Adding Basic Information

Click on the link to open the Basic Information panel. As part of the initial setup, you should have already selected Site Type, so we can skip that and move on to Site Description. You can paste your Business Overview from your website plan here. Certain Squarespace templates show you this information on the homepage or sidebar.

Site Description as it appears on the Aviator template

Next, decide whether you are happy for your website to be shown in Squarespace's index, and check the Promotion/Indexing box accordingly.

Finally, click on the Business Information link to load this section into the side panel. You may need to click on Save in the dialog box to store any changes you made to Site Description first. Review the screen notes regarding your business contact details, and fill in the parts that are applicable to your business. When you are finished, click on the Save button at the top of the screen to store your changes.

Use the navigational arrow links at the top of the side panel to return to the Settings menu now and after all of the upcoming Settings adjustments.

Setting your site's language and region

Open the Language & Region panel to set your language and time zone, as this will affect the display of any time- or date-based content (such as blog post dates). To change the time zone, click on your location in the map. You should also set the country in the Geography drop-down menu, as this setting affects the default currency and certain other commerce-related items. Save your changes and return to the Settings menu.

Setting up the SEO options

Click on SEO to load this section into the side panel. The first setting in the SEO section is Search Engine Description. This is an important field, because whatever you put here will be shown on search engine results pages. This text appears below the link to your site, so make sure it entices people to click. Use a variation of your Business Overview from your website plan here.

The gray text is the Search Engine Description as it appears on Google search results

Note

Google will only display the first 150-155 characters, so use short sentences and check your character count if you don't want the end to be cut off.

You can use an online character counter such as http://charactercounttool.com/ to calculate the number of characters in your text.

The rest of the settings on this page can be left as is for now. You'll have a chance to come back and adjust them later if necessary, but the default settings are fine to get started.

Keeping your site private until its launch

Squarespace hides your website from the public during your free trial period, but it's unlikely you will complete your website and have all the finishing touches applied before your Squarespace trial ends. Therefore, you need to take measures to ensure your site stays private and hidden from the public regardless of whether you are in your trial period or not. You can do this by setting a Site-Wide Password in the Security section.

Setting up your subscription plan and billing

At this point, you are using a free Squarespace trial account, so you don't have to choose a subscription plan yet, but it's worth covering here as it is part of your basic site setup. Feel free to use up your free trial (currently, this is 14 days), and come back to this bit when you are ready to choose your plan and set up your billing information.