Moving a practice website off Squarespace without losing your tracking

A practice website is rarely replaced because the old one is broken. It is replaced because it undersells the practice. The risk in replacing it is invisible on the day: the Google Ads campaign that brings in consultations depends on conversion tracking wired into the old site, and a new site that forgets it will look fine while the campaigns quietly stop measuring.

When we rebuilt the website for Singh Advanced Dentistry, a laser and cosmetic dentistry practice in Gardens, Cape Town, the practice's marketing partner ran Google Ads with conversion tracking deployed through Google Tag Manager. The brief, beyond the design, was blunt: switch over without the site going dark, and do not break the tracking. This is how that goes when it goes well.

Take an inventory before you design anything

Before the first design, we list what the old site is doing invisibly: the Tag Manager container, the analytics property, the Ads conversion actions and the triggers that fire them (a booking button, a form submission, a tap on the phone number, a WhatsApp click), any pixels from other platforms, and the pages the campaigns land on. The person who owns the ad account usually knows this best, so we ask for view access to the container rather than reconstructing it from guesses.

That inventory becomes a checklist for the new build. Every trigger in the container needs an equivalent element on the new site with the same identifiers, or the trigger is updated deliberately, with the ad account's owner in the loop.

Keep the conversion actions; carry the container across

Google Ads measures through the conversion actions — each has its own ID and label, and the Tag Manager container is simply how those tags are deployed on the page. So the job is not to rebuild tracking; it is to preserve the existing conversion actions and verify that their tags and triggers still fire on the new site. We install the same container on the new site rather than creating a new one, so nothing has to be re-created or re-linked, and the new site is built so the existing triggers find what they expect: the consultation button, the forms, the phone and WhatsApp links. Where the new design changes a journey, the trigger is changed in the container at the same time, and tested in preview before launch.

Plan the cutover like a cutover

The domain does not need to move registrars to move the website. In this case the domain stayed in the practice's own account and we took over DNS management and hosting. A few days before launch, the DNS time-to-live is lowered so the switch propagates in minutes rather than hours, and the certificate for the domain is issued and checked on the new hosting before any visitor is sent there. On launch day the records are pointed at the new hosting, and the old site is left running until the new one is confirmed live everywhere.

Every URL that existed on the old site and still has a counterpart on the new one gets a permanent redirect, so links in Google, in the practice's profiles and in old emails keep working. The sitemap is submitted in Search Console the same day.

The checklist

This is the list we worked through for the practice, in order.

1. Inventory: container ID, analytics property, every conversion action, every trigger and the elements it depends on, other pixels, campaign landing pages.
2. View access to the Tag Manager container and the Ads conversion list, before design starts.
3. New site built with the same element identifiers the triggers expect; any changed journey gets its trigger updated in a container workspace, not on the live version.
4. Container preview on the staging address: every trigger fires on the right element.
5. Redirect map: old URLs to new URLs, 301, tested on staging.
6. DNS time-to-live lowered several days ahead; certificate issued and verified on the new hosting.
7. Switch the records; old site left running until the new one resolves everywhere.
8. On the live domain, with the Ads account open: each conversion action fires and is attributed to the existing action, not a new one.
9. Marketing partner points the campaigns at the new landing pages.
10. Sitemap submitted; Search Console and the Ads account checked again after 48 hours.

What the practice got

A site that finally matched the practice: an editorial design built around their own photography, 21 treatments across six areas of care structured so a patient can find them, a team and results section, and a consultation call-to-action throughout. Hosting and the domain's DNS under one roof, so the next change is one conversation. And conversion tracking that kept measuring through the move.

If your practice is on Squarespace, Wix or an agency's platform and the thing holding you back is the fear of losing what works, that fear is reasonable and the fix is procedural. The case study shows the result; we are happy to walk through the checklist for your site.

Frequently asked

Do we need to move our domain to you?

No. The domain can stay registered where it is. We take over the DNS records and hosting, which is all a migration needs.

Will our Google Ads conversion tracking be affected?

Not if the existing conversion actions are preserved and their tags and triggers are verified on the new site before the campaigns are pointed at the new pages. Ads measures through the IDs and labels in those tags; the container is only how they are deployed, so the work is to keep the actions and prove they fire.

Does the site go down during the switch?

The old site keeps serving until the new one is confirmed live on the domain, the certificate is in place before the switch, and the DNS change is prepared so it propagates in minutes.