Meriden

Meriden is one of Squarespace's own free 7.1 templates, built on Fluid Engine and styled as the website of a life coach. The demo site is called Meriden Life Coaching: a warm orange and neutral palette, big serif headlines and a confident first-person tone. The pages in the demo nav are Home, Courses, Work with Me, Podcast and About, plus a Free Consultation button in the header. The home page sets out the coaching method in three steps (Focus, Reflect, Refine), promotes an upcoming virtual course and ends with a newsletter sign-up. The header also carries a customer login and a cart, so Courses is set up to sell rather than just list.

Who it suits

Life coaches first, then relationship, career and mindset coaches, and anyone who sells a mix of one-to-one sessions, courses and a podcast. If your business runs on a free discovery call and an email list, the demo already has that funnel in place. I would not pick it for a fitness studio, whatever older listings said.

One honest caveat

Meriden is a starting layout, not a finished site. Every image and line of copy is a placeholder, there is no custom code, and the Courses and Podcast pages only do their job once you have set up Squarespace Courses and connected a podcast feed. Selling courses also depends on the plan you are on, so check that before you build around that page.

Setting it up

Choose Meriden in Squarespace's template picker when you start a new site, or open the demo and start from it. Then swap the demo text and photographs, delete the sections you do not need and edit the rest with the drag and drop Fluid Engine editor; colours and type live in Site Styles. It sits in my free Squarespace templates collection, and you can compare it with paid designs in the Squarespace templates for coaches collection.