Is it possible, and sensible, to start an online store on Squarespace? What are the limitations and possibilities of a Squarespace online store? I have built and run several online stores on both Shopify and Squarespace, and although I definitely recommend Shopify for online stores, in some situations a Squarespace store is the more sensible solution. In this post I go through starting an online store with Squarespace.
Squarespace's ease of use and reasonable prices often make it a sensible choice for new or small online stores. If you already have a website on Squarespace (e.g. a blog or a homepage for your services) and would just like to add one, or a few, products for sale, Squarespace is a natural choice. In this post we look at the following:
- Limitations of a Squarespace online store
- The price of a Squarespace online store
- The 7 steps of setting up a Squarespace online store
I also recommend reading my in-depth article on starting an online store here. In it I go through the different stages of starting an online store and what to take into account, comprehensively and in general terms. 💪 This post covers only online stores on Squarespace.
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Know the limitations of a Squarespace online store
Today you can set up an online store and website on many different hosted platforms. My two absolute favorites are Shopify and Squarespace, which are also mostly what I write about here on the blog. As a rule I always recommend Shopify for ecommerce projects, because it is a dedicated ecommerce platform. But you can also run an online store on Squarespace, and in certain situations it may even be a more sensible option than Shopify.
Squarespace's strength is creating visually stylish websites without coding or much technical skill. It is a great choice if you need a reliable website and want to focus on building your brand and marketing your services / products instead of maintaining a website.
Even so, Squarespace is not for everyone. The limitations of a Squarespace online store, especially for businesses selling within Finland, are the following:
- The default payment methods are limited to PayPal and Stripe (card payments). You can get around this with the Shopify Buy Button feature, which gives you the Shopify checkout on Squarespace (although this adds extra costs). In Finland, however, people are used to paying with online banks, and adding these directly to Squarespace is not possible.
- The Squarespace checkout page cannot be customized, so your checkout will be the standard theme. Fortunately it can now be translated into Finnish (although you cannot edit the translations to your liking).
- Squarespace does not support multiple currencies, so you can choose only one for your store (which is of course not a problem when selling within Finland).
- Third-party apps are very limited. So, for example, Posti or Matkahuolto shipping methods cannot be integrated directly into the Squarespace checkout. For a small operation this is probably not a problem, but as order volumes grow, writing address labels by hand becomes a time-consuming process.
These are limitations, but for a small-scale operation they will certainly not stop you. I have run several Squarespace online stores on the side myself, and they have worked brilliantly, especially for digitally downloadable products.
The price of a Squarespace online store
I have written an in-depth article on Squarespace pricing (read it here). So here we only go through the plans that include ecommerce features, without going deeper into pricing.
Squarespace offers ecommerce features on three plans: Business, Basic Commerce and Advanced Commerce. Each plan has its own pros and cons:
Business plan (from €17/month)
The Squarespace Business plan costs from 17 euros per month if you pay for the whole year at once, or 24 euros per month if you pay monthly. On the Business plan you also pay a really steep commission of up to 3% per order. That is why I do not recommend the Business plan for an online store at all. The next two plans, however, make sense.
Basic Commerce plan (from €24/month)
The Squarespace Basic Commerce plan costs 24 euros per month if you pay for the whole year at once, or 28 euros per month if you pay monthly. On Basic Commerce you pay no commission at all on orders to Squarespace (note that payment processors may charge their own commission per transaction), which often makes this plan much more profitable. Basic Commerce also gives you sensible ecommerce features, such as customer accounts and ecommerce analytics.
Advanced Commerce plan (from €36/month)
The Squarespace Advanced Commerce plan costs 36 euros per month if you pay for the whole year at once, or 42 euros per month if you pay monthly. Advanced Commerce also has no commission on sales (Squarespace commission), and compared to Basic Commerce you get a few more important features, such as abandoned cart reminders, versatile discount code conditions and selling subscriptions (yes, Squarespace has a built-in subscriptions feature!)
The 7 steps of setting up a Squarespace online store
Now that you know the limitations of a Squarespace online store and the basics of its pricing, let's go through in more detail how to add an online store to a Squarespace site. I have listed 7 steps to consider when setting up an online store on Squarespace.
#1 Add a Store page to your Squarespace site
From the Squarespace home menu, go to Pages. Here you create a new Store page, where all your products are placed and where you manage them. Once you have created the Store page, you can start customizing its look and style before adding products. A few notes about the Store page:
- The layout and styling options for the Store page and product pages are limited compared to regular pages. This is because the structure of an online store is fairly standardized across all online stores, and Squarespace aims to apply best practices and guidelines for websites and stores.
- If you have several Store pages on Squarespace, changes made on one Store page may affect the others (for example, if you set the image aspect ratio to square on one Store page, the others show the same).
- Remember to get the Store page's SEO settings in order: the Page title and Meta Description. Read more about ecommerce SEO here.
- While you are in the Store page settings, also go to Advanced > Quick View and switch Quick View on. That way customers can preview a product page without leaving the category page.
