Thinking About Hiring a Squarespace Website Designer?
Businesses are quickly learning that a website is an invaluable tool to connect with new customers and grow their reach. Squarespace is one of the most popular website building solutions available today. They have several templates to choose from and it’s easy to get started.
However, a lot of businesses contemplate hiring a Squarespace Website Designer, rather than trying to figure it out themselves.
Why Hire a Squarespace Web Designer
Maybe you don’t have the time to build a website from scratch, maybe you’re not confident in their tech skills, or maybe you’re looking for a custom design by a professional.
Whatever the case may be, Hiring a Squarespace Designer can take a lot of the stress out of building your online presence.
This article outlines exactly what to expect when hiring a Squarespace Designer.
What to Expect when Hiring a Squarespace Designer
1. Intro Call
First we schedule an Intro Call to get to know each other. You’ll share your online goals with me and we will share our website design process with you. A brand new Squarespace website takes about two weeks to fully design and build. We’ll explain in detail exactly what to expect along the way. Prefer communicating over email? That’s fine too! We’ll discuss your goals via email, we’ll send you more info and give you time to decide.
2. Book your time slot
As we mentioned, a typical Squarespace site takes about 2 weeks to create. This means that when you book a Squarespace project with us, you’re booking a 2 week time slot with us. When you’ve decided you’d like to move forward with booking your web design project, you’ll secure your time slot by electronically signing your contract and paying your deposit.
3. Gather content + pre-build questionnaire
Before the project begins, you’ll gather all of the content needed to build your new website. This includes text content, images, videos, etc. You’ll send this over to us in whatever format is easiest for you (Google Drive, Word Doc). You’ll also fill out our pre-build questionnaire. This is a series of questions that are designed to provide us with a more in-depth look at your business. We learn more about your target audience, competitors in your industry, your preferred design style and much more.
4. SEO research
If you decide to add on our SEO Service, we begin researching target keywords related to your industry on day 1 of your project. We cultivate a list of high-performing keywords that we’ll later use to build your sitemap and optimize your website for Google rankings.
5. Design process begins
By project day 2-3, after SEO research is complete, we begin designing the first page of your website (typically the home page). We’ll decide on colors, fonts and other style elements that will make up the design of your website.
Using the content you’ve provided, we build the homepage of your site. The homepage of a website is typically a summary of all other website pages, so you’ll be able to get a feel for the direction that we’re headed in for the remainder of your site.
Once the homepage is fully designed and built, we’ll send you a password protected link for you to check out your website on Squarespace so far. We’ll also put together the core navigation for your website, so you’ll be able to visualize how the user will navigate through your site.
6. Building out all website pages
After we send you a link to check out the beginnings of your new website, you’ll be able to provide us with your thoughts and request any revisions to the design so far. You can ask to see different fonts, colors, page layout, etc… If you ask to see something done differently, we’ll typically send over a few options, whether it be for font combinations or layout of a section on the page.
We continue designing and building the remainder of your website’s pages. We’ll send each page over to you as it’s completed so you can continue to stay involved in the process and ask for revisions. This helps us the process more of a collaborative effort and allows you to be as fully engaged in the process as you would like to be.
7. Final revisions
Once the entire website is fully designed and built, we’ll give you some time to take a look at the site as a whole and request any final revisions. At this point, the revisions are less design changes and more content changes (using different images in places or changing headlines).
8. Final invoice
Once final revisions are complete, we’ll send along your final invoice. Upon receipt of your final payment, we’ll transfer full website ownership over to you so you can select your Squarespace subscription. Once your subscription is live, we’ll connect your domain name and launch your new website to the public.
9. Video tutorials and instructions for maintaining SEO
Before the project officially ends, we’ll record several video tutorials that shows you how to make updates to your new website.
If your package includes our SEO Service, we’ll help you get set up with Google Search Console so that you can submit your sitemap to Google.
We’ll also provide you with a personalized SEO document. This includes all of the keyword research that we’ve done for your website. We’ll outline exactly what you need to do moving forward to maintain the SEO that we’ve implemented.
10. Closing steps…
We’re available for questions and email support for 30 days after your project ends. So if there’s anything you get stuck on while managing the site on your own, we’re here to help!
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Your designer
I'm Sharon Calle, a Squarespace website designer and founder of Luminosa Creative. I work with inspired women entrepreneurs and small businesses to help them grow profitable and sustainable brands. To work with me get in touch here.