How to Transfer Your Website from Wix to Squarespace

July 14, 2023 Omari Harebin

In the world of website builders, there are over a dozen different options you can use.

Wix is one of the more popular choices, but as you grow a site, you'll quickly run into the platform's limits.

It's no wonder that so many people look to upgrade to a different platform and eventually land on Squarespace.

Step 1: Understand the Process

Before you begin, you should understand the process you're getting into. Unfortunately, there is no automatic port process available. You can't simply click a button, authorize an account, and watch your site port itself.

What this means is that you're presented with both a problem and an opportunity. The problem is, you won't be able to port your site exactly as it is now. Wix doesn't use the same templates and designs as Squarespace, so you need to reconstitute your site from scratch. The opportunity is, you can use this chance to upgrade, streamline, and redesign your site to look, function, and flow better for your users.

One thing to note is that your SEO might shuffle around; this is particularly true if you change your site design.

Even if you transfer your domain, Google can see that you're hosted on a different registrar or IP address and could temporarily sandbox you so they can make sure nothing went wrong. They want to make sure the site wasn't hacked, that it wasn't acquired by someone else and will be dissolved, or whatever the case may be. Once they verify continuity, your rankings will settle, possibly even higher than they were before.

To complete this upgrade process, you'll need to do several things.

Gather your assets and materials.
Pin down what you want out of your design.
Configure a new site.
Add any plugins or apps you want to use.
Port over the content you want to save.
Transfer your domain.
Test and verify your new site works.
Shut down your old site.

Don't worry; I'll take you through the process step by step. Starting with:

Step 2: Gather Assets and Materials

Once you've decided that you genuinely want to transfer your site from Wix to Squarespace, you need to gather all your assets locally. Depending on how you've run your website up until now, you may have most of this already. Which website assets am I talking about?

Your Images

Every image you've uploaded to your site for use in design, blog posts, or product pages needs to be copied.

Your Text

Blog posts, product descriptions, About pages, system pages; any content on your site that needs to be copied.

Your Colors

You likely chose colors to represent your brand. Make sure you have the specific hex values of the colors you find important noted down somewhere.

Your Product Pages and Information

If you have a storefront on Wix, you'll want to make sure you've noted down your various products, with whatever information is relevant to them. SKUs, descriptions, images, specifications, all of that.

It will help a lot if you use descriptive file names for your images in particular. It's a lot easier to upload the right photos when you name things like "Red_Shoe_Image_1" rather than "DCIM3243892725", especially when you have hundreds to go through.

Step 3: Pin Down Design Elements and Goals

Next up, you'll want to figure out what design elements you have on Wix that you wish to have on Squarespace, such as lightboxes, related post plugins, sidebar widgets, and slide-in CTAs.

Wix has a few features that Squarespace doesn't, at least by default.

Make a note of anything you added to your site through the Wix Market. These are features and functions you'll need to replicate with Squarespace features, either default features in Squarespace 7.1 or plugins designed to add those features.

This is also your opportunity to make a change. Let's say you've had a product image lightbox that you don't like, but you were too invested in making the change to remove it. Well, now's your chance to get rid of it and replace it with a different image format, like a carousel. Or, let's say there was a specific site design element you wanted to add but never got around to figuring out how to do it on Wix. Now's your chance to add it.

Some people take this opportunity to pull a complete site redesign. I'm not sure I would recommend that; you want continuity from one site to the next, so your users don't experience significant disruption. However, as long as large elements like your branding are consistent, a site redesign can be a great option to boost traffic and interest. Really, it's up to you.

Step 4: Configure a Squarespace Site

Once you've made your checklist of what you're aiming for in your design, it's time to configure your site.

You'll want to register a Squarespace site, first and foremost. I have a tutorial for setting up a new website here, which will give you a good idea of what you'll be doing.

While you'll be starting with a free trial, make sure you know what level of service you need out of Squarespace. For example, a simple blog might be fine with a low-tier plan, but if you're running a storefront, you'll need the commerce plan.

So, register your account, then start configuring your site. Make sure to add in your specifications as noted above, like your logo, site name, colors, and significant design elements.

Step 5: Add Plugins and Templates You Want

If you want specific design elements for your site but which Squarespace doesn't offer on its own, you'll need to find third-party resources to add them.

Squarespace offers a wide array of templates you can use as the foundation of your site, but you might want elements you can't get by default. That's where using plugins comes in.

Plugins let you do all manner of cool things that Squarespace doesn't integrate. For example, you can create a related posts widget, a sidebar, a video lightbox, or incorporate Facebook comments for your blog.

