Template setup

You Bought a Squarespace Template. Here's What It Still Needs.

SEO title: What a Squarespace Template Still Needs Before Launch | NoJoke Agency Slug: /insights/squarespace-template-setup Meta description: A purchased Squarespace template covers the look. These are the twelve things it leaves out, from font licences to redirects, and which ones you can do yourself.

A good template from a template shop is a sensible purchase. It gives you a finished look for the price of a dinner. What it doesn't give you is a finished website, and the gap is where most of the work is.

We get asked to fix template sites often enough to know where they go wrong. Here's what a template covers, what it leaves out, and which of the gaps you can close yourself.

What the template gives you

A colour palette, fonts, a set of page layouts, demo content showing how the layouts are meant to be used, and sometimes a few code snippets for effects the standard editor can't do.

That is the part of a website you can see in a screenshot. Everything below is the part you can't.

1. A structure for your business, not the demo's

Templates are designed around a demo business: a yoga studio, a photographer, a consultant. Your business has different pages, in a different order, for different visitors. Mapping your services onto the demo's "Classes" and "Retreats" pages is how sites end up with a navigation that makes sense only to the owner.

Do it yourself? Yes. Write your page list before you touch the template: each page, what it's for, who lands on it.

2. Copy that fits the layout

The demo text is exactly as long as the layout needs. Real copy rarely is. A headline written for three words breaks at twelve. A three-column feature section looks wrong with one column of 200 words and two of 20.

Do it yourself? Yes, but adjust the layout to the copy, not the other way round.

3. Mobile layouts

In Fluid Engine, the mobile layout is edited separately from desktop. When you replace demo content, the mobile version doesn't always follow: text boxes overlap, images crop badly, buttons fall off the edge.

Do it yourself? Yes. Check every page in the mobile editor after every change. This takes longer than people expect.

4. Font licences

Fonts available in Squarespace's own font menu are licensed for use on your Squarespace site. Fonts a template seller uploaded as custom files may not be licensed for your business at all, and the template licence usually doesn't cover them.

Do it yourself? Check the template's documentation for where each font came from. If the answer is unclear, replace it with a font from Squarespace's menu or buy a web licence.

5. SEO settings

Page titles, meta descriptions, URL slugs, heading structure, alt text. Templates come with the demo's, or with nothing. Our SEO checklist lists all 25 in order of impact.

Do it yourself? Yes. Start with the first five items on the checklist.

6. Performance

Templates are designed to look good in a demo, so they often use fade-in animations, background video and large images. All three slow the site and can fail Core Web Vitals. See our posts on the LCP fix and what to fix after it.

Do it yourself? The animation setting, yes. Anything involving code, check what you're changing.

7. Template code you'll have to maintain

Some templates ship with code snippets or plugin packs for effects the standard editor can't produce. That code is now yours. When Squarespace changes its editor, and it does, the effect can break, and the template seller may or may not update it.

Do it yourself? Ask before buying: what custom code does it include, and does the seller update it?

8. Structured data

Squarespace adds basic structured data for articles and products. LocalBusiness, Service, FAQ and Person data have to be added by code injection. This is what helps you show up in rich results and AI answers.

Do it yourself? Possible, if you're comfortable with JSON-LD. Our local SEO guide has examples.

9. Forms that go somewhere

The demo contact form sends to nobody. Each form needs a destination: an email address someone checks, a Google Sheet, a CRM. Newsletter blocks need an email platform connected.

Do it yourself? Yes. Submit every form once after launch and confirm it arrives.

10. Legal pages and cookie consent

Privacy policy, imprint where required (it is for Swiss and German businesses), terms for stores, and a cookie banner that actually blocks tracking scripts until consent if you serve EU or Swiss visitors. Templates include none of these, or include the demo's.

Do it yourself? The pages, with a generator or a lawyer. The banner, through Squarespace's cookie settings.

11. Accessibility

Template palettes are chosen for mood. Light grey text on white, white text on photographs, and thin fonts at small sizes often fail contrast requirements. Our accessibility guide covers what to check.

Do it yourself? Contrast, yes, with a free checker. Keyboard navigation and screen reader behaviour take more time to test properly.

12. Redirects, domain, email and analytics

If the template replaces an existing site, every old URL needs a redirect to its new equivalent, or you lose the rankings those pages had. Then: domain connection, email DNS records, Google Search Console, analytics.

Do it yourself? Yes, carefully. Missing redirects are the most common reason traffic drops after a relaunch. We wrote a recovery guide for when it happens.

Template or custom?

A template is a good choice for a new business with a simple site, a tight budget, and an owner with a few free weekends. The look is solved, and the twelve items above are learnable.

It's the wrong choice when the site has to do something specific: route enquiries by service, show filtered content, integrate with your booking or CRM, rank in a competitive local market. Then the template is the smallest part of the project, and a custom design built around your structure costs less in the end than a template bent to fit.

Questions we get

Are Squarespace's own templates free? Yes. The templates in Squarespace's library come with every plan. The paid ones are sold by third-party designers.

Can you finish a template site we started? Yes. We'll review what's there first and tell you whether finishing it or starting from our own structure is faster.

Will people recognise the template? Popular templates are used by thousands of sites. Visitors rarely notice. Competitors in your industry sometimes do.

What does the setup cost if we hire it out? It depends on how many of the twelve items you've done. Our pricing post explains how we quote.