Web design timesavers – An introduction to our new series

At Pixelhaze Academy, we know better than most how web designers and small business owners can end up tearing their hair out at the little things. There’s nothing glamorous about repeating the same task over and over, only to end up knee-deep in a sea of copy-paste misery. This autumn, we’re launching a new blog series to tackle the problem head-on: real-world timesavers to speed up your Squarespace work, save your sanity, and bring back some joy to the daily grind. If you ever get that sensation of living through Groundhog Day every time you set up a new site or have simply lost track of how many times you’ve fiddled with font settings, we’re here to help.

Welcome to Web Design Timesavers. Over the coming weeks, we'll share our favourite industry hacks, lessons learnt the hard way, and the bright ideas we wish someone had told us much earlier. All with a single goal in mind: help you focus more on creative parts of your craft, and less on wrestling with repetitive Squarespace chores.

Why This Matters

Time isn’t just precious for freelancers and business owners; it’s often the only thing standing between a thriving project and the slow, silent death of enthusiasm. Every minute you spend slogging through admin or redoing things that could be automated is a minute stolen from problem solving, creative thinking, or talking to actual clients. In website design, endless repetition isn’t just boring; it sets up plenty of opportunities for mistakes. Forget to update a small styling detail on one out of twenty pages, and suddenly your client’s “About” page looks like it was thrown together by another species.

Worse still, when you’re the business owner or sole designer, these slow leaks of time add up. Hours disappear, deadlines shift, momentum is lost. Sometimes, the effect is subtle: a little fatigue, a nagging sense that you’ve been busy all day but got nothing important done. Other times, it’s a full-blown wall of frustration. If you’re spending more time copying layouts than actually designing, you’ll never hit your stride or scale your skills up to new projects.

The solution isn’t to “work harder” or “power through” (classic advice from those who haven't done this in a while). Instead, let your tools and workflow do more of the heavy lifting. Enter the Pixelhaze Timesaver Series.

Common Pitfalls

Here’s the bit no one likes to admit: even experienced Squarespace designers are guilty of needlessly duplicating effort. Maybe you’ve found yourself:

• Manually recreating similar pages for every new service or product, instead of duplicating a solid template.
• Copying pieces of custom code from one browser tab to another whenever you want to reuse a styling tweak, then hunting for the tiny typo breaking your layout.
• Spending ages trying to match colours or fonts across multiple pages, eyeballing “close enough” and inevitably ending up with half a dozen different shades of blue instead of your brand palette.
• Overlooking genuinely helpful third-party tools because “it’s just as quick to do it by hand” (spoiler: it never is).

One mistake crops up again and again: underestimating how often these little inefficiencies pop up and how much headspace they quietly drain.

Too many designers get stuck in the “I’ll just do it manually this time” rut, convincing themselves that it can’t be streamlined. Trust us, it can. We’ve seen what happens when you string together dozens of little timesavers: suddenly, you have hours banked and a workflow that just feels right.

Step-by-Step Fix

Ready to take some real weight off your workflow? Here are the first three web design timesavers from the new series that made the biggest difference to us, plus how you can use them starting today.

Step 1: How to Actually Use Page Duplication in Squarespace (Without Creating More Mess)

If you’ve ever felt a cold shiver at the thought of rebuilding another “Contact” or “Services” page, you’re not alone. Squarespace, happily, lets you duplicate pages with just a few clicks. There are traps hidden here for the unwary: duplicated pages can quickly multiply junk content or accidental “/copy” URLs hiding out on your site.

How to use duplicate properly:

1. Pick the right source page. Start by crafting a single, well-designed template page for the section you want to reuse (for example, a case study layout with all the right blocks and sections, minus the specific project info).

2. Duplicate it, don’t remix it. Use Squarespace’s “Duplicate Page” feature (in the Pages panel, hover next to your page’s name and hit the “…” menu). The new page will appear as “Your Page Name (Copy)”.

3. Rename and update URLs immediately. Before you edit anything else, rename your duplicated page and set its URL slug. If you leave it as “about-(copy)”, you’ll regret it when someone Googles your business and lands on the wrong version. Always update navigation titles too.

4. Remove or replace placeholder content. Delete any sample text, images, or demo info. It’s easy to forget dummy content on live pages.

5. Repeat as needed and make a template. Once you’ve refined your template, you can store it in a hidden section or a private folder for all future use.

For a rapid-fire visual guide, check out our YouTube tech tip: How to Duplicate a Text Page in Squarespace.

Step 2: Supercharge Your Styling with CSS Snippets and TextExpander

If you’re even half-serious about giving sites a unique feel, you’ll eventually want to fine-tune styles beyond what Squarespace’s menu options allow. Enter custom CSS, the designer’s best frenemy. Problem is, copy-pasting chunks of code from old projects (or worse, digging through old emails or Notepad files) is a recipe for headaches and silly slip-ups.

