Squarespace is a versatile, intuitive platform you can use to build any type of website, from a for-fun hobby blog to an e-commerce store, without code. But being code-free doesn’t mean Squarespace is without any learning curve at all -- you’ll need to pick a domain, design your site and create your core pages. I’ll walk you through all of the basics, from choosing a domain to creating your first pieces of content.

How to build a Squarespace website: From choosing a domain to creating your first content

Choose a domain

Your domain is the address people use to access your website (for example, our domain is cnet.com). It’s often the first thing they see about your site, and it’s the tool they’ll use to get back, so it’s important to choose the right one. Specifically, you want a domain that is:

• Relevant: Your domain should relate to your site’s topic in some way, ideally through the use of popular keywords. For example, if you’re building a photography portfolio, you might want to include the word “photos” or “photography” in your domain. This helps people connect your domain to what your site is about, making them more likely to remember it.
• Short: Shorter domain names may be easier to remember. They’re also easier to fit into recommendations on social media platforms with character limits. So, sticking with the photography example, it might be wiser to use “photos” than “photography.”
• Easy to spell and say: Simple pronunciation and spelling -- often achieved through the use of common words -- makes it easier for people to talk about your site, both in real life and online.
• Connected to the right domain extension: .com is the most trusted and memorable domain extension, making it the best option for most websites. The only exception is when you want a specific extension to signal what your site is about (like a .org domain for a nonprofit) or what audience it serves (like a .ca domain for a business only working with Canadians).

You can get high-quality domain suggestions -- and find out if they’re available right away -- from a domain name generator like DomainWheel. Once selected, you can either register a domain with your Squarespace plan (getting it for free for the first year) or buy it separately from a domain registrar. I generally prefer using a domain registrar, as this often saves you more money in the long run.

Select a Squarespace plan

Squarespace requires you to sign up for a free trial and set up the basics of your site before purchasing a plan, but it’s still important to know what you’re willing to spend -- and what you need from your hosting -- upfront.

Squarespace’s Basic plan costs $16 a month for unlimited storage and bandwidth, plus full access to the website builder. Accordingly, Basic is excellent for building for-fun blogs, professional portfolios and service-based businesses. You’ll also get e-commerce features, which can be helpful if you’re starting an online store on a shoestring budget. However, there are notable transaction fees: 2% for regular online transactions and 7% for digital content subscriptions, charged in addition to the usual 2.9% plus $0.30 required by most credit cards.

The Core plan, priced at $23 per month, unlocks additional e-commerce features, like automated tax rate calculations, shipping label creation and specialized e-commerce analytics. You’ll also lose the 2% transaction fees on regular online purchases and have digital content subscription transaction fees reduced to 5%. Core is therefore a better choice for building an online store -- if you can afford the upfront cost.

If you’re building a content subscription site and you expect to make a significant amount of money early on, you may want to opt for the Plus or Advanced plans. These plans cost significantly more -- $39 a month for Plus and $99 a month for Advanced -- but dramatically reduce transaction fees on subscriptions to 1% and 0%, respectively.

Choose how you want to build your site

Click on Get Startedto begin the process of building your site. This opens a page where you can tell Squarespace your website’s industry. You can also select I’m just browsingin the upper-right corner to go straight to the template library.

If you enter your site’s industry, you’ll then be asked to specify what you want your site to do -- such as selling products -- and be directed to a page where you can choose between building your site with AI or using a template. 

While I generally recommend avoiding AI due to its extreme environmental impact, Blueprint AI is one of the best AI website builders on the market. Blueprint AI lets you choose things like your brand personality, color scheme and fonts. You can also select pages for it to create, such as an About page. Blueprint AI then builds a fully customized site for you, with the option to regenerate various aspects of the site as many times as you’d like. Regardless, I’d still recommend giving any generative AI content you add to your site a solid human edit for accuracy.

Squarespace has almost 200 designer-made templates for various industries (like photography or fashion) and website types (like blogs and e-commerce stores). While this is a significantly smaller collection than the 800-plus templates offered by Wix, there’s still enough variety for most people to find something that works for their site. You can also use search filters to find templates built for your industry or site type.

