Squarespace arguably is the best website builder service you can use to create your own website. The amount of customisation you can perform on your website via Squarespace is just mind boggling. The best part about using Squarespace is its selection of templates. Every single one of them looks stupendously beautiful. In fact, they are so beautiful that it makes it hard for a user to choose between them. Now, that is a great problem to have but nonetheless, it’s still a problem. I know when I was making my first website, I spent days searching for the perfect template. The fact is that there’s no single template which can take the crown. Your perfect template will depend on your website’s content. From e-commerce to wedding themes to blogs, there’s one for everyone here, so let us take a deep dive and find out the best Squarespace template for your next website:
What To Look For When Choosing A Template
Before we get started, let us understand a little bit about the thought process you should have before choosing a template on Squarespace. The first thing to keep in mind is that don’t select a template just based on its looks. Look at its functionality and the amount of customisation it offers. For example, different templates offer different abilities, so choose the one which fits your need. Secondly, keep your audience in mind before choosing a template as people’s taste really differ depending on the age group they belong to.
For example, if your website caters more to the old age group, you should choose a template which is light on navigation menus and displays most of the major information on the home page itself. Lastly, keep your brand in mind. As the placement of logos is fairly restricted and depends on the template you are going to use, see if your logo complement the overall design of the template or not. If it doesn’t, your logo will feel out of place and forced on the website. Look at the template demo (Squarespace allows you to check out the demo in great detail) and rank your favourite ones on the above criteria and choose the one which hits all the check marks.
Understanding The Template Family
This is a small but an important point you should understand. Every Squarespace template falls into one or another family. A template family is basically a group of templates which share the same underlying structure and functionality. What that means is that the amount of customisation available for any template in the same family will be the same. The different templates within the same family are there to show you how different you can make your website look by using the tools inside the Squarespace. I am mentioning this only to tell you that, if you think a template has been overused by people and want something fresh, you can select a template of the same family or better yet if you are willing to spend some time, you can customise the website to stand out of the crowd yourself.
Best Squarespace Templates For Photography, Arts, and Designs
All of the Squarespace templates seem to tread heavily on the image side of the things, so it is easier to get confused when choosing your first one for showcasing your work. However, there are a few specific templates which in my opinion will do more justice to your work than others. Squarespace is good enough to categorise its templates based on their use case scenario and you can see their pick for photography and Arts & Designs templates. However, the real work starts when you have to choose between the ones inside that category. The following two templates will serve most of the photographers and designers who want to showcase their portfolio online.
1. Montauk
If you are someone who believes your art speaks for itself and you want your visitors to focus on your work rather than anything else on your website, Montauk is the best way to go. This is best for people showcasing their art or design. It can be used for showing your photography too but I think the next one on the list will be better for people who are strictly photographers. The homepage is pretty minimalistic making your work pop out. If your website is going to showcase works of more than one artists, you get the ability to create a separate page for each of them.
However, there is one specific reason why I consider Montauk more suitable for designers than for photographers. There is a built in store in this template where you can sell your art and design right from your website. Although, most of the Squarespace’s templates can be customised to include a basic store, the one which comes with an inbuilt one provide you with more customisation option. This reason along with its elegant and minimalistic design makes Montauk the best option for artists and designers.
Note: Since it is the best option, Montauk has been used by many designers, so you should customise your template to reflect your brand to differentiate yourself from the crowd.
Check out: (Demo)
2. Wells
If you are a photographer whose main aim is to display his/her portfolio online, Wells is the template you should start with. It is the most elegant way to show your work. The template just has a side navigation panel and nothing on the top and bottom. This makes your website look very clean. You get the ability to create multiple galleries which you can use to categorise your work. All the links to your galleries and blogs (you can create a blog if you want to) live on the left navigation bar. The rest of the page is just utilised to show your work.
You can change the layout of the galleries and select how you want your photos to be displayed (stack, columns, carousel etc.). You can also name and add a description to your photos. It is one of the easiest templates to edit and hence, you will not have to deal with editing the template and waste your time and energy on that. Basically, this is the easiest and the best way to showcase your portfolio online.
Check out: (Demo)
3. Lange
Lange is best for people who want to tell a story through their pictures. The template showcases your work in a very modern and easy to view style. All the photos are displayed from wall-to-wall, allowing your work to occupy the whole width of the website. This also means that you can upload the pictures with the highest quality without the fear of them getting cropped on the website. You also get many modern features such as fade in and out of the image blocks and modern scrolling effects. This template also lets you to add text block on top of your images allowing you to insert a narrative element to your photos. If these features hit a chord somewhere inside you then you know its the right one for you.
Check out: (Demo)
Best Squarespace Templates For Bloggers
Squarespace makes it a little difficult for bloggers to choose the right template, as it does not offer any separate section for bloggers as it does with other categories (Photography, Entertainment etc). But that does not mean that there’s nothing for bloggers here, in fact, I would argue that if you want to start a personal blog, Squarespace is the best place to start as the service makes your blog look and feel very modern and eye catching. Check out the following templates if you want to create a blog using Squarespace.
