How to Make Your Squarespace Website Load Faster
One of the worst things a visitor can encounter on your website is… a slow loading webpage.
It may not seem like much of a catastrophe, but think of it from the website visitor’s perspective: they’ve clicked on a link, they’re ready to view or learn or take action on something (yay!), and then—they can’t easily do that. 😕
Page load time is the amount of time it takes your webpage to load on a viewer’s device (be that a computer, tablet or smartphone).
It’s a good idea to speed up your website’s page load time for several reasons:
slower loading times detract from your user experience, and some users may even leave your site before finding or accessing the content they were there for
faster loading pages improve your website’s SEO (page load time is an increasingly important element in search engine ranking, as a larger number of searches are performed on mobile devices, which are more prone to slower page loading in general)
How to check your website’s page load speed
You can check any webpage’s loading speed via Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool. Just enter the specific webpage you’d like to check and you’ll receive a quick report of its loading performance.
Now, a couple caveats on that:
This tool is a robot, not a human. It’s measuring your page load time in milliseconds. Yes, page load speed is influential in SEO, but that’s because it matters to humans using your website. If PageSpeed Insights thinks your page loads slowly, but it’s not noticeable to the human eye—probably not too big of a problem for your overall SEO.
Page speed requires balance. There are many factors influencing page load time (which we’ll get into below), but at the end of the day you’ll need to balance the style and functionality of your website with the speed of your page load times. Google’s plain-Jane search page loads really quickly because there’s nothing to it. On the other hand, CNN’s homepage loads much slower because there’s a lot of content that’s constantly being updated. But each website is optimized to serve its particular purpose.
So, you can expect to compromise on page load speed for any design and functionality, but you’ll still want to review your website to be sure that it’s loading as quickly as it can be, given the specific design and functionality in use on your site.
Because it’s so important to optimize your Squarespace website’s page loading speed, I’m sharing five simple ways to keep things speedy—and, this list also doubles as five things to look into if you’re worried you have a slow loading page or site.
5 ways to make your Squarespace website load faster
1. Keep your page size under 5 mb
I’ve shared this before as one of my tips for mobile-friendly web design (it’s particularly important for mobile users, as page loading speed is typically slower on mobile devices than on desktop).
When a user visits your webpage, their computer (or mobile device) attempts to download all of the page’s content. If your webpage is particularly content-heavy, this can result in longer load times.
To increase your page load speed, aim to keep the content of each page under 5 MB.
(No idea what your page size is? Here’s Squarespace’s guide on checking page content size.)
How to reduce Squarespace page content for faster loading
If you find that you need to reduce your page size, here are a few tips for reducing content for faster loading:
Reduce image size: Aim to keep images under 500 KB each (this should be doable while still maintaining the optimum width of about 1500-2000px for full-width images). In general, .jpg images have a smaller file size than .png. You can resize images with an image compressor like compresspng.com or compressjpeg.com.
Reduce embedded content: Embedded content, such as videos, can increase page load times. If you have a lot of embedded media on your website, try spreading it across multiple pages, rather than housing it all on one page (more tips on this below!).
Reduce gallery size: Keep photo galleries under 50 images each. If you need larger galleries, simply link to them across different pages.
2. Spread content across multiple pages
If you’ve reduced your image file size as much as you can and your page is still content-heavy, it may be a good idea to spread your content across multiple pages.
A good example of this is wedding photography: A wedding photographer may have a huge amount of high-resolution images (aka a very content-heavy site), but by strategically distributing this content on different pages across the site, overall page speed can be improved.
Here’s how the wedding photographer could separate different layers of content into different pages:
Homepage: one gallery with photo highlights + links to separate “Weddings,” “Engagements,” and “Maternity” category pages
Category pages: summary blocks with one thumbnail image representing each specific gallery within that category
Gallery pages: specific galleries of < 50 images each (for example, a specific wedding or engagement shoot)
3. Use blog post excerpts
Structuring your Blog List page (the native, built-in blog archives page on Squarespace) to include blog post excerpts, rather than full blog posts helps the page load faster, as each visit is not trying to instantly pull up all the blog content you’ve ever published into an endless scroll.
(Blog post excerpts also happen to be one of the top things I recommend including in every blog post.)
How to style your Squarespace Blog List page
If you’re using your Squarespace website’s native Blog List page, this is as easy as:
ensuring each blog post includes an excerpt
selecting Excerpt under Blog Settings > Advanced > Post Display
If you organize your blog content in a custom blog archive with summary blocks, full-loading blog posts are not a problem, as your summary blocks will only show the title, thumbnail image, post excerpt and metadata (or any combination thereof that you choose).
4. Check your custom code
Adding custom code to your Squarespace website is a great way to customize and enhance your overall web design, but it’s important to be aware of how it affects your website performance. Some custom code (such as third-party embed code, code injections and custom CSS) may cause your website to load more slowly.
This doesn’t mean that you need to avoid all custom code.
As a web designer, I’m a big fan of custom CSS hacks and even recommend certain third-party code for additional functionality—like using MemberSpace to create membership-protected pages on your website or installing SQSP Themes plugins to create fancy features like related posts reels and countdown timers.
But if you find that a webpage (or your entire site) is loading slowly, it’s a good idea to look into how any custom code in use may possibly be impacting your page load speed. Here’s how to check it out:
Copy/paste your custom code into a text document or other safe place you’ll be able to retrieve it from later (don’t want to lose it!).
Delete the custom code from your website.
Re-load your website and check page load speed.
If you find that the page load speed is about the same, you can re-add your code knowing that it’s not slowing your site down.
If you find that your page load speed increases considerably without the custom code, you’ll need to assess whether that code is necessary to use and, if so, how it could be adjusted to improve your page or site loading speed.
For example, could your code be cleaned up to be more concise? Do you have “dead” code left over from pages or Squarespace blocks that are no longer in use? It’s best practice to only include the custom code you absolutely need to keep your website looking and functioning as you’d like—so be sure to remove anything that no longer applies to that.
5. Assess your page redirects
URL redirects can slow down page loading speed, as visitors must first jump to different URLs before content can be downloaded from the intended page.
If you’re using page redirects on your website, check your URL mappings (Settings > Advanced > URL Mappings) to assess whether they’re simple and streamlined.
An example of a simple redirect is one page redirecting to another page, such as fivedesign.co/mobile-friendly redirecting to fivedesign.co/blog/how-to-make-your-website-mobile-friendly.
If you find that a slow-loading page has multiple layers of redirects being applied to it, simplifying your redirect structure can help speed up the page load speed.
And, sometimes it’s not your fault!
Very rarely, a site loading problem is actually due to a system-wide issue. You can always check the current system status on Squarespace’s status page.
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