep your photos by naming them and resizing them all at once. So, use SEO-friendly image names and be sure to get every single photo on your site, preferably under 500 KB in size, before uploading it to Squarespace. Both of these steps make your photos load quickly and be able to be understood and read by Google, which helps you in the search results. Number seven, use the photo library section. Squarespace built out this handy-dandy tool, whereby every time you upload a photo to Squarespace,

03:23it saves it in your library. So, you really only need to upload a photo once, and then just scroll back through your library to find a picture if you want to use it somewhere else on the website. Number eight, use the section save feature. So, just click on the heart button and your section design will be saved. To use it again on another page or lower down the page, click add section, and then saved sections, and then select the one that you want. Hack number nine, use gallery blocks over image blocks wherever possible. If you

03:50want a bunch of photos on the page and you want to arrange them really quickly, you'll be well-served by selecting a gallery block where you can just toss in a bunch of photos, quickly rearrange them, delete out any ones that you feel like don't fit, and lay them out with the gallery design options instead of dragging and dropping each image individually. Now, if you're watching this and thinking, "Wonder if I could be a web designer, too?" then that is exactly why I created the Dream Client Booking Blueprint. It is a 5-day guided challenge designed to help you

04:18land your first dream website client without all of the overwhelm. Whether you are just starting out or pivoting into website design, this challenge provides daily bite-size tasks to help you build your confidence and, most importantly, your client base. You're going to define your ideal client, you'll price your services with clarity, craft a really compelling portfolio, even if you don't have any clients to speak of right now, and learn how to craft a winning pitch. So, if you're

04:44ready to turn your design passion into a paid profession, then check out the blueprint. It is exceptionally affordable, meaning you can test out a potential design career for less than the price of dinner. Click the link in the description below to secure your copy of the Dream Client Booking Blueprint. Hack number 10, use the duplicate feature. So, you can actually duplicate sections of a page. You can duplicate blog posts, and you can also duplicate entire websites. Now, I know a

05:11few of my very savvy web design students, they tend to actually start off their projects with a base template which they've created for themselves. And this template has a lot of these sections that they tend to build and love already in the website because they duplicated an old site and kind of just created themselves a base template to start off every new project with. So, if you're dreaming of becoming a web designer and not just creating one site, but be creating many, many sites for clients over time, this is definitely worth the effort. Also, if you're a

05:38blogger and always want the same sections and format for your posts, you could create a blog post template and start off a new post by duplicating that template. Hack number 11, take a step-by-step course. Having someone tell you exactly what to do, who knows their stuff and has built a zillion websites, will obviously be a massive time saver.

05:57You can learn about my Squarespace web design course called Squarespace at the link below. Number 12, accept that your website is never finished and it is going to be a living thing and should constantly be being updated. So, don't put too much pressure on yourself to make it absolutely perfect just now because Squarespace is so easy to use, you can update the stuff on your website all of the time. Now, these hacks are all well and good, but just speedily getting through your website building project will only get you so far. People

06:25always ask me, "Paige, if you had to learn website design all over again, how would you do it?" I got asked that so often that I actually created an entire video on it. So, watch this video next to see how I'd go about learning website design from scratch, what I would do step-by-step, and what I wouldn't waste my time on anymore.