Beginner Squarespace Tutorial (Updated for 2021!) - Build Your Squarespace Website

squarespace makes it easy for you to create a modern professional website even if you've never done it before it's easy to use there's no coding required and there's a lot that you can do with it to turn it into a 24 7 marketing tool for your business if you are new here hi i'm louise i'm a squarespace authorized trainer if you use my code sidekick 10 at checkout you will save 10 off your first year of squarespace i also have a fantastic free resource that goes along with this video it's my free squarespace roadmap so make sure that you click the link in the description below to grab that this is the latest version of squarespace and it makes it even easier for diy-ers to create a stunning professional website if you've already started with squarespace you can see what version you're on by logging into your website then clicking help here it will display exactly what version you are on keep this in mind as you are watching tutorials on youtube and learning more about squarespace make sure that you're always following a tutorial that matches the version of squarespace you are on so the very first thing you're going to do is go to squarespace.com and sign up for a free 14-day trial by clicking get started from here you're going to see all these beautiful professionally designed templates that you can choose from and this is a really good point this is just a starting point okay and everything about it you're actually going to be able to customize which i'm going to show you in this video so you do need to start with a template though so scroll down here and choose whichever one is closest to the final vision that you have for your website it doesn't matter what topic or type it's been categorized as you can use any template you want okay so for example let's say that you really like this one and you can preview all of them in more detail by hovering over it then clicking preview and you'll be able to see it in more detail okay when you have found one that you like click start with this design from here you're just going to type in your business name click continue and i'm actually going to skip through all of these okay so this is the start of your brand new website first thing you want to do is go over here to pages and you'll see all of the demo content that squarespace has already created for you now you'll see that we have main navigation that means that these are the pages that are going to live at the top of your website here not linked is any other page that you want to have on your website it's just not going to appear at the top now i know this is a little confusing because this says contact us here but that's because at your top navigation you can also add a button to it okay so we're currently on our home page okay and here is all the content so to make it super simple for yourself you can just go ahead and customize the demo pages to do that you're just going to click edit and then you can go ahead and customize it so it's really easy for you to change out this content for example to change this text all i need to do is click on it i can delete that text here and type in my own it does take a bit of time to fully understand how squarespace works but after you play with it a little bit you will totally get it okay so i can change the text simply by clicking on it right so and i can also change out any of the images now this is actually a trick that i love so much you can go over here to this pencil icon click on that go to background then you're going to delete this photo here and instead you're going to click search images click free images and this is going to pull up this fantastic built-in integration with the free stock photo website unsplash so any of these images here you are able to use on your website it's 100 free for commercial use as well so let's say that i wanted to display coffee i'm doing a coffee website what am i not i think i use this for every video that i do so i'm gonna type in coffee and as you can see all of these gorgeous high-res photos appear here and this is what i can use on my website so i'm going to scroll down and when you see one that you like you're just going to click on it and then click add image so it's as simple as that for you to customize images on your website alternatively if you did have your own photos to use you can hit delete and then you can upload an image by clicking add an image here okay so you're going to scroll down the demo page and you're going to replace all of the content simply by clicking on it okay so now let's scroll back up to the top i want to show you how easy it is for you to add new content to your site so as you hover in between these different sections you'll see add section you can simply click on that and then this is going to bring up all these different pre-built sections that you can easily insert into your site so for example let's say that i wanted a section like this all i have to do is click on it and it's going to automatically be added to my site so add section and you'll see these pre-built sections also look over here to the left and you'll see all these different categories for the type of section that you can insert so for example if i wanted to build my newsletter i can click on that and i have all these different sections to help me build my newsletter okay so not only can you add entire sections like that but you can add in individual elements when you go into the section and you hover over the elements that are already there you will then see these blue plus signs click on one of those and that's going to pull up the squarespace individual building blocks so this is how you would just add one individual button for example i'm going to click on that and it's automatically going to be added so when you do this you'll see that you can add videos images quotes the list goes on so definitely scroll down here and check out everything that you can add so those are the general building blocks of building out your page at any point if you need to remove something simply click on it and then you'll see a little trash can icon appear click on that and confirm that you want it to be deleted okay when you're ready to save your changes make sure you go up here to this drop down arrow and hit save so that's how you work with the demo content but let's say that you wanted to build a page from scratch you can go over here to the plus sign