Squarespace Ecommerce: Set Up Your Store in 6 Easy Steps

With the right tools and resources in hand, you can be your own boss. And now is a great time to get started with Squarespace Ecommerce because of all the discounts available on their platform. Utilize these tips to set up your personal e-shop without any headaches or hassles!

The “squarespace ecommerce templates” is a guide that teaches you how to set up your store in six easy steps. The article also includes links to the different types of templates.

Squarespace is the greatest website builder for small companies and one of our most popular ecommerce systems. Its breadth of powerful but beginner-friendly features, including ecommerce, is one of the reasons it is so popular. Create an account, add items, set up payment and shipping options, design your site, and then upgrade to launch your Squarespace ecommerce shop.

With Squarespace’s 14-day free trial, you can try out the most of its commerce capabilities before committing to a subscription.

Squarespace is a website created by Squarespace.

Learn how to create an online shop with Squarespace by following our instructions.

For this demonstration, we established Everyday Knits, an online crochet supply business.

Sign up for a Squarespace account first.

Signing up for a Squarespace account is the first step in creating your ecommerce shop. We encourage that you start a trial if you haven’t already.

Go to Squarespace and select “Get Started” to get started. Squarespace, unlike other website builders, allows you to choose a template before registering an account. You’ll find a selection checklist below to help you narrow down your options. To see all of the available templates, go to “Online Store” under “Type.” You may preview them by clicking “Preview.”

You’ll be led to a setup wizard after you’ve chosen a template. Create a Google, Apple, Facebook, or other email address for your account. Most of the questions, such as where you’ve been selling, what you intend to sell, and how many things you want to sell, may be skipped.

The last slide in the creation process lays out the next stages in the process of creating your online shop.

Step 2: Start Adding Products

The next step is to add things to sell. You may do so by going to the final step of the creation process and clicking “Add items for sale.” If you need more time to arrange your items, go to the main menu and click on “Commerce,” which is a component inside the dashboard.

You’ll find a simple checklist to help you get started when you first join Commerce.

Examine your Squarespace Commerce dashboard for a moment. On the left, you’ll find the navigation menu, and in the middle, you’ll find the procedures for creating an online shop (if this is your first time).

Indicate whether you’re adding a physical, digital, service, or gift card product, as well as where you want it to be presented, when adding items. This is significant since it will have an impact on the product description information you’ll need to include on the product page.

To assist your consumers navigate your business, include the name of your product, a compelling product description, high-quality product photos, categories, and tags. You may also adjust pricing, put things on sale, and add quantities and variants from this page.

The parts below are found on the product page. You may be as specific as you like with Product Specifications, but keep in mind that you want buyers to have all the information they need to make an informed purchase.

Product Specifications

Add a product name, description, and any other information that is required. Additional blocks for entering a lengthier description, movies, or other information are available.

Images

Before you start adding product photographs, bear in mind that Squarespace has a product structure that it adheres to throughout all of its sites, which is arranged in the following ways:

• Pages for the store (landing pages for multiple products)
• Details pages (Product Specifications)

When adding or modifying a product, you may include the following images:

• Image in the header
• The main picture
• Images that are different
• Images for social media posting that aren’t as popular as the ones above

Your product’s The main picture, by default, becomes the Image in the header. To set a different one, click on Image in the header in the product page editor and upload a new one. Click Save.

Inventory

You may specify normal and on-sale pricing, quantity, SKUs, and product choices in this area. A product’s SKU is generated automatically by Squarespace, but you may provide your own.

Add variations if you offer several versions of the same product. Size, color, material, and even custom fields like gift wrapping may all be included.

Up to six choices and 250 permutations are available for Squarespace items. The maximum length of a variant is 100 characters.

In the product editor, click “Manage choices” to update product options or add new versions to an option. Once the variations have been saved, click “Edit All” to give an image, SKU, stock, and regular or on-sale pricing to each version individually.

Organization

Organize your items into categories and tags. This makes it easier for shoppers to locate things. To add a new category and tags, click “Add” (words or brief phrases).

Consider what keywords customers often use while looking for items when creating tags.

For adding categories and tags, here are some formatting tips:

• Tags are limited to 80 characters, whereas categories are limited to 25 characters.
• Case matters when it comes to tags and categories. Entering Shirts, Shirts, and SHIRTS, for example, produces three tags or categories.
• Tags and categories are listed alphabetically.

Visibility

Squarespace allows you to schedule the creation of items, keep them concealed, or make them public immediately. You may also enable options for adding similar items and Etsy product reviews on product pages under this area, as well as show products on Summary Blocks on your site pages (such as a highlighted product).

Summary Blocks are content blocks that you may place in different areas of your web pages. We added a highlighted product to our sample shop in this example.

On product pages, you may view related goods. (Image courtesy of Squarespace)

Marketing

In the marketing area, you may set up permalinks, SEO product names, and descriptions. When your items are posted on social media, you can also change the picture and description (excerpt) that customers view.

Configure your SEO to make it simpler for your items to appear in search engines. Product names are limited to 100 characters, while descriptions are limited to 400 characters.

For social media posts, you may use any product picture and excerpt.

Checkout

You may change the wording for checkout buttons, gather customer information through custom forms when consumers check out, and charge customers on a recurrent basis by setting up a subscription via the checkout feature.

Once you have filled in the Product Specifications, don’t forget to save your work! Scroll to the top of your product editor and click on “Save” on the top right. You can choose to make your product visible immediately (publish), schedule it to go live on a certain date and time (schedule), or keep it hidden (save).

If you’re adding a product that isn’t available for purchase yet, click “Save” (not “Save & Publish”) to keep the product hidden until you’re ready to list it.

Step 3: Configure Payment Options

Following the addition of items, you must set up payment options in order to accept payments. Connect to any of Squarespace’s payment processors and configure your shop currencies. To do so, go to the Setup section of your Commerce dashboards’ navigation sidebar and choose “Payments.”

Squarespace works with Square for in-person purchases and accepts Stripe, PayPal, and Apple Pay for online transactions (exclusive to the US). Customers must utilize an acceptable device that is signed up with their account, even if Apple Pay is available.

Afterpay and Clearpay are available as integrations if you want to provide your consumers purchase now, pay later (BNPL) services.

Payment processors set up in Commerce are distinct from those set up in other Squarespace products like Squarespace Scheduling.

Would you want to learn more about Squarespace’s payment processors?

Create a tax system

Depending on your business’ location, you may be required to Create a tax system for your online store given state requirements. You need to charge sales tax in your state and where your customers are located. To make it simple, you can set up tax-inclusive pricing so the sales tax is included in the product price.

Configure Fulfillment Options in Step 4

It’s important to set up how you’ll fulfill orders once your online store can take payments. This is the spot to do it if you want to provide shipping from your shop or a pick-up option from your physical location. From the navigation sidebar of your Commerce dashboards, choose “Shipping” under Setup.

Shipping

Flat-rate shipping, weight-based shipping, carrier calculation (FedEx, UPS, and USPS), and free shipping are all options.

Squarespace provides third-party shipping plugins like ShipBob and ShipStation if you wish to utilize a different shipping company or need to ship worldwide.

Pick-up

You may also provide a local pick-up option for customers who want to pick up their products instead of waiting for them to be sent.

Set the name, address, and any specific instructions for your shop to enable this option.

Step 5: Create Your Website

After you’ve finished with the commerce aspect of your online business, you’ll move on to the more interesting part: website design. Squarespace’s main selling point is its website builder, which includes attractive themes, an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, and adjustable CSS.

Because you selected a website template when you joined up for a trial, all you have to do now is personalize it to match your brand. If you want to switch to a different template, just repeat step 1 while signed in, and the new template will appear on your dashboard. Go to your Squarespace dashboard to view all of the templates you’ve selected.

You may use one account to manage several websites. It’s worth noting that each time you choose a template, your site will be treated as a fresh start.

When we were building up our sample shop, we discovered that switching layouts required us to re-create the Commerce section of the website. This may be really aggravating. However, since Squarespace designs are very flexible, altering the appearance of your business may not even need switching templates (you can add multiple sections and elements to your pages in a variety of layouts). In fact, of all the top ecommerce systems we’ve researched, Squarespace has the greatest customizing options.

Configure the Site Styles

Let’s begin by putting up site designs for your website. Click “Design” and then “Site Styles” from your main navigation menu.

Assign the following styles:

• Fonts are a typeface that is used to (include text styles for headings, paragraphs, buttons, and more)
• Various hues (edit the palette to fit your brand colors)
• Animations (fade, scale, slide, clip, or none at all) (animate site components as they appear on the page)
• Buttons are a kind of button that is used (configure styles and shape)
• Photographs (adjust content position, alignment, and more)

You may also change the following settings:

• Icon of a browser (favicon)
• The screen is locked (the page visitors see when your site or individual pages are password protected)
• 404 page (error message “Not Found” due to broken links or an invalid URL)
• Sharing on social media (Squarespace will use this picture to represent content when your pages are shared on social media.)

Make changes to your website template

The next step is to modify your template once you’ve established your site’s global styles. When you’re ready to make changes to your site, go to the top of the page and select “Edit.”

