3 Squarespace Hacks You Need To Know If You DIY Your Website
There are so many reasons why I love Squarespace but a big reason is because of how user-friendly the platform is, especially if you want to build a website yourself instead of hiring someone to build it.
Building a website can be confusing within itself, and you really do need a sort of checklist to make sure you don’t miss anything! Today I want to give you some hacks on my own checklist. These hacks can make your site look a little more professional and provide some insider tricks that you might not think of if you aren’t a website designer yourself.
My First Hack:
Make your link open in a new tab. The point of building your website is to keep people on it. You want them to see the amazing content that you have on there. The blog posts, the portfolio, everything you have worked so hard to create, you want them to see it! This is why having your link open in a new tab is probably one of the best hacks I’ve learned. It is so easy to do too. Here are your steps:
Create your link text or button
Highlight the link text or button and ‘edit’ it (click the link symbol to edit your link text)
When you see the edit box pop up, you will have a gear icon on your right-hand side or where you put the link in.
Your link editor will pop up and this is where you can edit your link to open in a new window
Here are some photo examples:
Example for Step 2
Example for Step 3
Example for Step 4
My recommendation is to only do this for outside links. If you are linking to somewhere else on your site then let the link stay in the same tab. Even if you are linking to your social media, make sure the link opens in a separate tab. The longer the site viewer stays on your site, they might see a blog post they like or want to check out another service you offer.
My next hack is to make sure that your photos are under 500kb
Now if you are anything like me and are not a photo expert have no fear because I’ll explain! Basically, you want your images to be this size or less because it helps with your site functionality meaning it loads faster for someone. If you are waiting around for a site to load, you are going to get annoyed fast and possibly click off of it (which we don’t want)! You can find the size of your photo in two ways, one being where the file lives on your computer or where the file lives in Squarespace. First, let’s talk about how to find the size of your photos then let’s talk about how to fix the problem. To find your photo size on the computer you can go to where the file lives in your folders, hover over the picture and wait for the information text to pop up, or click your photo and find its ‘file information’.
If you are looking for the file size on Squarespace there are a couple more steps to the process. First, you click the image you want to check. Click the edit button, click the replace button, then select file library and this is where all your photos live that you have uploaded to the Squarespace platform for your website. When the library pops up you are then going to find the photo you have in your image block. Click the three dots in the upper right corner and you’ll see the photo information pop up!
Finding your file size on your desktop or Squarespace
Ok so now we have found the file sizes and you are probably wondering, great but how do I make it smaller?! Well here are a few tips to make your image file smaller, you can:
Change your file to a JPG if it isn’t already. A lot of photo files are PNGs and that makes the file size extremely large. JPG makes the file size small and doesn’t let the quality of the picture suffer.
If your file is already a JPG and it’s still too large, try changing the dimensions of it or ‘resizing’ it. If you are resizing it, try making the height to be 1500px or 1200px. This helps just shrink the photo ever so slightly and makes the size of the file reduce.
Finally, if your file is still too large you can always use a photo compressor. You just upload your photo and it compresses the size for you and it can usually do the trick. I use CloudPresso every so often or another trick is to use Canva and compress the photo from there.
These are just some of the ways I get my file size to go down. Changing your photo size can be tedious but it ends up being worth it in the end!
My last hack is to rename your photos
As stated above, changing your file size can be tedious as well as changing the file name but it really is worth it in the long run. Changing your file name helps Google ‘read’ your image which then helps with SEO. You want to name your image with why your image is there or what you are doing in the image because you don’t want it to be too heavy with your SEO keywords. For example, if you name a photo: “Squarespace website designer” that tells google about your site but it may also think you are a bot try to rank for that keyword phrase. Instead, try something like this “Dominique Mantelli teaching about 3 Squarespace website design hacks”. That really tells google what this whole page may intel and more information about what keywords your site should be ranking for. There are two ways to rename your photos. The first is where the file lives, you can simply right-click it and click rename. The other way you can rename your photo is actually in Squarespace itself. When you click the image, then the edit button, scroll down until you see ‘File Name (optional)’ and rename your image there. Once you press save on the image it changes the name, all you need to do next is click done on the top left-hand corner then save and the photo was renamed!
Ultimately these are just the tips and tricks that I have learned while taking Paige Brunton’s Square Secrets™ 7.1 course and from designing my own site plus other clients. These tips and tricks may work for you or you may find some other way you like to do things. However, if you have any questions let me know in the comments below!