Squarespace Speed – Is Squarespace Slow? 9 Crucial Tips!

Is Squarespace slow? In this article, I’ll run the numbers on 756 live websites that are built with Squarespace.

Squarespace has become more popular over the last few years, because of its easy-to-use drag & drop website builder.

Sure, Squarespace will promise you the world on their advertisements and on their landing pages. But hey, you only care about real-life examples, right?

Now let’s put this to the test.

One year ago I built a website scanner that allows you to detect Website Builders, plugins, and frequently also the hosting.

When I built this tool, I added one great feature to it. It saves all entries to a database. So at this point, I am sitting on a bunch of very valuable data.

When I’m writing this, there are 756 websites in my database that were built with Squarespace.

Here are the real-life statistics of real-life Squarespace websites.

Squarespace Page speed scores from 756 real-life websites

* Page speed score is a metric that summarizes the overall speed performance

Squarespace Time To Load Full Page (LCP) from 756 real-life websites

* Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) marks the point in the page load timeline when the page’s main content has loaded.

Above you found the 2 most important metrics when it comes to website speed. However, there is a third metric that I would like to show you. 

Even though it’s not fair to blame Squarespace for these scores, I did want to show them to give you some context.

Squarespace Page Size scores from 756 real-life websites

Squarespace page speed analysis

Looking at the page speed scores of Squarespace websites, there are a few things that stand out.

#1 It is definitely possible to have a fast Squarespace website

As you can tell from the results, the fastest website loads in 0.7 seconds, which is incredibly fast. 

Does this mean Squarespace is fast? Well, it definitely is possible.

#2 Squarespace should educate its customers better at improving page speed

Looking at the average page size, there is a lot that can be improved. With an average page size of 4,375 kb, it’s not surprising that some websites aren’t loading fast. One website even has 41,082 kb to load, causing a horrible website performance.

Squarespace page speed recommendations – mistakes to avoid

Whether you’re considering to purchase a Squarespace subscription, or you’re an existing Squarespace customer – I’ve listed down the biggest mistakes that cause a slow website.

Make sure to avoid each of them, and you’ll be guaranteed of a fast website.

1. You’re using an old version

Just make sure you’re on the most updated version of Squarespace, as their developers did confirm this will help your website’s speed.

2. You’re using large images

Larger-sized high resolutions can consume a lot of bandwidth, slowing down site loading times. If I were you, I’d consider uploading them in a smaller size. As you do so, don’t let the image quality deteriorate. Use dependable and efficient picture compressing tools to ensure that their visual clarity is still preserved with no drop in quality.

3. You’re using the wrong formats

The size of your photo is merely one aspect of the issue. Then, the file types you employ also use important storage space. 

Are you utilizing a file format such as TIFF or BMP? If yes, keep in mind that TIFF is an uncompressed format that produces a more detailed image and contains more data, resulting in more storage space. I recommend other formats such as JPEG or PNG to help your site speed.

Want to embed videos? It’s best to use the Youtube embed feature, they’ll do the heavy lifting for you!

4. You have broken links

Broken links can increase website loading time and degrade the user experience. Find out how to spot broken links as much as possible because they are SEO killers. Yikes! 

Our entire web and search system is built on links. Spiders regularly crawl the links between websites repetitively. If there are no links to or from your content, search engines will not be able to discover it.

5. You have too many advertisements

Without a doubt, advertisements are excellent for generating high traffic results.  However, this should not be done at the expense of performance or user experience. Don’t let too many advertisements contribute to the slowness of your website. Simply include some that will have an impression! 

While one or two on-page advertisements from trusted sources, such as Google AdSense or Yahoo! Ads, will not harm your site’s performance, not every advertisement curator adheres to such standards.  Always avoid running advertising from dealers who do not properly examine and optimize their advertisements as a general rule.

Is Squarespace slow?

It can be. The slowest Squarespace website in this analysis takes more than 9 seconds to load. However, the fastest Squarespace websites loads in 0.7 seconds. Take a look at the recommendations in this article to speed up your Squarespace website.

Why is Squarespace slow?

A slow Squarespace website is most likely caused by poor website configurations. In this analysis I’ve seen Squarespace websites that load within 0.7 seconds, so having a fast Squarespace website is definitely possible. Take a look at the recommendations in this article to speed up your Squarespace website.

How to improve Squarespace page speed?

You can improve your Squarespace website page speed by following the recommendations in this article.