The first step is to name your website—if you haven’t done so already—and upload a logo. If you skipped inputting your website’s name before entering the editor, you can hover over the header and click “Edit Site Header” to open the menu. Click on the first option, which is “Site Title & Logo,” and change the title to your business name.

Use your company name or your logo as the headline of your website.

If you have one, provide a primary logo as well as a mobile logo. Your primary logo will be used on mobile devices if you don’t. The site title will be replaced on all pages if you submit a logo. However, don’t forget to name your website, since it will be utilized for SEO and as the headline of your page.

If you don’t already have a logo for your company, you may hire a graphic designer to create one for you. Expert graphic designers may be found on sites like Fiverr for a reasonable price. You may also build your own logo with free logo makers like Canva and Squarespace’s own.

Insert headlines, lists, images, quotes, text, video, and a gallery to create sections on your page. Appointments, contact forms, contributions, bulletins, items, and bookings are all included in the special area. Simply click “Add Section” and choose from the list of choices that appears in the pop-up box.

To add parts to your web page, mouse over the area you want to add a section to and click “Edit” at the top of the screen. An “Add Section” button will appear; click it to choose from the available layout parts.

Edit Shop & Product Pages

You may alter your shop’s product and checkout pages once you’ve modified your template.

To update your store, go to the template’s Shop menu and choose “Edit.” You may create sections, select goods to be shown, and more in the same way you update the template.

Treat your Shop Page as if it were a template for your website. The only change is that product categories and highlighted goods are shown by default on the Shop Page.

To modify product pages, go to the Shop page and click on any product. On the top menu, choose “Edit,” then “Edit Design.” Once you’ve hovered over the page, click the pencil icon. You have complete control over the layout of your product page.

Check to see whether the format you’ve selected for product pages works effectively on mobile.

To retain your changes, be sure to click “Save.”

Add Pages & Set Up Navigation

Click “Pages” from the main menu (the first item on the menu to the left of the screen). The pages and navigation from your selected template may be found here. You may add additional by clicking the “+” symbol next to “Main Navigation” and choosing from a blank page (which you can customize) or prepared page layouts. Select the desired format and give the page a name.

By hovering over a page’s name and clicking the trash symbol that appears to the left, you may erase it. By modifying the page title and selecting the gear button next to each page name, you may rename them.

You may also alter the page’s navigation title (the name that shows in the navigation bar) and URL slug underneath the page title. This has already been set to the page’s name, so if you’re not sure what you’re doing, leave these two fields blank.

Finally, drag the page titles up and down on the page menu to reorganize the pages. Note that your navigation bar will be rearranged automatically as a result of this.

Step 6: Make Your Online Store Public

You’ll need to subscribe to a premium plan to publish your website to the public and modify your domain name from generatedID.squarespace.com to your real brand name without a subdomain.

To access your username, go to the main menu and click it in the lower left corner. You’ll be sent to your Account Dashboard, where you’ll see a list of all the Squarespace sites you’ve established. Proceed to Billing by clicking the ellipsis under the site you wish to upgrade. You may upgrade your free plan to a premium one from here.

To sell on Squarespace, you’ll need to upgrade to a Business ($23 per month), Basic Commerce ($27 per month), or Advanced Commerce ($43 per month) plan. Personal ($14 per month) is the cheapest tier, however it does not support ecommerce. All of the price options mentioned are for a year. To discover more about the features available in each plan, see our Squarespace review.

Frequently Asked Questions about Squarespace Ecommerce (FAQ)

Squarespace vs. Shopify: which is better?

Shopify is the clear winner when it comes to heavy ecommerce. Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder with a solid ecommerce capability, whereas Shopify is a market leader in ecommerce systems. Shopify’s plans, on the other hand, are expensive, and the platform’s design options are restricted. Squarespace is a great alternative for casual sellers or small companies wishing to add a shop to their website.

Is Squarespace a suitable platform for creating websites?

Yes, it is correct. Squarespace not only provides a large number of current templates, but it also has strong design features and an easy-to-use interface that allows you to quickly construct a website. It has a comprehensive set of features at an inexpensive price, including powerful ecommerce and SEO, making it one of the finest website builders available.

Conclusion

Squarespace is a fantastic website builder with sophisticated ecommerce capabilities. While there are other ecommerce website builders available, Squarespace is a good option for small companies wishing to branch out into online sales. It includes a wide number of attractive templates, an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, and reasonable rates.

You Might Also Enjoy…

The “squarespace shopify” is a tool that allows you to set up your store in 6 easy steps. The tool is designed for people who are not tech savvy, and want to avoid the difficult process of setting up their own ecommerce website.

Related Tags

• squarespace ecommerce integrations
• squarespace ecommerce examples
• squarespace ecommerce tutorial
• squarespace ecommerce reviews
• squarespace online store