Squarespace 101
In this section, we will give you the full overview of Squarespace 7.1, Squarespace’s latest version that was used to build your template. We will share how the platform is organized, how to use it, and what we think are the most important features. The screenshots and gifs you will see throughout this guide are taken from one of our Squarespace templates, not necessarily the one you purchased. However, all of the settings and controls will be in the same place and work the same for you no matter which Squarespace 7.1 site you’re working on.
Squarespace Dashboard
Once your contributor’s invitation has been accepted and your template has been automatically added to your Squarespace account, you will see that the landing page for account.squarespace.com is your Dashboard. If you have multiple websites, you will see them all listed in your Dashboard.
Dashboard – Your dashboard will house any websites that you have created on Squarespace. For most of you, there will only be one website listed on your dashboard. For others who may have multiple businesses or design websites for other businesses, you will have multiple sites listed here.
Domains – If you own a Squarespace domain, you will be able to access it and its settings by selecting Domains in the top left corner. If you haven’t purchased a domain already, we recommend doing so on Squarespace to save you the hassle of connecting it from a third-party registrar. Learn more about domains and how to connect them to your site in our Connecting Domain section.
To begin editing your template, select the site from the list of projects in your Dashboard.
Home Menu
The Home Menu lives on the left side panel of any Squarespace website you are editing for easy access to the various settings and features. We will walk you through the basics of the Home Menu, but we recommend that you click on each option to explore them for yourself.
Website
Pages – The Pages menu is where you’ll manage all of your content on the site through your Main Navigation and Not Linked sections. The Main Navigation includes all navigation items that live in your website’s header (the top section of every page). The Not Linked section includes any other pages on your site that aren’t clickable from the Main Navigation. Learn how to edit the content in your pages in our Add Your Content section.
Styles – While the Pages menu is for creating and managing content, the Styles menu is where you will control the appearance of your site. The Styles menu is separated into five main areas: Themes, Fonts, Colors, Buttons, and Forms. Learn how to edit the site styles in our Edit Styles section.
Assets – Your asset library is where any images, videos, and PDFs you have uploaded will live. To begin, your asset library will include the placeholder images for your template.
Selling
Products – You can add and manage your products in the Products section.
Orders – All of your orders and order details will live in the Orders section. There, you can mark orders “Pending” or “Fulfilled” or refund an order with a click of a button.
Finance – If you use Squarespace Payments as your payment processor, you will be able to track and manage payments within the Finance section.
Discounts – Squarespace makes it easy to offer discounts with discount codes, product-specific discounts, or site-wide discounts that can be automatically applied at checkout. All of this can be done in the Discounts section.
Selling Tools – Squarespace offers several custom selling and e-commerce features like Product Reviews, Related Products, Waitlists, and Customer Notifications that you can explore and edit in the Selling Tools section.
Marketing
Email Campaigns – If you are looking for an affordable way to upgrade your email marketing game, Squarespace’s premium Email Campaigns tool allows you to create e-newsletters to send to your email list. Use Squarespace’s beautifully designed email templates or send custom automated emails when your customers purchase a particular product. Squarespace Email Campaigns is a great place to start as you grow your email list, or even when you have thousands of customers to email like we do. (We use Email Campaigns!)
Marketing Tools
Promotional Pop-Up – This feature allows you to create a pop-up that automatically displays when a customer visits your website. The pop-up feature is best used to entice customers to subscribe to your newsletter by offering a discount on their first order.
Announcement Bar – This feature is for displaying the announcement of a new product, a sale, etc. at the very top of your website on all pages.
URL Builder – You can create trackable links to connect to a campaign in a third-party platform like Facebook or Google Ads using the URL Builder feature.
Analytics
Squarespace Analytics is a wonderful tool for learning more about how many people visit your site, how they find your site, what devices they are viewing your site from, and what they do once they are on your site. Although it’s not as comprehensive as Google Analytics, Squarespace’s analytics tool offers a more user-friendly snapshot of the traffic, engagement, and sales on your site.
Other Navigation Menu Sections
In addition to the navigation menu items listed above, the Squarespace menu also includes premium and more focused menu items like Invoicing, Content & Memberships, Donations, Scheduling, and Contacts. Click into each menu item to explore the ways to enhance your site and the way you manage your products and services.
Settings
Once you have a grasp on the navigation menu items, you can explore the options in your website Settings section. The Settings section is the administrative section of your site. Explore each section to understand how to customize the details of your website. Below are some of the most important.
Website
Site Availability – Control whether your site is public, password-protected, or private. You may want to set it to private while you build your site, password-protected to send it to a friend for feedback, and public when it’s ready to go.
Cookies & Visitor Data – This section gives you control over your site's cookies settings and allows you to configure and customize your cookie banner. Be sure to check your state, region or countries regulations around website cookies and visitor data. The EU, for example, has stringent rules about online privacy and data collection, and enabling a cookie banner is a great way (but not the only way) to remain compliant.
Favicon – Your browser icon, or Favicon, is the icon displayed in the browser tab next to your site title. This is a critical piece of branding you don’t want to forget. It helps your users find your site easily when they have multiple tabs open. We remind you of this step in the Before You Launch section.
Social Links – Enter your social media profiles that will be used by the site's social media icons (either via the social icons content block, or displayed in the header). Don’t worry—we will remind you about this step in the Before You Launch section as well.
Selling
The Selling section offers a variety of customizations to enhance your shopping experience. It also allows you to connect your bank account to receive payments, create custom checkout pages, set up your tax rates and shipping options, and more. If you sell on your site, you’ll want to go through each section of the Selling tab before going live with your site.
Permissions & Ownership
If you plan on having contributors make updates to your website, the Permissions & Ownership panel is where you can grant access to other people (such as blog contributors, web designers, or virtual assistants).
Billing
Upgrade or downgrade your Squarespace subscription, edit your payment information, and view past and current invoices in the Billing section.