All of these require custom code, usually in the form of a plugin you can buy.

I have a curated list of great plugins here, which you can browse at your leisure. This is far from comprehensive, though, and there are thousands of other plugins online you can find. If you want to do something on your site, chances are someone else has already done the same thing and has created a plugin to do it. If you can't find one that does what you're looking for, drop me a line; I might know of one that can help you get one set up.

Once you've decided what plugins and custom templates you want and have added them to your Squarespace account, you can then start porting over your entire site content.

Don't forget to add any relevant integrations, like Google Analytics, your payment processor account, and your email management account.

Step 6: Port Content and Design Elements

At this point, the tedious process of porting content begins.

Here's a checklist of things to do.

Choose site-wide fonts and colors.
Add and configure your site name and logo.
Port over specific system pages, such as your About page or your Privacy Policy.
Port over your blog. For each blog post, add the text, the images, the formatting, the links, and the metadata.
Port over your product pages. For each product page, port over specific product information, page metadata, and images. Customize as you desire.
Configure any specific tools, such as a newsletter sign-up page or opt-in form, and test to make sure they work.

One thing you might consider doing just before this process is a content audit. A content audit allows you to determine which pages on your site are valuable and which ones are dead weight.

Old, thin content might be worth removing or (in this case) not porting over because they're not adding value to your site. The less content you port over, the less you need to worry about doing during this process.

Step 7: Verify New Site

At this point, you should have two websites. You have your standard website on Wix, and you have your new website on Squarespace.

The new website might have a cover page or a password-protected landing page preventing the content from being visible, both to users and to Google. It also probably uses the default-free Squarespace domain, which is something like "www.arbitrary-wordchoice-mx97.squarespace.com". Now, obviously, you'll want to change that before you go live.

Before that, you want to test that your site works. Visit it from another computer (and from a mobile device to try the mobile version), preferably while not logged into your Squarespace account. Make sure your pages look right, your fonts look right, your images look right, and that all of your metadata exists. Now is your chance to do troubleshooting before you pull the lever that switches which site is your "real" site.

Step 8: Transfer Domain

Once you've verified that your site works and looks the way you want it to, you can transfer your domain name over. Depending on how your domain name is registered (through Wix or through a third-party domain registrar), your process may be a little different. I wrote a more detailed guide on the process here.

Make sure you only do this once you're confident that your Squarespace site is ready to go live!

Once you throw this switch, all traffic from Google and from your existing links will lead to your Squarespace site rather than your Wix site. If your Squarespace site isn't ready, this can be devastating to your SEO and to your user base.

Additionally, before you do this, make sure to remove the landing page or privacy screen you might have on the Squarespace site. You want your Squarespace site hidden from view while you're building it, but once it's ready to go, you need it visible.

It's up to you whether you want Squarespace to manage your domain or if you'd rather have it managed by a third-party registrar. Having Squarespace handle this allows you to lump your billing together in one place, but it might make it more difficult to migrate away from Squarespace later. Having it on a third-party registrar allows you to manage it from a central location without worrying about transferring it again later but requires keeping track of another account. It's kind of a wash in terms of pros and cons, so use whichever one works best for you.

If you used the default Wix domain prior to this, well, I don't imagine you have a ton of SEO value to transfer in the first place. However, you'll need to keep your Wix site alive and redirect it to your Squarespace site for a few months until you're sure that your SEO and your audience have transferred over. Ideally, though, you'll have been using a custom domain, so this won't be an issue.

Step 9: Shut Down Old Site

Once you're sure your new site is up and running and that visiting your domain lands on the Squarespace site, you're free to take down your Wix site. Make sure, one final time, that there's nothing hosted on it that you want to save and haven't already ported. Once you've verified that, it is safe to cancel your old Wix account.

Cancelling Wix is pretty easy, and they have a guide here on how to do it.

And, that's it! You have your site set up on Squarespace, you have all of your content (or at least whatever you wanted to save) ported over, you transferred your domain; all that's left is to keep running your site.

Squarespace gives you all kinds of excellent options to explore. Ideally, you will be able to grow smoothly from this point on.

If you have any questions about Squarespace or want to browse the templates and plugins I have to offer, check out the rest of this site. As a soon-to-be happy Squarespace user, you'll want to read some of the other topics I've covered, such as our tutorial for beginners and our guide on Squarespace SEO. My blog is designed to be a great resource on all things Squarespace, so if you have a question I haven't covered, please let me know!