There are a lot of benefits to building your website on Squarespace. It’s simple, easy to manage and you don’t need to be particularly tech-savvy to put together a website in a few hours.

Where many business owners struggle is that they jump right into the process without thinking about the big picture and how a website fits into their overall mission.

Planning ahead of creating your Squarespace website has a big impact on your success. It’s the difference between setting up a really beautiful website and setting up a really beautiful website that generates revenue for your business.

So how do you go about planning your website?

A Step-By-Step Guide To Planning Your Squarespace Website

01. Define Your Website’s Purpose

Before jumping into the design and content elements of creating your website, it’s important to take a step back and look at how your website fits into your business and your overall vision. Your website should seamlessly integrate into your business and help you achieve your company goals.

Start by asking yourself the following questions:
What is your overall business mission/goal?
How will your website help you achieve that?
What are the key steps you need to have in place in order to achieve that?
What is the key message you are trying to share?

You need to ensure that it aligns with the systems and processes you have in place especially when it comes to your sales and marketing operations.

Consider the process your customers currently go through from becoming a stranger to a prospect to hot lead to a sale and afterwards, a brand advocate.

Your website should play a key role in the process so that regardless of how they find you, their next step is to visit your site where you can use your branding, content and layout to guide them to become a customer

.Using this information, you can begin to get a feel regarding the layout of your site.

02. Define Your Target Audience

Ultimately, you want to convert sales for your business with your website. The most important factor in achieving that is how well you target your ideal client through your website.

You need to be really specific about your target audience so that you can create a website that speaks directly to their pain points in a way that resonates with them and compels them to want more.

If you are too general, you’ll fail to connect on a deep level that gets your website visitors excited about finally finding a solution to their problem. You want them to say:

“I LOVE this company. They just get it!”

In the words of Marie Forleo, "If you are talking to everyone, you are talking to no one.”

Your target audience defines your website’s colours, tone, style, feel and how you communicate with them through your website content.

Consider the following:

Geographics: Customer location
Demographics: Age, sex, occupation, customer buying behaviour etc.
Psychographics: Values, interests, key pain points, what drives them etc.

Your Red Velvet Rope Policy

One last point. If you are a service based industry, you’ve probably had your share of difficult customers. You’ve also probably said you wouldn’t work with these types of people or businesses again. You’ve probably said this then falling into the trap of working with these people again.

When you are a service based company this can be demotivating. You want to deliver your best work. You deliver your best work by working with people who share your values, enthusiasm and are a good fit.

Your website is the perfect opportunity to filter these people out.

Michael Port refers to this in his book, Book Yourself Solid, as the red velvet rope policy. Dump the duds for the VIPS.

You do this by being very intentional about who is and isn’t a fit for your business. You can then incorporate this into the sales pages of your business to ensure you only attract your VIP clients.

If you want to filter these people out even more, consider adding a client intake form to your sales pages and ask some key questions before agreeing to work with someone. Help them to help you to help them.

As you can see, planning this out ahead of time has a big impact on how you go on to design your website.

03. Consider Your Core Message

Next up, you have to consider your core message. This is your brand statement. What’s your hook?

This informs everything you do. You have 3 seconds to engage a website visitors attention. You need to ensure that when your target audience clicks onto your site, they understand this core message immediately not only in the words but in the branding, the layout, the feel. Turn this core message into an experience that’s instantly identifiable.

Knowing your website’s purpose, how it fits into your business, who your customers are and the journey you want them to take will help you to define the core message on your website.

Speak to your ideal customer. What do you want them to know.

If you’re not sure, use the following statement as a template:

I help Who? with Problem? by Product/Service? resulting in Solution?

04. Plan Out Your Web Copy And Pages

By planning your website content in advance makes the actual creation process so much easier. Content and design are each important. Your content should determine the design. Often when we see a nice design, we’re inclined to make it work because it’s pretty on the eyes. As a result, your message can get diluted.

If you start with the content, you can then create a beautiful design around that.

With that in mind, here are some key considerations when it comes to your website copy:

Focus on what matters. You are trying to solve a problem for your customers. That’s it!
Keep it simple. Less is more. Avoid the bells and whistles, they distract from your core message.
Talk to your customers. Your website is all about your customers, not you. Speak with them, not at them.
Consider the customer journey. Think about how you can guide a new website visitor along the customer journey through the pages you have on your website.

People aren't buying a product or service. They are buying a solution that triggers an emotion that makes them feel as if their lives are better in some way because they worked with you.

Web Pages You Should Include

If you’re unsure about the key pages you need on your website, use the following pages as a basis to get you started.

Home Page:

Focus on your core message. Include who you are, what you do, who you help, how you help.

About:

Share who are you, your story, why you started the company and your overall vision.

Problems You Solve:

Consider a page where you list all the problems you solve so it’s easy for people to identify with. Sometimes people don’t know the right solution but they always know their problem.

Services / Store:

Your product/service offering

FAQS:

Use this to answer any questions and objections a customer would have . This makes the buying decision much easier.

Help/Contact:

Make it easy for customers to connect with you and start a conversation

Blog:

Leverage your knowledge, deliver value and show versus tell your customers why they should buy from you.

Privacy Policy/ Terms and Conditions:

A legal requirement.

05. Designing Your Website

When it comes to the design of your website, the look and feel should be aligned with your brand’s personality and that of your customers. Everything you do should deepen the connection you have with them.

If you currently don’t have a brand, here are some resources to help get you started:

If you are on a bootstrapped budget, you can create a simple logo and brand board in Canva. They have some great templates as a starting point.

The key elements that make the visual design include:

Logo
Tagline
Fonts
Colors
Patterns / Backgrounds Elements

Ensuring your brand is consistent online and offline is really important in building trust. People do business with those they like, know and trust.

Once you have your branding set, you can then choose a Squarespace website template. There are over 90 to choose from and they can all be customized to your brand. All themes are mobile responsive and the great thing about Squarespace is that it comes with a 14-day free trial so you can experiment with different themes to find what works.