1. Tudor/Skye/Foundry
If you remember what I wrote about the templates family earlier, this is the best example to understand them. All the three templates mentioned above belong to the same family and look and feel similar. You can choose any of the above templates to start your blog and customise it to your liking. On the face of it, Foundry is the one to go with if your blog is going to be text heavy and you want your readers to focus on your writing more than the photos that go with it. Skye focuses more on the images and shows only the title of your article alongside it. Of all the three, my favourite one is Tudor because it looks much more refined and elegant and seems to keep a balance between the text and images.
What makes these templates best for blogging is the underlying structures and functionality which are geared for blogging. The homepage features a grid of thumbnail images along with article title and summary (depending upon how you customise it) each representing a different blog. When a reader opens an article, at the end of the blog, they will also see suggested articles just like on a regular blog. The side menus have been hidden inside a hamburger menu, giving your blog a clean look, while at the same time keeping the navigation to all your pages. For the above reasons, I have found these templates to be the best choice if you want to start a personal blog.
Check out: Tudor (Demo), Skye (Demo), Foundry (Demo)
2. Native
Native is another great template you can use to get yourself started on your blogging journey. It is a very versatile and one of the most customisable templates of all. If you plan to write a blog in which the images get the same importance as the content itself, Native is the best choice for you. The home page is a vertically scrolling page where the articles are represented by high-res images followed by a short summary of the content inside. There’s also a page for a gallery showcasing all your photos. The about page is where you can describe your mission and let your readers know about the purpose of the blog. The Native template allows you to create a very minimalist and modern blog which your readers will enjoy reading.
Check out: (Demo)
3. Rally
Rally is by far my favourite pick to show users how good they can make their blog look. The template is not meant for individual bloggers (personal blogging) as it shows a lot of content on each page. You will need contributors to publish content on a daily basis to utilise the full potential of the template. One thing you can do is, start with any of the above blogging templates and then switch to Rally once you have enough content to justify using this template. The template features parallax scrolling with sections featuring different categories of articles including featured posts which utilise the full width of the website. It has a top navigation bar with an in-built search feature. This is best for a team of people who want to create a full fledged website where new content is published every day.
Check out: (Demo)
Best Squarespace Templates For Online Stores
If you are planning to build a full fledged e-commerce website which can host thousands of products with in-built inventory management and what not, Shopify will be the better option. Shopify specialises in creating online stores and frankly, its tools are way better than what Squarespace has to offer. On the other hand, Shopify costs more. So, if you don’t need all the features which are required to run a large online store and just want to launch a small to medium scale stores with a limited number of products listing, Squarespace is the right choice for you.
1. Galapagos
Probably the most popular e-commerce template on Squarespace is Galapagos and for the right reasons. The store shows all your products on the page in tiles format, where you can choose the size of the tiles. You can even allot different sizes to different products to put more emphasis on some products than others. You can create separate pages for displaying different categories of products. My favourite feature of Galapagos is the one which allows users to see prices of the products just by hovering their cursor on the product. There, customers can choose to take a quick look at the product or go the full product page. All in all, in my opinion, this one is one of the best if not the best online store template on Squarespace.
Check out: (Demo)
2. Hyde
The second template on the list is the e-commerce template to use if you want to complement your offline store with an online presence. I am saying this because the homepage of this template gives you a chance to tell you the story of your store and showcase your best products. If you want, you can make the product page your homepage and direct the visitors directly there, but that defeats the purpose of using this template, and frankly, Galapagos already does that.
It is for those people for whom showing their products and their mission to the world, is as important as the sales itself. That’s why, I think, it’s best when used as a complement to an offline store. But, that’s just my opinion and many people have utilised this template to create their online store. In terms of popularity, it is right there with Galapagos. So, basically, any of the above two are great choices for your online store.
Check out: (Demo)
Bonus: West
Squarespace just introduced 16 new templates a few days back and West is probably the most unique template of all. It’s an e-commerce template which makes use of parallax scrolling in a very elegant and beautiful way. The home page supports 3-dimensional scrolling with on-hover effects which really put your product front and centre. If you use this template, your online store will get a unique modern look which I think everyone is going to love. However, this also means that it won’t at all look like a traditional online store, so you should use this template carefully. It will be best for the people whose products cater more to young people as they will appreciate the design and also won’t get lost while navigating the site.
Check out: (Demo)
Best Squarespace Templates For Small Businesses
If you take a look at Squarespace templates, it will not take you much time to understand that most of them cater to small to medium size businesses. Hence, there’s no shortage of templates in this category. However, if you take a look at Squarespace’s template categories, none of them explicitly say business, rather the templates have been categorised depending upon the type of businesses they are best suited for. For example, there are categories for Creative Services, Food & Drinks, Health & Fitness, and so on. Hence, what template you are going to choose will depend on the business you own.
