6 Things You Need to Do Before You Hire a Squarespace Designer
Outsourcing tasks in your business can be an overwhelming experience, but you can make the process a lot easier for yourself (and for your website designer!) by doing a few things beforehand.
Building or improving your website is a big step in scaling your income, and a website designer usually gives you a great ROI. But making such a big investment needs some initial preparation, so here are the things you'll need to do before getting in contact with a Squarespace designer.
Map Out Your Website Pages
The biggest impact on the investment, scope and timeline of any website design project is the number of pages required. Getting clear on the pages you need means your Squarespace designer can come back to your with a quote much quicker.
As you can imagine, a website with 3 pages takes much less time and work than another website with 10+ pages. Keep this in mind when choosing your pages, as reducing the number of unnecessary pages can keep the costs down and help you stay on budget.
Here are some examples of pages you may include on your website:
Home
About
Services
Portfolio
Shop
Blog
Contact
Your website designer will also help you organise your pages, and will help you choose which to keep on your navigation, and which to link to elsewhere. Getting particular about the pages in your navigation is just one strategy to increase conversions and achieve your business goals.
Establish the Functionality You Need
Which features are a priority for your website? Your website designer will need to understand the functionality you are looking for before they can give you an accurate price. Different requests will increase or decrease the scope - and potentially the timeline - of any project, so it is important to consider these before speaking to a Squarespace website designer.
Here are some examples of features that are worth mentioning to your designer:
Ecommerce (selling products through an online shop)
Blog (with or without sidebar)
Free or paid membership section
Multilingual/translation functionality
Appointment scheduling
Email list sign ups
Pop ups
Make sure the list is as comprehensive as possible - leaving something off the list could change the scope/timeline midway through a project, which doesn't make for such a smooth experience. Give the list to your website designer before the project starts, or during a consultation call.
Choose a Squarespace Pricing Plan
Squarespace by nature is an affordable website building platform that enables you to own a website at a low cost. But depending on your business and website needs, Squarespace has several different pricing plans to choose from.
This means the question: "Which Squarespace plan is right for me?" is very common - so doing the research yourself can be a useful step when calculating your budget or talking to a Squarespace designer.
Squarespace plans are either a monthly or yearly subscription, and range from $12 - $40 depending on your needs. There are many different factors that affect the website plan you'll need to purchase, from basic ecommerce needs to pop ups and advanced integrations.
We've written a post on how to choose the right pricing plan, so definitely give it a read if you're looking for information or still trying to decide.
Related: How to Choose the Right Squarespace Pricing Plan for your Website
Your Squarespace designer should also be able to help you choose a plan for your website if you're still not sure!
Design Your Branding
At the very least, your website designer should have a logo to work with. This means they can have something to take style inspiration from. If you don't have anything else, your website designer will be able to pick out a colour palette and typography that suits your business and works for your new website.
That said, if you do get professional branding done, having some of these elements included across your website really helps to establish and maintain brand consistency:
A primary logo
Submarks
A colour palette
Chosen typography
Patterns or graphic elements
Related: The Best Font Pairings for Squarespace Websites
Start Your Website Copywriting
If you've never heard of the term "copywriting", it means the written content that goes on your website. This is a very important step and almost all website designers will need your written content before they start the website. Written content dictates the layout, and your designer will need to understand what is going on each page before they begin designing it.
In the past, we've been asked things like "Can't you just design the page and then I'll put words on after?"
No. This does not work at all and you'll end up with empty spaces where you can't think of any content, and layouts that don't work at all for what you want to write. Content first is a much more strategic approach to website design, and the vast majority of designers may end up postponing your project if you do not provide the written content on time.
However, don't feel like you need this finished before you approach a Squarespace designer. Most will be booked out at least a few weeks in advance, so you'll have extra time to complete the website copy before your potential start date.
If you don't want to write website copy yourself, you can hire a copywriter to do this for you!
Source Professional Photos
Lastly, you'll need to source professional photos for your website. This will have the biggest impact on the overall look and feel of your website, so shouldn't be taken lightly.
By far the best thing to do is get professional brand photos taken, but you'll need to consider this before working with a photographer:
Are they suited to brand/website photography?
For photos to be usable on a website, they need plenty of white space so that text can be overlaid. You'll want the majority of your photographs in landscape, because this is more flexible and can be cropped if needed.
Some photographers (for example, portrait photographers) will shoot in portrait and put their subject in the centre of the photograph. As you can imagine, doing the opposite is much more beneficial for use on a website. Here you can see the difference between these types of photos - the first is clearly a more flexible choice.
Photos from Unsplash.com
However, if you don't have any professional photos or can't afford a photographer right now, you can always source some free stock photography online.
I don't recommend using photos taken on a smart phone - your website will be responsive, meaning the size of the page and images change depending on the size of the screen it’s viewed on. While a photo taken on a smartphone might look okay on a smaller screen, when it’s viewed on larger desktop screens, you run the risk the image will get blurry and will really detract from the quality of your website.
There are plenty of websites online that allow you to download professional photographs for use on your website. These copyright free photos can be used with needing to credit or link back the source. I recommend Unsplash.com - this website allows you to use their high quality images free of charge!
Remember it is your responsibility to ensure the photos you choose to use on your website are either copyright free, or you own the photos.
