How to Create a Course in Squarespace: A Step-by-Step Guide
Turning your expertise into an online course can create an entirely new way for people to learn from you, without requiring more hours in your diary every time you make a sale. Whether you are a consultant sharing a proven process, a wellness professional creating a guided programme, or a creative teaching a specialist skill, your course can turn knowledge you already have into a valuable digital product.
If you are wondering how to create a course in Squarespace, the good news is that you can build the course within the same platform as your website. Squarespace Courses lets you organise content into chapters and lessons, combine video with text, images and downloadable resources, track student progress, and sell access through pricing plans.
That integrated approach is one of the biggest reasons Squarespace can work so well for course creators. Your website, course content, payments and wider brand experience can live within one connected digital space. The challenge is making sure that space feels intentional. A successful course needs more than uploaded videos. It needs a clear curriculum, a compelling sales journey and an experience that makes students want to keep learning.
Here is how to approach it.
Why create an online course with Squarespace?
Before getting into how to create a course in Squarespace, it helps to understand what the platform actually offers.
Squarespace Courses is designed for multimedia learning. You can create sequential lessons, organise them into chapters and give students a progress tracker so they can see how far they have come. Course pages use Squarespace's editing tools, which means lessons can incorporate video, images, written content and other page elements.
For an established Squarespace business, this can make expanding into education feel much more cohesive. Rather than building your main website in one place and sending customers somewhere completely different to learn, you can create a connected journey from discovering your expertise to purchasing your course and accessing the content.
This is particularly valuable if your course forms part of a wider business model. Perhaps you want to offer an introductory course before clients invest in your premium service. Maybe you want to package your expertise into a more accessible offer. Or perhaps the course is the beginning of a larger membership or digital content library.
Squarespace supports courses alongside memberships, videos, services, and other products, giving you room to expand your digital offering as your business grows.
Step 1: Plan your course before building it
The most important part of creating an online course happens before you start designing anything.
Begin with the transformation. What should somebody know, understand or be able to do after completing your course? A strong answer gives you a filter for deciding what belongs in the curriculum and what can be removed.
From there, break the transformation into stages. These stages can become your chapters, with individual lessons covering the smaller concepts or actions required within each stage.
For example, a brand strategy course might move through foundations, audience, positioning, messaging and implementation. Each chapter has a clear purpose, while every lesson moves the student towards the overall outcome.
Try to resist the temptation to include everything you know. More content does not automatically create more value. A thoughtful learning journey that helps somebody move confidently from one step to another is often far more useful than an enormous library of information.
Step 2: Create your Squarespace course page
Once you have mapped the curriculum, you can start building.
Squarespace's current course functionality is available on version 7.1. To add a course, open your Pages panel, select the option to add a new page and navigate to Content & Memberships, followed by Course. You can then select a layout and give your course page a title.
Your course has two central parts: the course overview page and the individual lesson pages.
Think of the overview as the student's home base. It can introduce the course, show its chapters and lessons and display their progress. The lesson pages contain the actual learning material. Students can work through lessons and use the Complete and Continue functionality to move through the curriculum while updating their progress.
This structure is simple, which is a strength. Students should spend their energy learning rather than trying to work out where everything is.
Step 3: Organise your chapters and lessons
When learning how to create a course in Squarespace, it is easy to focus heavily on design. Structure deserves just as much attention.
Squarespace lets you organise lessons into chapters, making longer programmes easier to navigate. Individual lessons can have their own titles, descriptions, URLs and thumbnails. You can also publish lessons immediately, schedule them or leave them as drafts while you continue developing the programme.
Use chapters to give students a sense of momentum. Instead of presenting twenty unrelated videos, create a visible journey where each group of lessons has a purpose.
A simple structure could look like this:
Chapter 1: Foundations, including three short introductory lessons.
Chapter 2: Strategy, where students complete the core learning.
Chapter 3: Implementation, turning the ideas into practical action.
Chapter 4: Next Steps, helping students maintain their progress after finishing.
You do not need this exact structure. The principle is to make the next step obvious. Students should always understand where they are, why a lesson matters and what they should do next.
Step 4: Build engaging course content
Your course does not need to consist entirely of long videos. In fact, varying the learning experience can make complex information easier to absorb.
Squarespace lesson pages can combine video with page sections and content blocks. Squarespace recommends options such as written lesson overviews, galleries, accordions and other visual elements to organise supporting information. If you use video, you can also add timestamps to help students find particular topics.
Think about what format serves each lesson best.
You might use video when demonstration or personality matters, written content when students need something easy to reference, and downloadable workbooks when you want them to apply what they have learned. A short summary at the end of each lesson can reinforce the key idea and give students one clear action before they continue.
Squarespace currently allows videos to be uploaded directly or added through supported external links such as Vimeo or YouTube. Directly uploaded lesson videos can be up to three hours long, subject to storage availability. Squarespace sites include a limited amount of video storage, with additional storage available through Digital Products plans.
Step 5: Make the course feel like part of your brand
Learning how to create a course in Squarespace is partly a technical exercise, but the experience should never feel purely technical.
Your course is another interaction somebody has with your brand. The visual language, tone of voice and overall experience should feel connected to the website that convinced them to buy it.
Keep typography, colours, imagery and graphics consistent. Give lesson thumbnails a recognisable style. Write introductions and instructions in your established brand voice. Most importantly, make the interface easy to navigate.