1. Bedford (Generic Small Business & Non-Profit Organisations)
A business website needs a lot of different pages as there’s a lot of information to display. For example, a business website needs a homepage, an about page, a services page, and a products page among others. Also, a business website should make it easier for its visitors to navigate between the different pages for which a traditional top navigation is necessary. Bedford hits all these check marks and also brings infinite customisation to the table. Bedford’s other features include special customisable banners and buttons, sidebar navigation, and a scrolling Index Page among others.
As I mentioned earlier, it is one of the most customisable templates on Squarespace. While Bedford’s demo shows a website build for a non-profit organisation, Bryant (demo), a template of the same family, is designed to showcase a real-estate business. Hayden (demo), which also belongs to the same family showcases a beautiful website for an interior decoration business. When you review these three templates, you can see the amount of customisation you can perform on this template. If you want to create a website for your business which is unique and distinct from any other business website, choose Bedford.
Check out: (Demo)
2. Pacific (Food & Drinks)
I love simple websites, and what can be simpler than a one-page website. If you own an eatery and want to give it an online presence, you should choose this one without hesitation. Whether you own a food truck, a small stall, or a neighborhood burger joint, this template will make your website look as beautiful as your food itself. It is a one-page website with parallax scrolling with support for full-width images. You can display the images of your best cuisines along with your menu in a modern and elegant way.
However, if you are looking for something which is much more customisable and supports extra features like online ordering and all that, Basil (demo) will be the better option for you. It’s a multi-page website which can show your restaurant in all its glory. You can have a homepage showcasing your cuisines and keep separate pages for the menu, online ordering, locations and so on. You can also include a blog with your website if you want to.
Check out: (Demo)
Bonus: Harris, Moksha, Heights, Five, And Others
This article is already becoming a long one and that’s why I don’t want to dwell too much on a single category. So the next few recommendations will not be accompanied with entailing details but they are on the list because they deserved their place. If you belong to a service industry and your business specialises in providing one or another form of service, Harris (demo) will be the one for you. Using this template, you can explain your services in detail. There’s also a contact me block built right on the homepage which will help you generate leads. If your business is about real-estate development or property management, you should go with Five (demo).
Moksha (demo) and Heights (demo) are best for people working in the fitness industry while Mercer (demo) and Haute (demo) are best for businesses falling in the realms of the fashion industry. Choose the templates based on the category they fall into. If your business is different and doesn’t fall into any of the above categories, go with Bedford, which is our first and foremost choice.
Best Squarespace Templates For Freelancers (Individual Service Providers)
1. Ready
If you are a freelancer and want to create a website for offering your services, Squarespace has got a great template stored just for you. Ready is a great template with a rich home page which you can use to explain the services you provide. You can add testimonials from your previous customers to show your experience and can also include an opt-in block (contact) right on the home page. The template offers a side bar navigation structure hidden discretely behind a hamburger menu. Here you can keep navigation to your other pages including pricing, contact us, about us etc. If you are a freelancer, this template will surely help you in improving your business.
Check out: (Demo)
2. Hatch, Nueva, And Sofia
Although I consider Ready to be the best template for freelancers, Hatch is a very close second. Hatch offers a bit of parallax scrolling along with the ability to use big bold fonts and a header image which is one of the largest I have seen on any template. You can also add text blocks on top of the image if you want to. Rest of the features include adding testimonials and contact us (sign up) on the homepage itself. All in all, you can choose between the either of the two templates. The decision will purely depend on your personal taste.
Nueva (demo) is another great template which goes all out on parallax scrolling effects and has a traditional top navigation bar. If you are someone who has just started dipping his/her toes in the world of freelancing and just want a simple one-page website which is simple, looks beautiful and allows you to detail your experience, education along with some testimonials, you should go for Sofia (demo). It’s a beautiful one-page website which can help you get an online presence.
Check out: Hatch (Demo), Nueva (Demo), Sofia (Demo)
Best Squarespace Templates For Weddings
1. Sonny
Look I am no expert in this category. Also, in this category people will want to choose the website depending upon their personal taste. However, for someone who wants to tell their story, Sonny will be the best choice. It allows you to add full frame images along with text overlays. The template also supports parallax scrolling feature along with the ability to add a gallery to your homepage. To me, this one looks the most beautiful and is for those who want to add a lot of pictures and details to their wedding/engagement website. Naomi (demo) and Anya (demo) are also similar templates with a little difference in the way they display the content.
If you want a simple website which gives out a traditional card style vibe Julia (demo) will be fit your needs. Aubrey (demo) is for someone who loves the minimalist design and doesn’t want to share a lot of details. Choose the one you love and just get on with it.
Check out: (Demo)
SEE ALSO: Top 10 Squarespace Alternatives To Build Your Website
Build Your First Website With The Best Squarespace Templates
Choosing a template might seem difficult at first, but if you follow the rules it will become an easy task. While choosing a template, keep in mind the following points, the content that it will display, the branding, the target audience, and the amount of customisation and the features you will need. Also, keep in mind the family to which the template belongs to as looking at different templates of the same family can give you a fairly good idea about the underlying structure and customisability of the template. Keep these points in mind and you are good to go. So, what are you waiting for, go make your first website. Do tell us your thoughts in the comment section below, if you found the article informative enough to make a decision.