if you want to add this link across the top or if you just want it to be linked to you know within the pages within your buttons or you want to give people a direct link to that page you're going to put it under your not link section so let's do that as an example i'm going to click the plus sign and then you can click page layouts so click on that and this is going to give you full pre-built pages that you can also use so really squarespace is just trying to make this as fast and easy for you as possible so for example let's say i want to go with this one here i'm going to click on that and it's going to load in an entire page for me okay so now let's talk about aesthetics so like your colors your fonts how do you change that all you need to do is click back top left here and go into design so click on that site styles is where you control all of this information so i'm going to click site styles and you'll see another menu over here on the right appears this is where you're really going to edit the overall look of your site so for example for fonts i'm going to click fonts and you will actually see these different font packs that squarespace has created for you if you click switch right here you'll see all these different font pairings that you can choose from so let's say that i liked this one here i can click on that and that is going to change all my fonts across my entire site so really quick and easy of course you can get more detailed and more specific on this but i love how easy it can be so let's click back again and go to our site styles then we have colors so i'm going to click on that now i can click edit palette and i can completely change all the colors across my entire site in just a few clicks so if we scroll down here you'll see all these professional presets that they've made you can choose from one of these so let's say we want to go with this one right here i'm going to click on that and automatically all colors across my site will be changed so you can either choose one of these presets here or you can come up here and you can replace each of these colors so if you already have your brand hex codes you can just click right here delete this number and paste yours in instead and it will change that across your site okay so for now i'm going to go with this one right here okay great now click back now the next important thing when it comes to colors is your themes so squarespace breaks it down into different themes to really give you different styling options for each one of these sections that you build out so as you can see this is our lightest one lightest one but down here is dark one and they all have different color settings so that you can achieve different yet cohesive looks if at any point you want to change out one of the colors you can come over here it's a little pencil icon and then you'll get very specific editing options and you can go ahead and change those up to make this even easier click on the specific element and it will bring up your editing options over here on the right but ideally you won't have to change the themes at all and you can just use the pre-built themes once you have added in your palette so those are the basics of how you would build out your website in squarespace now let's say that you're ready to go and you want to publish it out to the world you're going to go down here and click subscribe and you're going to select a plan before this will be public for others to view for most entrepreneurs i recommend the business plan because of all the features you're going to want with that and if you pay annually you're actually going to get a free custom domain and you're going to get one year of professional email from google so this is going to give you that branded professional email address so that's a great add-on as well so it's really the fact that we need a few more advanced features of the business plan so that's why i recommend it so go with the annual plan to get the most savings when you use my code sidekick 10. overall squarespace is a really powerful platform you can sell any type of product that you want with commerce you can also actually build your email marketing strategy so email campaigns is another feature of squarespace and this is going to allow you to build your email list send out newsletters and also create automations then they have different marketing tools to help you build your business you can easily share content with the blog feature you can schedule appointments online you can now sell memberships or online courses with member areas and you can get really detailed analytics into how your site is performing so once you have paid for your site you're going to be back in the editor here one of the main things you're going to want to do is redeem that free custom domain or if you already have your domain that's no problem at all you can simply connect it so you're going to go to settings domains then get a domain and here you would type in the domain that you want to purchase so your business name here dot com unfortunately that is unavailable but you'll go through this process and you will find the domain that you're looking for or you can use a domain i own so if you already have one click on that enter in your domain and then you can click connect domain select the provider where you purchased it from and then click connect the connection process is going to be a little different depending on what domain provider that you've used but sometimes it's going to be really quick and simple and done within a few seconds so now once that is all connected once you go to that domain you're going to see your brand new squarespace website so of course there's so much more to teach you so make sure that you grab my free roadmap in the description below i'm also going to be posting more videos on building your website so also hit subscribe alright guys that's it for today's video i hope that you found it helpful don't forget to use my code sidekick 10 at checkout to save 10 off your first year of squarespace and make sure that you grab my free squarespace roadmap to help accelerate building your own website if you like this video let me know by giving it a thumbs up don't forget to hit subscribe and i'll see you soon with another video [Music] you

Channel: Louise Henry

Views: 49,386

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Id: kzo-dRW0ZaA

Length: 14min 17sec (857 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021