What's Needed for a Website Build Out?
You’re ready to create a new Squarespace website, but you’re not sure where to start. Whether it’s your first website or you’re revamping your online experience, it can be a big undertaking to pull together all the website assets. In this blog post, I’m sharing the core assets that will help set the foundation for a strong online home.
One.
Established Branding
Having solid branding in place is key to creating a consistent look and feel on and off your website. Often companies starting out may want to skip this step, but having brand guidelines and a solid foundation in place will really pay off in the end for brand recognition. If you’ve previously worked with a branding agency or studio, it will be important to gather all the assets and submit them to your Squarespace website designer in preparation for a website build out.
Crucial items to help transition your branding to your Squarespace website:
Primary Logo
Font family
Color palette
Brand guidelines
These “bonus” assets really help create that curated and personalized look to your online home:
Brand marks and secondary logos
Custom icons
Custom illustrations
Patterns and textures
If you’re previously DIY’d your branding and are ready to explore working with a branding studio, I’d love to chat about our branding design process and philosophy. Feel free to reach out via our inquiry form to schedule a discovery call.
two.
Brand Photography
Imagery is such a crucial part of website design, so ensuring you have on-brand photos will really help elevate your online presence. When possible, I always recommend clients to invest in a branding session with a local photographer. These images always turn out so well and can be used in a variety of ways such as your website, social media, print materials, ads and more. One of the most versatile and cost effective ways to give a professional and personalized approach to your brand and website.
Not sure what style of photography you’re looking for? Or maybe you aren’t familiar with any lifestyle or brand photographers in your area? I love recommending options to my clients to ensure the photographer they choose is a great fit for their branding shoot needs.
If a professional branding shoot isn’t in the cards, a more cost effective option would be to curate an assortment of stock imagery. Nowadays there are so many different and unique stock sites that offer an array of styles of photography. If the thought of this feels overwhelming, many website designers offer a stock photography curation fee to help curate and cull a set series of images to use for your Squarespace website.
A few favorite stock photography sites:
three.
Professional and Polished Copy
This may be the hardest asset to pull together, as it can be a very large undertaking–especially if your site is robust. I strongly recommend working with a copywriter to craft website copy that is on-brand, strategic and helps convert. Having strong call to-actions, clear and concise content, as well as thoughtfulness towards SEO, all can help with a better user experience.
A few favorite copywriting studios:
If you’re going the DIY route, I offer a template with examples and best practices for each page. This helps set an outline and expectation of what you can add to your website vs. staring at a blank screen and trying to come up with copy and content to add to your Squarespace website.
four.
Time in Your Schedule
Creating a new Squarespace website or going through the redesign process takes time and energy. Ensuring that you can carve out adequate time in your entrepreneurial schedule is key to prevent burnout and overwhelm through the process. At Made by NF, we use Asana as our project management tool to help reduce the overwhelm and keep timelines on track. But at the end of the day, it is important to make sure you have time to dedicate to collecting assets, reviewing milestones and preparing for a successful website launch.
Keep these four key categories in mind as you start to embark on creating your new Squarespace website. Whether you are doing it yourself or working with a brand and website studio like Made by NF, having these assets ready to go at the start of the project will truly help set your new site up for success.
Ready to build your new online home?
