4 Essentials for a Highly Converting Squarespace Website
Please note that this post contains affiliate links and any sales made through such links will reward me a small commission – at no extra cost for you :)
Have you heard online business owners, maybe even coaches, say that a website doesn’t matter?
When you are just starting out and you are brand new to business, then yes of course. You don’t NEED a website to get clients.
But I have a couple points to make about this.
You get to a point in your business when you should have a professional looking website.
It enhances your credibility, it shows that you take your business seriously, and it’s a way for dream clients to have all the information they need in 1 place - who you are, your offers and your expert proof (blog posts, testimonials, features, etc).
But the #1 thing is that it’s supposed to do selling FOR you. And this is where the problem arises for many business owners.
Most websites aren’t conversion focused. What I mean is that most business owners that go the DIY route are only focused on the visuals.
While yes, visuals do indeed matter, there is more to building a website that will yield results than just that.
That’s what I’m breaking down the 4 essentials for a cohesive and highly converting Squarespace website in this post.
1. Content that is speaking directly to your dream clients
Find your niche
You need to know exactly who you’re talking to.
If you’re talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one.
This quote rings so true because people want to work with others who they know understand them.
Who do you want to serve?
Don’t be afraid to narrow in a specific group of people. Doing so will attract those people to you quicker and repel the others who aren’t a good fit.
That’s not to say that you won’t attract similar types of clients though.
For example, I LOVE working with female coaches and creatives. Those are my people I speak to. However, I’ve attracted other service based businesses and men, and I still really enjoy working with them!
How do you serve them?
You want to think about the specific problems your dream clients are having and how you can speak to those.
Get specific here. People are searching for specialists who can help them solve their problems.
Think of it this way…
If you’re having problems with your vision, would you go to a general practitioner or an optometrist?
You’re going to go with the optometrist, of course! You know that they will be able to diagnose the problem much quicker and more accurately.
Who you serve and how you help those dream clients is exactly what should go at the top of your homepage. I refer to this as your tagline.
>> Read more: 3 Things You Need at the Top of Your Homepage <<
Speak to their pain points and the transformation they desire
Now that you know what they’re struggling with, dig deeper.
What will continue to happen if they don’t change? What is the transformation your services provide? How will their life and business look different?
This information should be used across your website. One of the biggest mistakes I see among DIY website designers is making their website content solely about them.
Yes, your about page should include your story. You should speak to your low point, your transformation and what your life looks like now. But your dream clients should be the hero. They should see your journey in themselves.
That’s why it should start and end with them. You want to open up the page with a statement or question directed at them and address what they’re struggling with. This will help ensure them that they’re in the right place. You want to end the page by bringing it back to them with a strong call to action.
This approach is similar for your services page. You shouldn’t jus throw your packages up and call it a day. There should be a bit of a warm up before they reach information for how you can work together.
This is important for both your about page and services page because they need to see that it’s possible for them, too.
This is why I provide my clients with content planners, which guide them along the content writing process. It includes prompts and directions for what to write on each page, and I provide feedback on how to make their content stronger.
2. A cohesive and professional feel
Solidifying the visual elements of your site
The first step to designing a cohesive website is focusing on the branding first.
Ask yourself these questions:
What emotions and aesthetic do you want do you website to convey?
What colors are you drawn to and not drawn to?
What colors will resonate with your dream clients? How will they react upon seeing those colors?
You want to find the intersection of these 3 points because it’s just as much about you as it is about your dream clients.
Different colors have different emotions and meanings, especially when you take a look at the whole spectrum of a color. And you want the emotions of the colors you choose for your branding to connect with who you’re targeting in your branding.
If you’re not sure where to start, create a secret Pinterest board to collect your design inspiration.
Tie together these elements and use the examples as keywords when searching for pins to save:
Aesthetic (minimal, feminine, rustic, bold)
Emotions (soft, happy, neutral, professional, feminine)
Colors (sky blue, bright pink)
It’s best to save 15-20 pins of images, designs, color palettes, textures/patterns, stock photos, graphics, and fonts. After you’ve done this, you can review and refine the board if it doesn’t look cohesive.
Not sure how to set up your Pinterest board and need some further guidance? I walk through this in my FREE brand design clarity training.
Here are a couple other notes I want to mention:
Choose no more than 4-5 brand colors
It’s great to have a mix of light and dark for contrast
Chose no more than 3 fonts
Sans serif fonts are great for headlines
Serif fonts are great for paragraphs
You want to make sure that your fonts and colors are all set up on the backend of your site before you start designing. You can do that by creating a style guide.