This is where thoughtful website design becomes commercially valuable. Good design is not simply about making a course look polished. It reduces friction, creates confidence and makes it easier for people to engage with your content.
If you are still developing the wider website around your course, our guide towhat Squarespace is and how its features work offers a useful introduction to the platform.
Step 6: Decide how people will access your course
Once the learning experience is ready, you need to decide how you want to sell it.
Squarespace uses pricing plans to control access to course content. Depending on your offer, you can create free access, charge a fixed amount or use a subscription model. You can also choose whether the whole course sits behind a paywall or whether the overview remains public while lesson content is protected. Individual lessons can also be made available as public previews when appropriate.
This gives you useful flexibility when designing your sales strategy.
A free mini course could help grow your mailing list. A fixed payment might make sense for a focused standalone programme. A subscription could suit a growing library where students receive ongoing content.
To accept payments through pricing plans, you will also need to connect a supported payment processor, such as Squarespace Payments, Stripe or PayPal, and make sure your website billing setup supports the Digital Products functionality you need.
Step 7: Create a course sales page that earns the click
A brilliant course still needs a reason for somebody to buy it.
Your sales page should focus less on how many videos are included and more on what changes for the student when they complete the programme. Start with the problem or ambition that brought them to your website. Explain the outcome of the course, who it is designed for and what the learning journey involves.
Then invest feel tangible by showing what is included.
Consider including:
A clear course promise and description of the intended outcome.
An overview of chapters and lessons.
Information about the course format and access.
Your expertise and reasons students can trust your approach.
Testimonials or results when available.
FAQs that remove common uncertainties.
A clear call to action and pricing information.
Squarespace pricing plan blocks can be added to pages to promote gated content and allow visitors to sign up, making it possible to build the purchasing journey into the wider sales page.
Step 8: Test the complete student journey
Before announcing your course, experience it like a new student.
Check your course on desktop and mobile. Read every lesson. Watch the videos. Open every download. Test your navigation and calls to action. Review the purchase and access journey so you understand exactly what a customer experiences from the moment they decide to enrol.
This final review is also a good opportunity to simplify. Remove unnecessary steps, shorten overly complicated instructions and make sure important information is easy to find.
Your course may contain fantastic expertise, yet students experience that expertise through the platform around it. A smooth, intuitive journey helps the content itself shine.
Step 9: Launch, learn and keep improving
Publishing your course is the beginning rather than the final destination.
Once students start enrolling, pay attention to how they use the programme. Which questions keep appearing? Where do people need more explanation? Are there lessons that could benefit from a worksheet, example or shorter introduction?
Squarespace provides tools around course management, marketing and analytics, so you can continue learning from your audience rather than treating the first version as permanent.
You can also continue growing the ecosystem around your course. Educational blog content can attract people searching for the problems your programme solves, while SEO can help build visibility over time. Email content can nurture people who are interested but not yet ready to purchase.
The goal is to create a connected journey where useful free content introduces your expertise, your website builds trust, and your course gives people a clear next step.
Want support creating your Squarespace course?
Knowing how to create a course in Squarespace gives you the foundations. Turning that course into a polished, strategically designed part of your business requires another layer of thinking around branding, content, user experience and the sales journey.
At Visuable, we create Squarespace websites and web integrations that bring those pieces together. Our online course services can support everything from setting up a simple course and payment gate to developing a complete branded course experience with a sales page, membership dashboard, content upload and training.
We work with Squarespace as well as platforms such as Thinkific, MemberSpace, Mighty Networks and Vimeo OTT, which means the right solution can be shaped around what you actually need rather than forcing your business into one approach.
The best course platform is ultimately the one that supports your content, your audience and your growth plans. When Squarespace is the right fit, it can give you a beautifully connected place to share your expertise, sell your knowledge and create a learning experience that feels completely at home within your brand.
Ready to bring your online course to life?
You have the expertise. Now you need a course experience that makes it easy for people to discover, buy and learn from it.
At Visuable, we can help you create a beautifully branded online course that connects seamlessly with your Squarespace website. From your sales page and payment setup to your course structure, content upload and member experience, we’ll take care of the technical details so you can focus on creating content your audience will love.
FAQs
-
Yes. Squarespace Courses allows you to create an online course using chapters and lessons, with support for multimedia content and student progress tracking. You can then use pricing plans to control free or paid access.
-
To create a course in Squarespace 7.1, open the Pages panel, add a new page, select Content & Memberships and choose Course. Select your preferred layout, create the course overview and then add lessons and optional chapters to organise the curriculum.
-
Yes. Squarespace lets you connect your course to a pricing plan and offer access through a fixed payment, subscription or free sign up, depending on your chosen setup.
-
Yes. Course lessons can include uploaded video or supported externally hosted videos, including Vimeo and YouTube links. You can also combine videos with written content, images and other page sections.
-
Yes. You can create free pricing plans, and Squarespace also allows individual lessons to be designated as public previews when the course setup supports this. This can be useful for giving potential students a taste of your teaching before they purchase.
-
Squarespace can be a strong option for businesses that want their website, brand and course experience in one ecosystem. It supports multimedia lessons, chapters, progress tracking, payments and other digital products. For businesses that need more specialised learning or community functionality, platforms such as Thinkific or Mighty Networks may also be worth considering. Visuable works across these course and membership platforms and can recommend an approach based on the project's requirements.
Related Blogs
