Squarespace is one the best (or, probably the best) platforms for photographers, interior designers, architects, artists and all creatives. And as a creative, you want your website to become the online representative and beautiful storefront, which appeals to your ideal clients and showcases your brand's personality.

Your brand is an extension of your own personality, and displays your own uniqueness. That’s right, your brand becomes an expression of your own self.

But how are you going to showcase this well on your Squarespace website? And how are you going to get those dreamy clients to find you and want to get in touch with you? There are some fundamental things you want to nail down, in order to make sure your site is ranking well on Google and speaking to the right audience. 

3 Fundamental aspects of your Squarespace website

We’ve listed 3 basic things you need to know and want to work through before you start working on the design of and launch your website.

1. Your brand message

2. Your user journey

3. Using the right keywords

1. Brand Message

Your brand message is the communication of your brand’s unique value proposition & story through verbal and nonverbal messaging.

A good way to really start thinking about what this could be for your brand, is to think about your ‘why’. Why did you start your business? Why do you provide your services and/or products?

The reason you want to start this way is because it will help you determine your niche, or unique value proposition. This begins to set you apart from others in your industry, because it defines your own uniqueness and that different ‘thing’ you’re bringing to the world. As much as we all like to think that creative industries are hugely competitive or saturated, they’re really not if you begin to focus on your niche and strengths. Remember, there is no one else like you on this earth, you bring that to your business, and so you want to show that off all over your website and online presence.

2. User Journey

It’s really important to think about your user journey before you even start to put your website together. This is the journey (or ‘route’) that you want your site visitors to take. Ideally, this is some logical route from them first landing on your site, to reaching the end goal. This end goal could be to:

• Completing your contact form

• Submitting their email address

• Placing a product into the cart

The route that you want your audience to take, should be clearly laid out in the primary navigation bar. The primary navigation is prominently displayed, and only the most relevant pages should be linked here. Any non-relevant (meaning those pages which don’t necessarily add much to the user journey) pages can be linked and left in the footer.

As a general rule, and in minimalist design we like to say that the primary navigation should contain no more than between 5-7 links. This is to help your site visitor stay on track with your user journey, but also prevent your audience from being overwhelmed with many choices. We call this choice paralysis, and it’s something you really want to avoid across your site!

3. Using the right keywords

A website is only a ‘nice to have’, if you’re not also thinking about and implementing search engine optimisation (SEO). By optimizing your website with the right keywords, you’re giving your website and brand a much better chance of ranking better on search engines like Google. By ranking better on search engines, you’re able to rely less on social media, but why is it better to do this?

Some disadvantages of relying on social media:

• You don’t own any of your followers

• You have very little control over your social media accounts

• The algorithm can change at anytime

• The audience on social media aren’t always converted to loyal customers

As your site begins to rank better on search engines, you’ll also notice your website traffic increase. This will mean that you could potentially have visits to your website, day or night, and this can become global. The initial implementation of SEO can take some effort and involves patience and time, however, as your site increases in authority, you can take your foot off the accelerator (with it just needing the occasional boost)!

 Some advantages of SEO:

• It’s a longer term, and sustainable method of growth

• After a certain period of time, you don’t have to use up so much of your time to attract the right audience

• Increased domain authority on search engines

• The audience who find you on search engines (like Google) are more likely to become loyal customers

Your free workbook

We have a great free resource for you, where you can work through developing your own site journey. It’s a 10 page workbook, and using minimalist principles, you can design a journey which is going to be intentional to achieving your website goals!