Squarespace AI: Where it helps and why we still need humans.
If you're exploring Squarespace AI, you probably like the idea of getting a website off your to-do list a little faster. Fair enough. There is something exciting about typing a question into a box and getting help with a problem that would otherwise eat up your afternoon.
There is also something a little depressing about opening five business websites and feeling like you've just visited the same website five times.
Same vague headline. Same suspiciously cheerful people. Same invitation to “unlock your potential.”
Potential for what? I came here to find an electrician.
As a Squarespace designer, I have mixed feelings about AI. I appreciate what it can help us do. I also care deeply about the creativity, personality, and craft that go into making a website feel like it belongs to a particular business.
A website is a piece of visual communication. Its photography, typography, layout, pacing, and words all influence how someone feels about the business behind it. Those choices deserve care.
So if you're wondering how to use AI with Squarespace, there are useful places to start. There are also parts of the process I would be very reluctant to hand over.
What does “Squarespace AI” actually mean?
There are a few different things people might mean.
Squarespace's built-in Blueprint AI helps generate a starting point for a website. You can then customize it within Squarespace. Tools like ChatGPT and Claude can separately help with research, planning, writing, and code. Image tools offer another set of possibilities.
I rarely use Blueprint AI. In my experience, the starting designs usually need substantial work to reach the level of individuality and polish I want for a client.
But you can use AI to help with specific tasks while keeping the creative direction and design firmly in human hands.
Where AI can be useful when building a Squarespace website
Researching your competitors
AI can help compare competitor websites, summarize their services, and identify questions their content does or doesn't answer.
That can be useful before deciding what your own website needs to communicate. If every competitor makes the same broad promises, you have an opportunity to be more specific.
Provide actual websites or page content, ask for sources, and check the results. AI can sound remarkably confident about a page it hasn't properly read.
And remember that a competitor's polished website doesn't tell you how many customers it brings in. Research gives you things to consider, rather than a recipe to copy.
Finding design inspiration
AI can help you find real websites worth looking at and organize references around a particular industry, mood, or approach.
Perhaps you're looking for an accounting website that feels approachable, or a construction company that presents its projects beautifully without making visitors sit through a cinematic introduction.
Finding references can save time. Deciding what makes them good, what fits your business, and how to create something original from that starting point is where the design work begins.
A folder full of lovely websites is a useful resource. It still needs someone with a point of view.
Brainstorming and organizing content
A blank page can be surprisingly intimidating when you're trying to explain a business you've been running for 15 years.
AI can help organize your notes, suggest a page structure, or explore different ways to explain a service. It works better when you supply real substance: customer questions, details about your process, examples of your work, and the things that make your business different.
For example:
Using these notes, suggest an outline for our services page. Help a first-time customer understand what we offer, who it's for, and what happens next. Don't invent details. List any questions we still need to answer.
That's a useful task with clear boundaries.
Asking for “compelling website copy” with no further direction tends to produce a passionate team delivering exceptional solutions. Apparently, the internet has quite a few of those.
Supporting SEO and blogging
AI can help draft SEO titles and meta descriptions using the actual content of your pages. Give it the relevant service, location, business name, and length requirements, then review its suggestions for accuracy and clarity.
🚩🚩🚩 Please note that tools like ChatGPT often hallucinate about SEO though, telling you search volumes and keywords that are not based in reality. You want to come to these tools with your well defined keywords. Otherwise it will optimize you for keywords no one is searching for.
Blogging is another useful application, provided you bring something worth saying.
Customer questions, lessons from a project, common mistakes, and your own professional opinions make good starting points. AI can help turn that material into an outline or draft, identify gaps, and tidy up a paragraph that's wandered off somewhere.
What it can't supply on your behalf is your firsthand experience. It can invent a convincing anecdote, which is precisely why you shouldn't ask it to.
A specific article explaining something your customers struggle with is a better editorial goal than publishing another 1,000 words because the calendar says it's Tuesday.
And yes, AI helped organize and draft this article. The opinions, artistic reservations, and complaints about generic AI content came from me. We are all sitting with the irony.
Touching up real photographs
AI image tools can help remove a distracting object, extend a background for a wider crop, or make a real photograph more usable.
That can be helpful when you already have a good image of your team, your space, or your work, but it needs a little adjustment to fit the page.
Keep the result honest. At this point we can all tell when an image is an “AI Image.” Your team should still look like your team, and a finished project should still show what you actually delivered. Check the details before publishing. AI occasionally develops ambitious ideas about how hands work.
Adding a specific piece of custom functionality
Sometimes a website needs functionality that Squarespace doesn't provide natively. AI can help develop code for a clearly defined need.
This is an area to approach selectively. Before adding anything, check whether Squarespace already has a suitable feature.
Extra code can make a site harder to edit and maintain, particularly when it depends on the platform's underlying structure. It needs testing on different screens, and someone needs to understand how it works. Squarespace also treats custom code as an advanced modification outside its normal support scope.
The ability to generate a feature quickly doesn't tell you whether it belongs on the website.
What I wouldn't hand over to AI
AI can generate options for almost everything above. That can make it tempting to keep asking until you've generated an entire website.
But there are parts of a project where I want much more than a plausible answer:
Getting to know the business. Listening to an owner, asking follow-up questions, and noticing when the most interesting thing they've said isn't anywhere in their existing marketing.
Developing an original visual direction. Making deliberate choices about typography, color, imagery, and composition that give this business its own presence.
Crafting your message. We were certified with Storybrand in 2020 and that messaging framework still guides how we help our clients communicate. Don’t leave your message up to the machines but instill it with the inspiration of the hero’s journey, where your client is the real hero and you are the guide the helps them succeed.
Capturing real photography + videos. There is nothing better in our AI world than being as real as possible. Get real photography of your team, business and products.
Do your own keyword research. Don’t leave this up to the robots… somehow they still don’t really get it.
Choosing what matters most. Deciding what belongs at the top of a page, what needs more explanation, and what can be removed.
Creating authentic material. The real project, the thoughtful photograph, the customer story, and the insight earned through years of doing the work.
Taking responsibility for the result. Checking that the website is accurate, usable, coherent, and ready to represent the business.
These are central parts of the job. They shape the website from the beginning.
Your website deserves a point of view
The part of web design I care about most is making something that feels considered and specific. A site where the words, images, and design work together, and where a visitor can quickly understand why this business might be right for them.
Useful tools can support that work. They don't decide what deserves to be made.
If you're building your own Squarespace website, try AI on a small, well-defined task. Bring your knowledge, question the output, and give yourself permission to reject something even when it's polished. “This doesn't feel like us” is a perfectly good reason.
At Known Creative, we bring strategy, messaging, and creative direction together through custom Squarespace website design.
If your current site could belong to just about anyone in your industry, let's talk. There's probably a much more interesting business underneath it.
