How to Redesign a Large Squarespace Website Without Losing Traffic or Data
The staging site method, for businesses that can't afford downtime.
You've had your website on Squarespace for several years. You've invested in it and you've been blogging. You have a shop, orders, blog comments, and a pile of landing pages. Now it's time for a redesign.
But this huge website keeps bringing you clients and leads. It's working. So you're not sure how to go about it.
In this post I want to walk you through my process as a professional designer, including the small tricks that let you facelift an existing website when your business depends on it staying up.
I'm Olga Kolgusheva, and I've been designing websites on Squarespace since 2019. In that time I've migrated enormous websites from WordPress and Wix over to Squarespace, and updated gigantic Squarespace sites in place.
The Difference Between Your Domain and Your Website
A website really consists of two things.
The first is the domain name. Your domain can be registered on Squarespace itself, on GoDaddy, or with any other registrar. It's a separate thing from the site.
The second is the server space. Your website is a set of files, and those files live on a server. Squarespace is an app that handles that server space for you.
This matters because inside a single Squarespace account you can have multiple websites, and you can move a domain name back and forth between them.
The Easy Way (And When It Doesn't Work)
If you understand that, the easiest way to redo your website is obvious: create a new site, duplicate your existing one inside Squarespace, work on the copy, and when it's ready, point your domain at the new site.
Sometimes that isn't an option.
If your existing site has a lot of blog posts with comments, you have a problem. We can move blog posts between websites, but we cannot move the comments.
If you have e-commerce, the problem is bigger. We can move the shop, but we cannot move your customers, your orders, or any of that data.
When that's the case, you have to stay on that one Squarespace site.
What can and can't move between sites
Can move: pages, site styles (with a plugin), assets, gallery images, any kind of content, and email subscribers.
Cannot move: blog comments, and e-commerce data like customer records and order history.
If your site holds either of those, don't duplicate. Use the method below instead.
The Staging Site Method
Here's what we do instead.
We create a staging website inside the same Squarespace account. On that staging site, we build five to ten new landing pages and style the blog. This is where all the real design work happens, with no pressure and no risk to the live site.
When the time comes to switch, the website will be down for only about an hour or two. Sometimes less. We do it at night so there's no disturbance to the business.
It's a seamless process for the business owner, who doesn't have to sit there worrying that the site is down, and it's a fast process for us. We work on the staging site first, then migrate everything into the live site very carefully, replacing the styles and then the pages one by one. Once we turn it back on, it's a new site.
To migrate pages and styles between the two sites, we use a Chrome extension called SquareWebsites Tools Pro. It's a paid subscription with no free trial, and for anyone building Squarespace sites regularly, it pays for itself quickly. The export and import options below come from that extension rather than from Squarespace itself, which is worth knowing before you go looking for them in your settings. Circle members can also save pages to their Circle account, which is handy if you work across several projects.
Here's how that looks in practice.
We password-protect the live site first, under Website, then Site Availability. Then we set up a proper lock screen, which is the part people tend to skip. Under Pages, in System Pages, there's a Lock Screen you can actually design. We pick something better than the default, put the phone number on it, say the site will be back by five, and link to a form that lives outside the website, usually a Google Form, so anyone who arrives while we're working still has somewhere to go.
Then we migrate the styles. We export the tweaks from the staging site and import them into the live one, and that swaps the entire look of the website in a single move.
After that, the new pages are transferred one at a time using the plugin we mentioned earlier.
We move the custom code too. Any new CSS sits at the bottom of the Pages panel under Custom CSS, and that travels across along with any JavaScript.
Last, we swap the new pages into the navigation in place of the old ones, and turn the password protection off.
To an outsider, the website was simply down for a couple of hours.
Why This Works
Here's the part that makes this method worth it: once you replace the site styles, everything else picks them up automatically.
Your older pages, your blog, and your shop all pick up the new styles on their own. And every component of the website stays exactly where it was, with all its data intact.
You've replaced the foundation. Now you can keep working on the live site at your own pace, fixing individual old pages with no pressure and nothing broken.
Squarespace has certain design constraints, and in this case they work in your favour. Once the styles are swapped, the rest of the site falls into line on its own.
Afterwards: Redirects and Cleanup
Once everything is in place, go over any links that might be broken and set up redirects pointing the old URLs to the new ones. Usually this goes pretty smoothly, but it's worth checking properly.
Then keep cleaning up. Organise the main navigation, tidy the pages you haven't touched yet, and work through the rest at whatever pace suits you.
This is the most efficient way I've found to do it. The website goes down for an hour or two, but the business keeps its data, its rankings, and its momentum.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I duplicate a Squarespace site to redesign it?
Yes, and it's the simplest approach when it works. Duplicate the site, redesign its copy, then move your domain across. It only works if you don't have blog comments or e-commerce data, because neither of those can be transferred between sites.
Will redesigning my Squarespace site hurt my SEO?
Not if you keep your URLs consistent and set up 301 redirects for anything that changes. The staging method helps here because you're keeping the same site and the same install, so your existing pages and their URLs stay in place.
How long does my site need to be down if I use your method?
Around one to two hours, and often less. Doing it overnight means most businesses see no practical disruption at all. Password-protect the site during the switch and give visitors a lock screen with a phone number and a contact form.
Can I move blog posts between Squarespace sites?
Blog posts, yes. Comments, no. If your blog has meaningful comment activity, that's a strong reason to redesign in place rather than duplicating.
Do old pages update colors and fonts automatically when I change the styles?
Yes, and this is what makes the method work. Once you import new site styles, existing pages, blog posts, and shop pages all pick them up without being rebuilt individually.
Building a site right now? Try Squarespace free and save 10% on your first subscription with code APPLET10. Or browse our Squarespace templates – every one comes with a 12-month trial through our Platinum partner status.
