Building Squarespace Fitness Websites: what you need to know for your fitness or yoga Studio

If we've ever discussed websites for more than two minutes, you'll know I'm all about Squarespace. Hands down, it's the best platform for fitness and wellness studios to create their digital home, and that's precisely why I suggest most of my clients choose to build their fitness websites on Squarespace.

Let's take a look…

Why Choose Squarespace for Your Fitness Studio Website?

What I love about designing Squarespace fitness websites is that it's a user-friendly website builder, and it takes a lot of pressure off small business owners to constantly keep on top of their website plugins and security. 

Squarespace makes it easy for you—the business owner, to edit text and images, add videos, and more—basically everything you'll want to do to keep your website up to date. 

I've worked with business owners with varying self-expressed "techie" skills. They all ultimately feel comfortable making basic edits to their website in day-to-day business operations, which is extremely important in running an agile small business.

Plus, Squarespace offers a free 14-day trial, during which you can play around with the interface to see if it's right for you without committing to anything. Even better, Squarespace is known for excellent customer service, which means that if you need support, they're there to help.

Unsurprisingly, website costs are a factor when choosing which platform to use for many emerging fitness businesses.

If you choose to build a Squarespace fitness website, you'll pay between $23 and $33 per month, which is very reasonable! That monthly fee includes everything from site security and web hosting to templates and e-commerce. 

However, one of the first choices you must make when using Squarespace is the website template you'll start with. There are so many beautiful layouts to choose from that it can be overwhelming.

The Best Squarespace Fitness Website Templates

Here's the good news—unlike the previous version of Squarespace (7.0), the latest version (7.1) has one universal foundation to its templates.

Yep, you heard that right! The template options you see are all based on the same underlying framework, just styled differently as starting points. 

This shows you just how flexible the design for a Squarespace websites can be, and takes the stress out of choosing just the right template from the start.

When putting together your fitness studio’s website, you aren't locked into any layout or design styling. Once you get started, you can literally make any one of them look exactly like the others. So pick one that catches your eye and just jump in!

Still looking for guidance? Are you wondering which Squarespace templates may be the best fit for a fitness studio website? 

• Bailard is a good primary starting point. There's nothing too wild going on, but it's an excellent place to start with a clean, classic layout.

• Klipsan is bold and robust, and I like this one a lot for fitness and gyms.

• Clune is trendy and modern and might be a good option if you have some outstanding vertical photos (that are otherwise usually hard to make fit in websites that utilize more horizontal banner image placements)

---

Examples of Squarespace Fitness Websites

---

Taking Your Squarespace Fitness Website Template to the Next Level

There's no question that templates are a great place to start. However, a template is only as good as the content you put into it.

Here's your dose of tough love for the day: If you put care and thought into prepping all of the critical elements of a professional-looking website, the final product will be better than you imagined. In addition to the template, here are some of the things you will need to create your Squarespace fitness studio website:

• Visual branding

• Written content

• Photography

• A scheduling system like Acuity, Momence, Walla, FitDEGREE or Mindbody

Having a vision and a plan for the images and words you include on your website is just as important as good design, so consider and plan this before you dive into building the site. 

Now, a great fitness website that stands out from the competition won't look like it was made from a template.

Like most things, web design trends come and go, so your goal is to balance a mix of tried and true must-haves (like great copy and images) along with some fresh and current ideas that show your website hasn't been ignored for the past decade. 

As you move through the design process, you'll probably get more and more excited about reaching the finish line. But even if your website looks great, there's something more important you'll need to check—does it actually work?

Integrating your Squarespace Fitness Website with Your Scheduling Software

The good news is that Squarespace works really well with just about all scheduling platforms that allow you to embed functionality on your own website. I've created fitness websites on Squarespace that integrate with Mindbody, Walla, Mariana Tek, Wellness Living, and FitDegree, to name a few.

If you're using Mindbody software (which many of my clients do), there are many options for integrating your day-to-day operations with your Squarespace website. To do this, you can check out my Complete Guide to Integrating MINDBODY with Your Squarespace Website.

If you're not using Mindbody, check with your studio scheduling platform for website embed options. In many cases, your scheduler will offer snippets of code you can paste into a CODE block in Squarespace to bring that scheduling feature to your site.

To see more integration examples with all the software listed above and more, check out my complete portfolio of Squarespace fitness website designs and use the filters at the top to find just what you're looking for!

---

Do You Need to hire a Designer for a Squarespace Fitness Website?

Whether or not you choose to work with a professional for your Squarespace website design is up to you. But if website design isn't something you usually do, I recommend outsourcing.

A website design professional will know not only how to create a fitness website on Squarespace, but they can also help you stay on track by ensuring all the necessary pieces of the website design project are adequately handled. 

If you decide to hire a Squarespace fitness website designer, I recommend you ask these questions when vetting potential candidates:

• Can this person represent me well?

• Does this person have a branding or general graphic design background?

• How much maintenance will be required post-launch?

• How much training is provided with your website design package?

• Does the designer understand your industry and how your website will work with your scheduling software? 

• Does the designer offer basic on-site Search Engine Optimization as part of their services?

By understanding what it takes to create a Squarespace fitness website that wows, you can make an informed decision about how the design should be completed and whether or not using a professional makes the most sense for you.

Need help with your Squarespace Website Design for your Fitness Business?

Check out Pixality's Fast Fit Website package, designed to help you get your studio website online with a fully integrated 10-page Squarespace website.

---

You may also like: