How to Add a Booking Calendar to Your Squarespace Website
Make booking your services easier for your clients
Time is a valuable commodity for service-based businesses, and effective, automated scheduling can help them save tons of hours. Whether you run a fitness studio, a consulting firm, a photography business, or any other service-oriented venture, providing a convenient booking experience for your clients is key to both their satisfaction and your success.
Squarespace offers a range of tools to streamline and optimize your business operations – including the possibility to add your own calendar so customers can schedule their meetings and appointments with ease. In this article, we’ll discuss how you can add a booking calendar on your Squarespace website and boost your scheduling.
Scheduling on Squarespace: How to add a booking calendar to your website
There are basically two options you can explore to set up a calendar and allow your customers to schedule appointments on your Squarespace website:
Using Squarespace’s scheduling service (Acuity)
Using a third-party tool and a code block
Let’s go over each of them.
Squarespace Scheduling (Acuity)
You can use appointment scheduling blocks to display calendars so visitors can book appointments without leaving your site. Bear in mind you'll need an Acuity account (Squarespace’s all-in-one schedule management system) to use this block on your Squarespace website.
If your Squarespace account is already linked to an Acuity account, follow these steps to add your calendar to your website:
Go to the Squarespace editor, click Add Block, and then Scheduling.
Click the pencil icon on the block to open the block editor.
Choose the scheduler you want to display from the drop-down menu (a general scheduler or a scheduler for a specific calendar, appointment type, or category).
Now, if you want to display a calendar from an Acuity account not linked to a Squarespace website, first, you’ll need to copy your scheduler URL on Acuity. When you have it, you can add a scheduling block to any page on Squarespace following the previous steps but choosing Custom Link from the dropdown menu instead.
All Acuity plans in Squarespace support the scheduling block. However, if you’re using an Acuity account that is not linked to a Squarespace website, the free plan doesn’t support embedded calendars. So, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to use scheduling blocks.
One of the coolest features of Acuity is that you can have more control over who can schedule with you through your website. Squarespace allows you to add a password to the page with your scheduling block so only visitors with a password can book an appointment. Alternatively, you can make your booking exclusive to site members by adding Member Areas to your site.
And in case you were wondering: Yes, you can fully customize the design of your scheduling calendar on the Acuity editor.
Third-party scheduling tools
If you're not using Acuity, you can add a calendar to your Squarespace website by either linking to an external booking page or embedding a booking widget with a code block, a type of block that allows you to add custom code to your site.
If you use different scheduling software, your first option to add your calendar to your Squarespace website involves linking to it using the following methods:
Button block. Create a button with the appropriate call to action (like ‘Book Now’ or ‘Book an Appointment’) and link to the third-party scheduling platform.
Navigation link. Add a link in your navigation menu that takes visitors to your third-party booking page.
Text link. Add a link to your third-party booking page on any page, blog post, or block content area on your website.
The second option is to embed a third-party calendar or booking widget using a code block on Squarespace. Bear in mind that this is a premium Squarespace feature and is only available in Business, Commerce, Professional, and Premium plans.
Here’s how you should go about embedding a scheduling service widget:
Copy the embed code from your third-party scheduling service (the exact process to get your embed code will depend on the service you’re using, but it’s usually relatively easy).
Head to your Squarespace site and open a page or post editor.
Add a code block and paste the embed code into the block.
Save, and you’re done!
Some of the third-party scheduling services you can use include Calendly, Oncehub, YCBM, and Chilli Piper, but there are many others boasting different features.
There you have it! Whether you’re using Acuity or a third-party provider, adding a calendar to your Squarespace account is easier than it sounds. This simple little hack can help your visitors book appointments with just a couple of clicks, streamlining the process and boosting your service-based business. So, why not give it a go?
FAQ: Scheduling on Squarespace
Before we go, let’s tackle some of the most frequently asked questions regarding scheduling on Squarespace: