You’ve finally decided to launch your site, compiled everything you need, and you’re ready to let the world see your Website! Way to go!!

But wait a minute... We have to ensure you’ve included everything you need to your website before launching! You don’t want to leave any stone unturned or remove your website from public view just to make another set of edits. Not only bad for your website’s SEO, but it is unprofessional and time-consuming.

Fortunately, I have compiled the ultimate Website Launch Guide that will highlight everything that needs to go into your website before going public and how to split these processes into days so that you can launch your website in less than a week. 

If that sounds like what you will be interested in, keep reading. 

Planning Your Website Launch

As the renowned author Dale Carnegie said, ‘an hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing’. 

It holds more truth than you can ever imagine. Many small business owners ignore the need to sit down and properly plan their website launch, which can be detrimental in the long run. 

After getting your premium Squarespace template and installing it on your Squarespace website, the next thing is to determine what goes into creating a unique, professional website for your business. There is a lot to consider before the actual website launch, and getting everything right will guarantee a smooth launch and user experience for your visitors. Let’s take a look at some of the crucial things to put in mind. 

Set Your Website Goals

Most small business owners often make the mistake of designing and editing their Squarespace template the moment they install it, which mostly leads to a dead and confused end. Knowing your website goals will influence the Premium template type you go for, how your information will be arranged, and the kind of copy and images that best suit your business niche. 

Having fun, bright colors with quirky designs may be perfect for a kids-themed website but unsuitable for a legal or corporate one. Therefore, it is important to know 

• Your business type

• The purpose of your website

• Who is your target audience is

• The pages that you must include on your website 

• The type of typography, vocabulary, and images that speaks to your target audience 

• Your growth forecast. 

Create A Website Launch deadline

Sometimes, a deadline is all you need to get the job done. When you start building your website, you must have a clear-cut deadline for your launch. Having a deadline makes you space out your work and assign each day to different tasks. Besides, the faster you launch your website after completion, the better for your business. 

Launching your website should take less than a week if you use a premium Squarespace template. For instance, if you purchase one of our website templates, you can easily launch your website in 5 days. 

That is why premium templates are perfect for business owners running out of time who don’t have any design background and want a professionally-designed website. 

If you are wondering where to get the best premium Squarespace templates for your business, check out our template shop.

I have broken down your design launch time into five days, and I will explain the tasks to complete each day to meet the deadline. Each task shouldn’t take more than four to five hours daily, allowing you to continue your daily business work. 

Day One: Establish Your Website Goals 

As previously mentioned, your website goals will set the foundation for any other process and edits you want to make to your website. It will significantly influence your brand style guides and the tone and voice of your copy. Therefore, dedicating a whole day to figuring out your website goals is important. Here are some things you should pay attention to

• Purpose of your website: What is your website meant to do? Is it serving as a library for your past work? (A portfolio) or an online store for your products? Knowing the WHY of your website will dictate a lot of things. 

• Key Functionalities of your Website: Another thing to figure out is what your website will do. Will it be a place to book your services, buy your products or watch your coaching classes? Will it serve as a place where your clients can view your past works or a personal branding website to introduce yourself and what you do? Find out the purpose that each page on your website will serve and the overall functionality of your website. 

Once you are clear about the key functionalities of your website, you will be able to determine the number of pages your business needs at the moment.

Day Two: Create and Curate Your Brand Style Guide (Color Palette, Typography, Images, etc.)

Once you figure out your website goals, it is time to get your hand dirty by establishing your Brand style. A brand style is simply the guidelines that determine the look and feel of your brand, in other words, how people will perceive your brand. It covers your brand's logo, color schemes/palette, tone, and voice. 

If you are using a premium Squarespace template, I suggest you go for a template that fits closely with your brand style. Doing that will prevent heavy edits and run your website in a few days. Let’s look at some things you should compile on day two.

• Logo: Your logo says a lot about your business. Ensure you go for a clean, professionally designed logo that contains few elements to maintain its sharpness in smaller sizes and communicate your business values. You can either get a professional graphic designer or create the logo yourself. However, the premium template usually comes with a name-based logo (site title) that you can easily edit to your business name.

Check Out 100+ Modern Logo Fonts For Branding and Project Design.

• Colors: Determine the color palette/scheme that fits your brand. You should choose at most five colors that pair well with each other and represent your brand professionally. Once you find out these five colors, you can reduce to at most three for your brand colors.

Fortunately, there are many color palette generators, such as Coolors and Adobe Colors, so you don’t have to figure it out alone. 

If you don’t want to stress yourself about these, select a premium template close to your brand color scheme or only requires a few color changes to get the perfect look. Fortunately, our premium templates come with visually appealing and already preloaded colors, so you have nothing to worry about. Also, you’ll receive suggested color and font palette guides if you want to add a unique touch to the template. 

Check out 12+ Stunning Squarespace Real Estate Templates.

• Typography: Typography can provoke different feelings, and choosing the right fonts can make a huge difference in how your target audience perceives your business. I suggest you go with at most three fonts combination on your website. If possible, maintain your font number at two fonts. 

Squarespace provides a font option if you are uncomfortable with the fonts that came with your Premium template. However, ensure that your font pairs are complementary and go together. 

You can check out 100+ Serif Fonts for your Squarespace Website. 

• Images: When curating your images, ensure they fit into your brand style and you have the right images for each page on your website. The best thing to do is to curate these images in different folders based on their respective page and save them in JPG for the highest quality. Our Premium Squarespace templates come with preloaded images that you can easily swap out for yours, so you don’t have to worry about creating image sections on Squarespace. 

Day Three: Write Your Website Copy

Don’t ever make the mistake of writing copy directly on your website template. Instead, write your copy outside Squarespace in Google Docs or Mircrosoft Word. Determine the tone of your copy and the emotions you want it to provoke. 

Also, look at the template you purchased and see how the copies are structured to determine the length and position of your copy. These templates were designed to convert and make your website sell, therefore you shoud follow the structure of the copy, and put the length also in consideration. Do not try to alter the sections unless necessary. 

Another tip is categorizing the copy depending on the pages and the sections. Doing this makes everything a lot easier. 

Day Four: Upload Your Copy and Images + Finish Home and Service Page

Now that the most stressful tasks are over with, the next thing you want to do on Day Four is to upload everything you’ve created, including Favicon

Check Out How To Add Squarespace Favicon To Your Website

Many business owners overlook the need for a Favicon, which is super important. A favicon is that tiny logo you see when you open a tab on your browser. Squarespace has a default favicon, a black box, which is boring and unprofessional. Therefore, ensure you also have a favicon ready to be uploaded. 

Wondering how to create a Favicon? Read this article on How To Design A Website’s Favicon.

Upload Checklist

• Copies 

• Images 

• Change/Swap Fonts if necessary

• Update Colors on your template 

• Logo 

• Favicon

The most important thing is to focus on the homepage and service page on Day Four because they are the essential pages on your website, especially if you own a business. If you can’t complete other pages on Day Four, do not worry about it.

Day Five: Cross the I’s and Dot the T’s (Finish the rest of your pages)

The last day, Day Five is to finish the rest of your pages if you couldn’t finish on day four. Upload, edit, design, and save. 

After all your pages are done, the next step is to crosscheck whether all the information, images, fonts, and copy are in the right place and format. Look through for typographical errors, and run your copy through a plagiarism check to ensure that another website doesn’t already use the copy. 

Note: Ensure your copy are original, and it wasn’t copied for another website because it will drastically affect the ranking of your website on Search Engines. 

Pay Attention To SEO

When all your pages are ready, your logo and favicon are in place, and it is time to launch your website, take a step back and hold on a minute. The last thing you must pay attention to is the SEO of your pages. 

Most business owners do not edit URLs, add meta and alt descriptions, or check for keywords and other SEO best practices. Here are some SEO Checklist to put in mind 

SEO Checklist

• Add a Site Title 

• Add Site Description

• Add SEO Description to all your pages

• Customize your page format: Design your page to appear a certain way on search engines.

• Check URL Slugs: Input the main page keyword in your URL link to rank higher.

• Add Location and publish online

• Add alt texts to images 

• Add tags and categories to your blog or online store 

Many SEO articles are provided on the Squarespace Resource library, and here is one of the SEO Checklists that you’ll find helpful. 

Remember that SEO is a continuous process; you’ll always have to optimize your pages, posts, products, and images to rank your website higher on search engines. Therefore, it is better to equip yourself with basic SEO knowledge or employ an SEO specialist if you don’t have the time. 

Wondering how you can do all these on your Squarespace Editor? Check out How To Build A Website Using Squarespace

Ultimate Squarespace Website Launch Checklist

Before you finally launch your website, I want you to go through the list of checklists again to ensure that you’ve indeed dot your i’s and crossed your t’s. This list will be long, but it is definitely worth it. 

• Edit Site Title 

• Upload A Logo 

• Upload A Website’s Favicon

• Upload Copy, Images, Colors, and Fonts

• Check the quality and sizes of uploaded images

• Review your Brand Style: Colors, Fonts, Spacing, Size, and other details 

• Check Copy For Typographical Errors

• Enable Cookies Banner

• Design your navigation bar

• Check if your form block is connected correctly

• Check each page for layout, copy, images, etc

• Customize URL Slugs for each page

• Add a site description for your website 

• Add page descriptions for your pages 

• Add meta descriptions and alt text to your images

• Follow any other SEO Checklist

• Ensure your template are mobile-responsive (all templates on our shop are mobile-responsive)

• Make the page size below 5MB for loading speed

• Add Your Social Media Integration

• Crosscheck your Homepage… Again.

• Design a custom 404 page. 

• Add custom domain 

• Remove all page password if it was set in before

• Disable the Coming Soon page

• Verify your website with Google Search Console

• Final Check on your website 

• Publish

• Test your website on all different screen sizes to affirm its loading speed and responsiveness.

You Can Finally Launch Your Website! 

Yay!! You’ve completed all the necessary steps and checked all the tasks in the checklist; now it is time to publish finally! Ensure you recheck your website once again before hitting the publish button. 

Remember, your website doesn’t have to be perfect; there is always room for interaction, even after setting your website to the public. Website building and maintenance isn’t a one-time thing, it is a lifetime thing (as long as your website is still online). So, don’t be held back by perfection mirage and publish it anyway. You learn on the job! 

Designing a Website Not Your Thing? We've Got You Covered!

You may say, ‘ I understand everything you’ve said, but I am still unsure of the Premium template to go for.’ If that is your dilemma, let me help you dismiss it and make a firm decision. 

When choosing a Squarespace template, you must consider your business needs, the aesthetics you are after, and the functionality of the premium template. Fortunately, premium templates are specifically designed for different industries, so you’ll find a perfect one for your business niche. 

For example, the Modern Real Estate template is perfect for Realtors, as it includes key pages like Properties, the home page, and the blog page that cater to their target audience's needs. This simplifies the design process, leaving you with fewer decisions to make. All you need to do is replace the images and copy, then publish your website, which can be done over the weekend.

Therefore, no matter what you are looking for, you’ll find the perfect match with premium templates. If you don’t want to waste more time, visit our website template shop!

However, not to leave you stranded, here is a great post to read on how to choose the right Squarespace website template for your busines

Here are suggestions for different templates for different niches 

• Coaching Business - Business Coaching Template

• Branding & Design/Creative Agency - Creative Studio Template

• Wellness/Beauty Products - Journal Template

• Yoga/Fitness/Wellness Coach and Studio - Brown Template

• Entrepreurial/Freelance/Digital Mrketing - Social. Co Template

• Personal/solopreneur - Sophia template

• Beauty/Esthetician/Salon - Moxie template

Check out our template shop to find more templates specifically designed for your business niche.

Wrapping Up 

By following these steps, your website will be ready to lunch in 5 days or even less. To simplify the process and make it seamless, consider investing in a premium template. 

Firstly, templates provide a simple and easy-to-use framework for building a website, allowing you to focus on creating content rather than designing the website from scratch. They also offer a wide variety of customization options, allowing you to tailor the template to your specific needs and preferences. Additionally, templates come with customer support and detailed setup guides, which can be particularly helpful for those who are new to website creation.

Cheers to your website launch!!!