5 Things You Need on Your Website
There are hundreds of thousands of Squarespace websites run by small business owners and entrepreneurs—and with their vast difference in style, functionality and overall business purpose, it’s not very practical to suggest a certain formula that every website needs to follow to be successful.
There’s just simply not “one” magical strategy that works best for everyone, every business, and all of our different needs.
But, that said, there are some basic underlying principles of web design that do apply to pretty much everyone—freelancers, bloggers, online stores, service-based businesses, non-profits and everything in between.
Here are five simple things I recommend every Squarespace website should have:
5 things you need on your website
1. Favicon
What’s a favicon?
This little guy is the small icon that appears in your browser, specific to your website. In the screenshot below you can see the favicons for Google, Facebook and Five Design Co.:
Favicons also show up in your browser’s bookmarks bar, browsing history and other places across the web (and, Google just announced they’ll be showing up in mobile search results too).
Customizing your favicon adds to the professionalism and branding of your website, as well as helps visitors to recognize the site in a list of bookmarked pages or a window of many open tabs.
To customize your favicon, you’ll need to create a 32 x 32 pixel image in the design software of your choice (Canva is my favorite!) and upload it to your website’s favicon settings.
In Squarespace, this is found under Design > Logo & Title > Browser Icon (Favicon).
If you don’t upload a custom favicon, your site will use a default icon—for example, sites built on Squarespace will use this default cube icon. (Recognize it?)
Here are step-by-step instructions for creating and adding a custom favicon to your Squarespace website.
2. Email list opt-in
Utilizing opt-in forms on your website is an essential way to grow your “list” (such a buzzword in online marketing, and for good reason!) by capturing information from visitors who stop by your site and happen to enjoy your content and find it useful.
Why you need an email list for your business
Building a list of interested visitors means you can continue to have contact with these people in the future. And, these new visitors who enjoyed your content are now potential clients who may wish to purchase something from you in the future—whether that’s a new product you’ve yet to launch (or maybe even thought of), or an existing product you offer that they just haven’t been introduced to or weren’t ready for yet.
It’s unlikely that every person who lands on your website will be ready to purchase or receive what you’re offering them at the exact moment they first encounter you, but by establishing a longer-term professional connection with them (via your list), you’re able to continue offering value and perhaps reach them at a time that they’re seeking what you have to offer.
How to add email opt-ins to your Squarespace website
Opt-in forms can exist in and of themselves (a simple “Subscribe” form, via the Squarespace newsletter block), or they can be accompanied by an offer that may make them more enticing—otherwise known as an opt-in gift, or lead magnet.
Lead magnets are usually free (so, often synonymous with “freebie”) and could be something like a checklist or worksheet, a discount code, an ebook, a free course or a free consultation with you.
The point is simply that they’re attracting your target audience or ideal client—the people who are most likely to be interested in your business services and receive the most benefit from them.
Here’s a list of my favorite opt-in gift ideas, as well instructions on adding them to your Squarespace website.
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This post contains affiliate links through which I may earn a commission if you choose to purchase, at no additional cost to you. As always, these are products or services I personally use & love!
3. Privacy policy
If you collect any personal information on your website (such as email addresses on your opt-in form), you’ll need to have a privacy policy posted in a visible location on your website (I suggest the footer), letting your website visitors know how you collect, use and store their information.
Your website privacy policy is even more important since the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) went into effect in 2018.
If you work with an attorney for your business, you can have them draft a privacy policy specific to your website and the specific ways you actually collect and use personal information.
If you don’t have a personal attorney (quite common, don’t worry), there are plenty of free privacy policy templates available online, though you’ll just want to be sure that they apply to your particular business and cover your specific legal needs.
A middle-of-the-road option is to purchase an attorney-drafted template from a legal template business—the business owner will often be able to help you determine if their template is a good fit for you.
In addition to your privacy policy, there are a couple other legal policies for your website you may wish to have in place.
What’s a cookie policy & do I need one?
A cookie policy is part of your website’s privacy policy—and you most likely need one. I’ve shared more about cookie policies and how to add a cookie banner to your Squarespace website. Here’s an example cookie banner in use on my site:
4. Social sharing image
If you run a business or are an influencer or expert in your field, chances are it greatly benefits you to gain exposure to new prospective clients or audiences.
One of the simplest, most effective (and most affordable!) ways to gain exposure is through social sharing—i.e. one of your readers/followers/fans re-shares a piece of your content to their audience.
Free marketing is great! Now, let’s make sure that whatever they’re sharing is set up professionally to give you a great first impression to your new audience.
This means: customizing your Squarespace website’s “social sharing image” so that when someone shares one of your webpages or blog posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) it’s properly branded and optimized with key information.
On Squarespace, blog posts shared to social media are automatically branded with their thumbnail image and post excerpt. (If you’ve set these up properly when publishing your blog posts, no further action needed from you here, they’re ready to go!)
However, other pages on your Squarespace website are shared with a more generic site-wide social sharing logo.
Here’s an example of my social sharing logo, and how it appears when my website is shared on Facebook or other social media:
How to customize your Squarespace social sharing images
You can customize your site-wide social sharing logo under Design > Logo & Title > Social Sharing Logo. This will apply to all pages on your website other than blog posts or products (which will pull in their own thumbnail image, assuming they have one).
If you’d like to customize the social sharing image for a specific page on your website, you can do so in your page settings for that particular page: Page Settings > Social Image > Alternate Social Sharing Image. This image will be applied to this specific page only.
Note: Also be sure you’ve customized each of your pages’ page description, which will accompany your webpages wherever they may go around the internet—such as being shared on social media.
5. Buttons!
(aka some way to continue engaging with your content or services)
Most websites exist to encourage some type of continued engagement beyond just looking at one webpage.
Whether you want potential customers to contact you, or you want them to read more of your content or view more of your products, or if you even want to send them elsewhere (like your social media), you’ll want to clearly provide opportunities for your website visitors to go to these intended places.
I suggest including plenty of nicely branded buttons linking your viewers to other places they’d like to continue engaging with your content or offerings, such as:
your list of services
your online shop
your newsletter opt-in
your lead magnet opt-in (it’s nice to set this up as its own page!)
your contact form
your membership program sales page (if ya have one, which would be great!)
Is it better to use buttons or text links?
I’ve included plenty of text links throughout this blog post in case you’d like to refer to any of the other resources mentioned. But, despite the dozen or so text links above, this branded button is a little more attention-grabbing, isn’t it?
How to customize Squarespace buttons
Customize your website’s buttons in your Squarespace style editor (Design > Site Styles). You can update the button color, font style and color, and the overall button shape (square, rounded, etc.) and styling (outline, solid, etc.) to match your overall site branding.
If you’re comfortable working with custom code, here are some Squarespace CSS hacks for even further styling your Squarespace buttons.
More Squarespace web design tips & resources
Though there are certainly many more important elements to include on your website (including these additional ones if you have a blog!), the items listed above are five of the most important—and the most applicable to everyone.
If you’d like more details on the specific items we include in my custom web design projects, feel free to download my free Squarespace Website Checklist:
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