Connect your domain

While you can jump directly into site design, I recommend connecting your domain first. This allows you to publish your site as soon as you’ve finished building it and prevents someone else from purchasing the domain you want. You can buy a domain through Squarespace itself or purchase a domain through a dedicated registrar.

Your first instinct will probably be to click on the Get a custom domain button in the site dashboard, but this leads to a page where you purchase the domain on its own. A better option is to purchase your Squarespace plan now, as every Squarespace plan includes a free domain for the first year. You can get a plan in the Settings area accessed through the gear icon in the bottom left corner.

From there, go to Billing > Subscriptions and choose to upgrade from the free trial to a paid plan. 

Squarespace will then walk you through purchasing a hosting package. From there, you’ll get the option to claim your free domain.

If you want to purchase your domain through a registrar -- or you’ve already purchased your domain -- you’ll need to point the domain at Squarespace’s nameservers. You can do this by logging in to your registrar, selecting the domain you want to use and finding the Nameservers section of the domain management page. Select Custom DNS and enter the Squarespace nameservers (connect1.squarespacedns.com and connect2.squarespacedns.com). Here’s an example of what this looks like in Namecheap, the domain registrar I use:

This change can take up to 48 hours to register, but in my experience, it usually goes through in one or two hours.

Customize your site

Now it’s time to design your site. To get started, return to the site dashboard and click Edit Site to open the Squarespace editor, where you can modify both individual pages and the overall look of your site.

To customize your site’s overall appearance, select the Styles option. From here, you can choose a theme to match your website’s intended tone. This provides a great baseline for you to build your site around.

You can then customize individual aspects of your site’s appearance, including:

• Fonts: The typefaces and font sizes used for your headers and paragraphs. I recommend using the bold version of your preferred font for headers and the regular version for paragraphs to create a cohesive look. You may also want to consider font accessibility for visually impaired and/or dyslexic users.
• Color scheme: The colors of various types of text, including links and the background color of your site. You can also customize the background and text colors of buttons published on your site. Stick with one or two primary colors and one or two accent colors so your design doesn’t feel overwhelming.
• Buttons: The overall shape of buttons published on your site, including whether they have sharp edges or rounded corners.
• Forms: The shape of the input fields (where people enter information) and submission buttons for forms published on your site (like contact or newsletter forms).

Squarespace has “packs” for each of these customization categories. Like the overall theme, you can select a pack and leave it as-is or customize individual elements to create a more individualized look.

Build your homepage

Next, close the Styles section of the editor and click on your homepage, which opens the full page editor, eliminating the sidebar so you can see exactly what your visitors will see when they visit your homepage.

You can click on any element of the page to view the editing options. Most areas have options for adding elements, like images, and changing design elements like colors.

There are a few things to keep in mind as you build your homepage:

• Visuals: Catch your visitors’ attention right away with a high-resolution photo, illustration, or (sound-free) video. Every section of your homepage -- the areas they see when they scroll down -- should also have at least one high-resolution visual, and all images should relate to your site’s brand and purpose.
• Clear, compelling headers: The top of your website should feature a header that introduces what your site is about. Secondary headers at the top of each section should further explain -- to visitors and search engines -- what each area of your homepage is for.
• White space: A site with numerous images or other visual elements placed directly beside each other (or overlapping) can feel cluttered and overwhelming. White space -- the blank space left between content blocks -- reduces this feeling and makes it easier for visitors to interact with various elements of your page.
• Calls to action: Every section of your home page should include a call to action asking your visitors to do something, whether that’s visiting a different page of your site, subscribing to a newsletter or buying a product.
• Header and menu: You can add your site name and logo to your header and provide a search bar. You should also include links to key areas, using dropdown menus to link to sub-pages if you have a lot of content. For example, you might have a Shop link with a dropdown menu linking to individual product categories.
• Footer: Your footer should include copyright information for your site and links to key pages, including any privacy policies or terms and service pages. You may also want to include your email address or other contact information here.

