5 Things You Want Ready Before You Hire A Squarespace Web Designer
As a Squarespace website designer, I find when clients have the right things in place before getting their one day website launched, success is guaranteed.
What Should a good website have?
The more I help clients a new website launch, the more I understand there are some critical things that need to be in place before getting started.
Building and launching a website is like building a house. You don’t just need the house, you need to understand what neighbourhood it’s going to be in, how to give people directions to get there, exterior painting and landscaping and all the rest of it.
None of these things is rocket science, and you certainly don’t have to have them ready before you launch. But your launch and your website will be 10x more effective if you have these things in place before your web project starts.
#1 An Objective
Why are you building your site? Yes, usually to make money, but how will the website help you do this? By adding subscribers to a list? By displaying details about your offers and services with an easy way to reach you? You want to showcase your work, a project or your talents and abilities?
Maybe you want to sell products or offer an online course. It may just be that you need to show a professional face to the world before you’re comfortable launching your business.
These are all great reasons to build a website, but you need to be clear on them, or you might end up building the wrong site. Your CTAs (calls to action) may be buried, your message may get muddled or your site structure may be set up in a way that won’t help you meet your objectives.
#2 A Brand
Brand is a huge topic which can get overwhelming, but it doesn’t need to be overly complex. According to one of my favorite books on branding The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier, a brand is simply this: a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company.
With your brand you tell people who you are, what you do and why it matters. You communicate your brand through the tone of your copy, your graphic design (including colors, typography and layout), your logo, the imagery you use and how you relate to your clients and customers.
You don’t need to go through a big branding exercise before launching a website, but at a minimum you should have an idea what your brand is about. Write down some words and values that you want to communicate about your business.
Why should someone hire you our purchase your products? What visual elements communicate these values (colors, pictures, visual styles). You may not be able to pull together these elements on your own, but you can seek out people doing what you are doing and try to figure out what their brand is. Find people whose work you admire as well as people whose brands turn you off.
Write a brand statement: a simple, short paragraph that captures the spirit of your brand. Don’t use fancy jargon. Keep it honest, concise and to the point.
#3 A Keyword List
People have to find you. There are many ways to be found these days: social media, networking, word of mouth. A website, however, is on the internet and the way people find things on the internet is through Google.
SEO is an enormous, complicated topic. As a freelance Squarespace designer and former online shop owner, I’ve learned a lot about it, but still feel my basic knowledge just scratches the surface.
My clients often have no clue and don’t even really understand what SEO is – and why would they? They are therapists, yoga instructors, lawyers and academics. In the day-to-day operations of their businesses they have nothing to do with the subject.
Keywords, however, are incredibly important. These are the words and phrases that your ideal customers will use to try and find you: “Yoga Ayurveda Studio in Berlin,” “help with bullying in the Munich area,” “Expert on energy extraction politics in West Africa.” You need to figure out which words and phrases describe exactly who you are and what you do so the right people can find you.
I highly recommend watching this series of 6 videos by SEO Moz “SEO in an hour.” If you can only watch one, watch the second one on finding the right keywords for your business. This is a solid introduction to SEO in bite-sized chunks, which will serve you well for the next thing you need.
P.S. Don’t believe the hype you definitely can use Squarespace for SEO
#4 Copy
Armed with your brand statement and your keyword list, it’s time to write your copy.
Create a short outline for your site. What web pages do you need (usually something like: Home, About, Services, Contact, etc.). Then write out the content for each section. Keep your site objective in mind. Work your keywords and keyword phrases into the copy.
The sections may get rearranged in the process of building your 1 day website, and the copy may also be edited, rewritten and massaged during the process, but that’s okay. The main thing is you’ve got something to start with.
You can write it yourself or work with a copy editor if you have the budget. If you are asking people to contact you, to get on your list or make a big purchase online, working with a copywriter who understands how to write text that converts visitors to buyers may be a worthwhile investment.
However, like all of these things, don’t let this stop you from getting started, you can always come back and update your copy later.
#5 Imagery
At the very least you’ll need a professional picture of yourself. In a perfect world you’ll have action shots of you, your services or your products.
These days there are a lot of license-free imagery sites where you can get amazing, high quality pictures of just about anything. Everyone is using them though. There is nothing like custom photography to make your site stand out and communicate your brand (a dynamic which you’ll want to share with your photographer).
When I created the Squarespace website design for Akasha Studio in Berlin, the client had beautiful photography taken by a friend of hers, a London-based fashion photographer. This gorgeous photography helped the site stand out and look incredibly unique, professional and “on brand.”
We didn’t have images of everything we needed so we supplemented with some license-free photography. It all came together for a strikingly gorgeous site.
Of course you can throw a website up without the five things I list here. The risk with this approach, though, is building a generic site that doesn’t do what you need it to, won’t be found by the people who want to hire you, buy your products or get involved in your project.
Starting strong with solid intention will help the investment in building your site pay real dividends in the future, by attracting the right clients who feel confident hiring, working with and paying you.