How to Speed Up a Squarespace Site — Simple Checklist

In this post, I’m going to show you how to speed up a Squarespace site. Read on to discover nine simple steps you can take to make your site load faster — and improve its performance in search results.

If you’ve been reading about SEO, you’ve probably learnt that fast-loading sites are given preference over slower ones — and are prioritized accordingly in search results.

And, if you’re a Squarespace user, you might be thinking that your options are rather limited on this front.

In many ways this is true, because Squarespace is a ‘hosted solution’ — meaning that you get limited control over code and templates, and none over hosting.

But there are still a LOT of things you can do to speed up your Squarespace site, and in this post, we give you a checklist of the key steps you can take to ensure that you have the fastest Squarespace site on the block.

Before you get stuck in with our tips though, you need to take a close look at the existing performance of your site as far as site speed goes.

Let’s take a look at how to do that.

Before starting, check your existing site loading time

To see how fast your Squarespace site is currently loading, you’ll need to run it through a speed checking tool.

There are two reasons for doing this.

First, speed checking tools give you a very precise loading time for your site — down to the millisecond, in fact — and highlight specific areas where you can make improvements.

You may find out, for example, that a particular script you’ve added to your site is taking ages to load, or that your images are too big — and you’ll be able to tweak your Squarespace site accordingly.

Second, by using a speed checking tool before making any speed improvements to your site, you’ll get a benchmark figure that you can refer to at the end of the process.

This lets you evaluate how successful your optimization efforts have been — and if there’s any further room for improvement.

Now, you might be tempted to use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool for this job (pictured below).

However, Squarespace cautions users against using it, saying:

I’m a bit skeptical of this statement, to be honest — Google uses the ‘Lighthouse’ technology behind PageSpeed Insights as part of its ranking process. So for me, the overall score it generates is going to be relevant to users of any website building platform, Squarespace included.

This is especially the case since the introduction of Google’s Core Web Vitals targets — a set of targets relating to the speed, responsiveness and visual stability of a website.

That said, I generally recommend using GTmetrix over PageSpeed Insights for speed tests on Squarespace sites (or at least in conjunction with it) because it gives you more ‘actionable’ information about the bottlenecks on them.

If you enter your Squarespace’s site’s URL into GTmetrix, it will give you a breakdown — or ‘waterfall’ — of exactly how long each script or piece of content is taking to load (see screenshot below for an example).

You can use these insights to identify areas of improvement in addition to working through the recommendations below.

Now, it’s worth noting that GTMetrix will flag up some aspects of your Squarespace site that can’t really be changed — like the wait time for SSL, for example, or how long it takes Squarespace to load images hosted on its own servers.

But overall, it’s useful for identifying slow-loading content or fonts, or spotting a slow DNS lookup time…more on all that below!

Now, let’s take a look at the exact steps you’ll need to take to speed up your Squarespace site.

1. Use Squarespace 7.1 rather than 7.0

I’ve found that in general, Squarespace 7.1 is much faster than 7.0.

And, based on what Squarespace’s software engineers have been telling Squarespace designers in online forums, a lot of technical improvements are being made to Squarespace 7.1 to speed the platform up and make it more compliant with Google’s Core Web Vitals standards.

(In fact, I’ve noticed that a lot of Squarespace 7.1 sites that we work on are now meeting them — a very positive development.)

Importantly, Squarespace has announced that these speed improvements won’t be made to the older 7.0 templates.

So, particularly if you have a small Squarespace site, and you want continue using the platform — but in a speedier way! — it’s worth considering a switch to version 7.1.

(This will also give you access to a lot of improved features, including the option to use Squarespace’s new Blueprint site setup process and its ‘Fluid Engine’ drag-and-drop editor).

If you’re currently using Squarespace 7, you can switch to version 7.1 by going to Website > Design in your dashboard, and then clicking the ‘Update to Version 7.1’ option.

However, although this method of upgrading your site keeps your 7.0 version intact while you rework it into 7.1 format, it doesn’t let you revert back to 7.0 once you’ve hit the ‘publish’ button.

Accordingly, it may make more sense to actually build a new 7.1 site from scratch via a Squarespace free trial. That way, you can test the site speed of your new version — and compare it against the old — before you commit to using it.

2. Switch on SSL

Want a quick speed win?

Ensure you’re using Squarespace’s SSL option — this means that your site will be delivered through the faster HTTP/2 protocol.