You should also spend some time browsing popular websites in your niche to understand what folks are already doing and what you might want to emulate -- or change -- when building your own homepage.

Add essential pages

With your homepage set up, it’s time to build the rest of your core pages. There are a few pages almost every website needs:

• About: Where you provide a more detailed explanation of who you are, what inspired you to create your site and what you hope to achieve with it.
• Contact: A page providing the information your visitors need to get in touch with you. Your contact us page can include a contact form, email address, phone number or even a physical address if you’re building a website for a brick-and-mortar business.
• Subscribe: The primary home of your newsletter sign-up form, with a full pitch explaining what your subscribers will receive, including any subscriber freebies. This page can be as simple as a header, explainer paragraph and sign-up form -- or you can go all out and build a landing page with extensive visuals.

Other common pages include:

• A privacy policy explaining what data you collect from visitors and how you use it.
• Portfolio page sharing past projects you’ve worked on or otherwise demonstrating your expertise.
• Store/product pages where people can buy your products.
• Services page(s) detailing any services you provide, with sign-up or contact forms so people can start working with you right away.
• Testimonials page displaying quotes from people you’ve worked with before. Make sure to include names, images and/or links to demonstrate that these quotes came from real people.
• Terms and conditions page establishing rules for using your website, products or services. This page can also explain how you will interact with your users and process things like complaints or refunds.

You can add pages to your Squarespace site by opening the website editor, selecting Pages from the sidebar menu and clicking the plus “+” icon. You’ll get the option to choose a template -- with options available for several of the page types we’ve discussed here -- or start with a blank page and build everything yourself.

Test your website

With your pages set up, it’s time to make sure everything’s working as intended. There are two ways you can do this:

• Test it yourself: Visit your website and navigate through the pages on your computer and/or phone. Check images and links to make sure they’re working as intended, pay attention to speed and note any time you’re struggling to find a specific page or piece of information.
• Ask others to test it: Ask friends or colleagues to explore your site and tell you about any difficulties they encounter while using it. You can either ask them for a general impression or provide a questionnaire to guide their tests.

Ideally, you should run at least one self-test and one test from a friend or colleague before publishing your site. You’ll want to run additional tests after significant fixes to be sure they’ve worked, as well as before making any big updates in the future.

Optional: Write your first blog post

If your site will have a blog, you’ll want to make sure there’s something for people to see there when it launches. Specifically, you want to create an article that demonstrates what people can expect from your blog.

If your blog will be primarily a news area for your site or brand, write an article announcing the launch of your website and any products or services launching with it. Treat the launch like a proper event and focus on how your site, product or service can help your visitors.

If your blog will be an active publication, write an article about the topic you plan to cover. For example, if I were launching a blog about building an online business, I might start with an article about how to choose a web host. This would establish my expertise, connect my website to relevant keywords to start building up my SEO and provide value to my readers, encouraging them to return.

Once you’ve decided what your first article will be about, you can enter the website editor and go to Pages > Blog,then click the plus “+” icon to open the blog editor. Here, you’ll be able to draft your article, adding text, images and other content like tables.

As you write, remember to keep your content focused on helping your visitors with something, whether that’s understanding your products or performing a task like setting up a website. You may also want to read up on blogging best practices to understand how to organize your content for readability and SEO.

Getting ready to launch your Squarespace site

Creating your site is only one part of building your online presence; you also need to build some buzz for your launch. Set a launch date -- I recommend giving yourself at least 30 days between when you start designing your site and when you open it to the public -- and start talking about it on social media. You can share pieces of your design process, talk about the goals for your site and suggest that people subscribe to your newsletter to see the announcement when your site goes live.

Most of all, make sure you have a plan to celebrate your site on launch day, whether that’s through a big promotion or just eating a slice of cake (or both). Building a website is a big undertaking, and you deserve to be proud of it.

For more, compare Wix vs. Squarespace to learn which website builder is right for you.