#2 Add products for sale
Start adding products on the Store page by clicking the "+" button or the "Add product" button. You can choose from the following product types:
- Physical products
- Digital products
- Services
- Gift card
Once the product window is open, you can start adding the product details. You will notice there are quite a few fields to fill in when adding products, so make sure you go through each of them. Once you have one product page ready, you can duplicate it as a template to cut down the time spent adding and editing the next products (as long as they are the same product type).
#3 Connect a payment method
From the home menu, choose Commerce > Payments. Here you can connect your Squarespace site with Stripe (card payments) or PayPal. The integration is very easy and requires no technical skills. It is worth registering a Stripe or PayPal account before connecting the payment methods, though. Then you just log in through Squarespace and the payment methods are working!
Adding payment methods is fairly straightforward, apart from a few things:
- A personal PayPal account does not work, so you need a PayPal Business account.
- Squarespace does not natively support multiple currencies.
- If you want to add other payment methods (e.g. online bank payments), you can add an online store to Squarespace with Shopify's Buy Button feature.
#4 Set your shipping costs
If you sell services or digital products, you can move on to the next step. You can set rules and conditions for shipping methods by choosing Commerce > Shipping > Add Shipping options from the home page. Squarespace has 4 shipping options available:
- Flat Rate: A fixed fee per order and/or product. For example, shipping is 5 euros per order regardless of how many products are ordered, or shipping is 5 euros + 0.50 euros for each additional product after the first.
- Rate by Weight: A shipping fee based on weight. The fee is calculated from the total weight of all products. With this method, you set the weight for each product when adding it, and Squarespace calculates the order's total weight and the correct shipping cost at checkout.
- Carrier calculated: A carrier integration calculates the correct shipping cost. This would be the most accurate option, but it is only available in the United States, so businesses selling in Finland cannot use it.
- Free shipping: Free shipping on all orders or on orders that meet criteria you set. For example, free shipping on all orders over 50 euros.
#5 Set up taxes correctly
Remember to set up taxes correctly for your store. You can do this by choosing Commerce > Taxes. Go to Get Started and click the + button to start adding tax rates. For businesses selling within Finland this is a fairly clear and easy process, since you just choose "Finland" as the country and your products' VAT rate as the tax rate (the most common is 24%, but this depends on what products you sell).
You can also choose whether tax is included in product prices or added only at checkout. The most common and clearest way for the customer is to include taxes in the product price, but for B2B businesses adding taxes at checkout is also an option.
#6 Customize your store's features
In practice, after the steps above you are ready to sell products online: the checkout works and you can take orders. There are still things worth going through carefully and adjusting to suit your store, though. Here they are:
Squarespace checkout functionality
Normally a customer can add products to the cart and then keep browsing until they are ready to check out. Depending on your store and products, however, you may have different needs and wishes; here they are explained:
- Express Checkout: This skips the Add to cart step and takes the customer straight to checkout. If you sell only one product, it makes sense to enable this.
- Minimum order amount: If you want to set a minimum order amount, go to Commerce > Checkout. Find the Minimum order amount field, select the option and enter the amount you want.
Store policies
It is good to show your terms of delivery at the store's checkout. You can enable them by going to Commerce > Checkout. Scroll all the way down and choose the Checkout Page: Store Policies button. You can enter your most important policies here and link to the full policy page.
Abandoned cart recovery
This feature sends customers an automatic email reminder 24 hours after they have added products to the cart but not completed the purchase.
Newsletter subscribers
Enable this option if you want to ask customers to subscribe to your newsletter at checkout. Please note that in Finland the newsletter subscription must not be pre-selected.
Default country
If you only sell within Finland, set this to "Finland" by default. Otherwise Squarespace offers the United States as the default.
Customer notifications
An important part of the shopping experience is email notifications. You can customize Squarespace's default customer notifications by going to Commerce > Customer Notifications. At least get the following in order:
- Make sure Global Email Styles uses your brand's colors and fonts (or something very similar). You can also add a logo or the company name to the header. The content of Global Email Styles carries over to all customer messages, such as order confirmation, order shipped, abandoned cart reminder and so on.
- Under General Orders, go through every email template and change the email texts where needed. At the very least, translate them into Finnish as far as possible (note that unfortunately not every part of the emails can be translated into Finnish).
#7 Test and launch!
Once everything has been gone through, products added and payment methods set up, it is time to launch your site. Right after launch, I recommend making a test purchase and paying for it in full (you can refund it to yourself later in order management under "refund"). That way you experience the whole purchase process and can still fix any mistakes or make other changes.
Finally
I hope this article gave you a thorough look at Squarespace online stores, their possibilities, limitations and features. You can try it out and start your own Squarespace site free with a 14-day trial here!
Hi again! 👋 Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and I really hope you use them. 🖤 Clicking a link costs you nothing extra, so feel free to explore the sites and tools recommended in this post. If you end up becoming a paying customer through my link, I get a small commission.
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