Switch on the accompanying HSTS option too, as this can improve security and SEO in general too.

You can enable SSL and HSTS in really easily in Squarespace by going to Settings > Developer Tools > SSL.

(Note that it can take up to 72 hours for these changes to take effect — but I’ve found that in general, they kick in pretty quickly.)

3. Reduce your image sizes

A simple way to reduce the loading time for your Squarespace site is to keep your image file sizes as small as possible.

You’ll need to strike the right balance between file size and image quality (i.e., try to keep the file small without avoid everything becoming pixelated or grainy), but if you can get this balance right, you’ll enjoy considerably faster loading times.

Here are some key things you can do to keep image sizes low:

4. Keep scripts and extensions to a minimum

It can be quite difficult to avoid using third-party scripts on Squarespace websites.

Facebook pixels, tracking code for online advertising, web stats scripts and Squarespace plugins / extensions can all add really valuable functionality and analytics to your website.

But the trouble is, they can also slow your Squarespace site down.

So, it’s worth doing an audit of the scripts you’re currently using — and getting rid of any scripts and extensions that are not adding value.

Now, let’s take a look at fonts.

5. Be smart with web fonts

Web fonts can make a website look really slick, but they can take a long time to load.

Now, you can speed things up by using web-safe typefaces (Arial, Times, Georgia and so on).

But if you have to use web fonts (and let’s face it, a lot of us do):

You can choose which fonts to use in Squarespace by going to the ‘Design’ section in your dashboard and then clicking ‘Site Styles.’

It’s then a case of going through every style element involving text — headers, body copy, blog titles and so on — to ensure that only the relevant typeface is used on the site.

6. Use the custom featured image option for video embeds

If you’re embedding any videos on your Squarespace site, always choose its ‘use custom featured image’ option (pictured below). This lets you upload a ‘cover’ image of your own for your videos instead of those provided by YouTube.

If you don’t take this approach, Squarespace has to look up and load content from video services like Youtube or Vimeo — even if a visitor to your site doesn’t actually play a video!

This can result in quite large files having to be downloaded unnecessarily, slowing things down.

(It can also result in third-party cookies being run on your site, which not only slow things down further, but can cause headaches from a GDPR perspective. See our Squarespace GDPR guide for more information on this topic).

7. Consider using AJAX loading

If you are a Squarespace 7.0 user, you may be able to make use of Ajax loading to speed things up a bit.

Having Ajax loading enabled means that your site will only load the content that’s visible (rather than ALL the content on the page).

For example, if a user visits a gallery page, only the visible images will load — for example, the ones above the fold. Any other pictures will load in line with the user’s scrolling, i.e., as they come into view.

Ajax loading is supported in the following Squarespace 7.0 template families:

To enable Ajax Loading, you go to Design > Site Styles and tick the ‘Enable Ajax Loading’ box (you can use the search box at the top-left corner of the screen to search for ‘Ajax’ and locate this quickly).

The only thing to watch out for here is that using Ajax loading on Squarespace can interfere with how third-party scripts function.

So, if your site is particularly reliant on third-party code that you’ve added, you may need to tread carefully here — check that any scripts you’ve added are still working properly after enabling Ajax loading.

8. Reduce your DNS lookup time by using a faster provider

The final step you can take to speed up your Squarespace site is to reduce your DNS (Domain Name System) lookup time.

For a technical explanation of DNS lookup time, I’d suggest reading this excellent Cloudflare resource on DNS, but a simple explanation of it is this: it’s basically how long it takes your browser to find out where on the web your domain is located.

The DNS lookup has to be performed before anything from your site can be loaded – so you want this to take as short a time as possible.

Now, some domain name providers don’t provide particularly fast DNS lookup times, as this chart from DNSPerf.com makes clear.

So, if you’ve registered a domain with a sluggish DNS provider, you could consider:

All this involves a bit of configuration, but if you have the know-how (or the support of someone who does), it’s worth investing a bit of time in this.

For example, we moved some domains used for Squarespace sites over to Cloudflare, and saw some significant reductions in DNS lookup times.

For information on how to do this, you can refer to the Cloudflare section on the Squarespace support site or Cloudflare’s documentation on using Squarespace with the service.

Need some more SEO tips?

I hope you’ve found the above tips on how to speed up a Squarespace site useful! But there are lots of other ways that you can improve your Squarespace site’s performance in Google rankings.

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