TextExpander is a tool we wish we’d picked up years sooner. Think of it as a digital cheat sheet for all your favourite code snippets, keyboard shortcodes, and plugin fragments.

How to get started:

1. Install TextExpander (or your favourite snippet manager). The principle is the same for any code snippet tool, but we’ve found TextExpander works reliably on both Mac and Windows.

2. Build your code library. Copy any tried-and-tested CSS, JavaScript, or HTML snippets you find yourself using frequently. Think “rounded buttons”, “sticky header”, “don’t-break-this-layout” CSS—anything you keep reusing.

3. Set up shortcuts that make sense. For example, “;btnround” could expand into your rounded button CSS, or “;dropnav” for a dropdown nav style.

4. Make folders for projects or site types. If you design for wildly different clients, break your snippet library down (for example, “Blog Plugins” vs “Shop Plugins”).

5. Be careful with licensing. If you want to store third-party plugin code, check (with a quick Google or developer email) that your licence covers multiple projects, especially for paid plugins.

Step 3: Tame the Styles Section with Colourzilla and Font Optimizer

All the style options in Squarespace look lovely in the demo. When you actually try to make small changes to every page, frustration can set in fast. Nothing breeds creative fatigue quite like nudging colour swatches and font weights for hours on end, only to discover that “off-black” shade lurking on the Contact page.

Using smart browser tools (like Colourzilla for pipetting colours and Squarespace Font Optimizer for font management) alongside Squarespace’s style export/import features helps you speed through styling tasks and avoid mistakes.

How to implement this timesaver:

1. Pick and store exact colours with Colourzilla. It’s a free browser extension (available for Chrome and Firefox). One click grabs any on-screen colour, ready to paste as a hex code.

2. Use Squarespace Font Optimizer for advanced typography. This handy third-party tool lets you fine-tune font weights, letter spacing and line heights. You can go further than the built-in controls.

3. Export and re-import style settings. If you have a perfect style setup, don’t repeat it by eye. Use Squarespace’s style export features to copy exact colours, fonts and spacings to other sites or templates.

4. Double-check everywhere. Open key pages before and after changes to avoid the “mystery mismatch” between your Homepage and the Blog.

5. Don’t forget browsers. Check your changes on at least two browsers. Some tweaks look different on Chrome compared to Safari.

Step 4: Plan for the Next Batch and Turn One-Offs into Repeatable Recipes

If you find yourself solving the same design challenge twice, you’re probably about to invent your own workflow hack. Don’t wait for it to become a bigger problem—begin your own recipe collection.

1. Document your best tweaks and shortcuts as you go. Whether it’s a favourite navigation layout or a button hover effect, jot down the method or save the snippet.
2. Consider sharing with your team (or future self). Even if you work solo, you’ll thank yourself later for not having to remember how you got that gallery to stretch just right.
3. Prune your library now and then. Outdated tricks or “for this site only” workarounds can clutter your templates.

What Most People Miss

Most folks, when they think about “saving time”, only look at the big stuff—avoiding unnecessary meetings, cutting out major distractions, or investing in a shinier computer. It’s rare for someone to notice that the little things, repeated twenty times a week, are the true productivity killers.

The serious gains happen when you make a habit of systematising even the small edges. Treat every task as a draft for a repeatable process. That’s where the magic (and the free time) lives. The best web designers are able to get the basics done in half the time, with half the stress.

The Bigger Picture

Take a step back, and it becomes clear why this approach pays off. Time you save now adds up in surprising ways. More efficient workflows aren’t just about launching more sites or having happier clients (though those are nice side effects). They also allow you to keep more mental energy available for creative thinking. You can then take on bigger, more ambitious projects without that creeping feeling you’re about to drown in admin.

The less you’re forced to think about “How did I do that last time?”, the more you can actually design, strategise, and grow your brand. By making small time-savers part of your routine, you build momentum into your process: smoother launches, fewer mistakes, better focus, and ultimately, more clients who think you’re some sort of magician.

Wrap-Up

If you’re still reading, you probably know the value of reclaiming wasted hours and suspect there’s a better way to build Squarespace sites. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the next few weeks, we’ll dig deeper into processes and timesavers we wish we’d known years ago, with proper how-to guides, real example walkthroughs, and honest reflections on what actually works.

Here’s a sneak peek at what’s coming next: upcoming sessions in this series will cover automating content import, setting up reusable brand sections, and revamping your asset management flow. If you have your own nagging Squarespace time-vampires, let us know!

While you’re here, pick one of these steps and try it on your current project. You’ll spot the difference before your next coffee break.

Want more helpful systems like this? Join Pixelhaze Academy for free at https://www.pixelhaze.academy/membership.