>> Read more: How to Create a Style Guide Inside Squarespace <<
Adding the professional touch
All of the images on your site should be high quality.
You should have at least 3 professional looking photos of yourself - one each for your homepage, about page and services page. Make sure there are no selfies.
For stock photos, you not only want to make sure that they are cohesive, but that they are not pixelated or blurry.
My favorite free stock photo sites are Pexels and Unsplash, and my favorite paid resource is Creative Market.
3. Organization and layout
Many DIY websites are unorganized and super overwhelming. This is where you truly want to simplify.
Site layout
Is the organization of your site optimal for your site visitors? Is it clear when sections begin and end?
Your homepage serves as your gateway to the rest of your website. Are you giving them a taste of what they can expect from you if they continue to look through your site?
How you could be overwhelming site visitors
More than 5 pages in your top navigation
Social media links at the top of your website
Too many bolded or larger sized sentences
Calls to action (or lack thereof)
Do you have calls to action that are:
At the bottom of each page?
Clear and compelling?
Button links instead of text links?
[Bonus] In your client’s language?
I’ve seen many websites where a person is taken through a few pages and then there’s no call to action or link at the bottom of the page.
This is important because without calls to action, you’re stranding your site visitor. You might think it’s obvious where they should go next, but it’s not to them.
Avoid calls to action that are along the lines of “click over to my services page to learn more.” Make it easy by adding a button instead of asking the person to scroll back up to your navigation.
You can have multiple calls to action on a page, but they should all funnel the person to the same destination.
You want to make simple stupid where they should go next.
Site journey
What do you want people to do when they land on your site? What is the journey they are going to go through as they navigate your site? You want to break this down.
For example, if you’re a health coach and your goal is to get people to sign up for a consultation, a typical site journey might look like:
Homepage > About > Testimonials > Services > Contact
If you’re a wedding floral designer, maybe it’s:
Homepage > About > Portfolio > Services > Contact
On each of these pages, you want to have a call to action leading the site visitor to the next step. Besides the homepage, you should only be directing someone to one page. As mentioned above, multiple calls to action on a page are fine as long as they lead the person to the same place.
4. SEO (search engine optimization)
If you’re not familiar with SEO, “it’s the practice of optimizing your web pages to make them reach a high position in the search results of Google or other search engines” (source: Yoast).
There are many elements of SEO, or search engine optimization, that are happening in the background of your site. Many times, site visitors might not even know you’re using an SEO strategy.
But there are a few key things that can create a negative user experience, therefore impacting your ability to convert site visitors into clients.
Load time
You want to make sure that your website loads quickly, within 2-5 seconds. You can test it with the Google Page Speed Insights tool.
This is important because if the pages of your website take a long time to load, people will click out before they see the content.
Images can greatly impact your load speed. If you have high quality images, the absolute maximum is 5MB, however, even that is a very large file size. If you can get the file size down to 500KB, that is most optimal.
I love JPEGmini for reducing my image file sizes.
Keywords
Many business owners hear that they need to “add keywords” to their site, but it unfortunately translates to them keyword stuffing.
This is when you unnaturally add keywords to boost the ranking of your website.
Here’s an example:
Wedding Photography, Dallas Wedding Photographer, Dallas, TX Photography, Engagement Sessions in Dallas, Engagement Photographer, Dallas Wedding Photo Shoot
It may look silly sitting here reading it, but I’ve seen this over and over again both in the footer of a website or at the bottom of blog posts.
Even if you’re doing this unintentionally, Google will pick up on it and penalize you because this is a spammy tactic that many sites used many years ago.
Text inside images
Only use images that contain text sparingly. It can hinder visitors from finding information on your site because it’s unreadable by Google.
So there you have it! Those are the 4 essentials for a cohesive and highly converting Squarespace website.
My clients are powerhouse women that are slaying in their work, using their passions to fuel their life, and truly making an impact through their mission.
Are you ready to join the roster?
My 2 week web design package is for the woman who is…
Ready to STOP dilly dallying in the backend of her site and wasting time on aesthetic changes that have no impact
Ready to hand over the reins of the creative process, sit back and relax while I nail that vision she’s struggled to transfer from her mind onto the screen (my clients say I’m creepy accurate at this)
Ready for a website that showcases her as the badass expert and authority she is, enhance her professionalism, and attract more aligned AF clients