How To Set Up an Online Store With Squarespace
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In this tutorial I want to show you how you can easily use Squarespace to start an online store quickly. For the purposes of this tutorial I'm using a blank Squarespace template that only has a blank homepage and no other pages.
However; you can easily start with any other Squarespace template that catches your eye. Or, if you already have an existing Squarespace website, you can add a store to it without having to start from scratch.
One final thing that I’m going to mention is that throughout this tutorial, I’ll be using Squarespace 7.1. So with all that out of the way, let’s get started.
Follow along with the video tutorial: 👇🏻
Step 1: Create Your Shop Page
So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to add a page in the Not Linked section by clicking on the plus sign. And I'm going to go down here to Collections, and then I'm going to choose Store. Now, when I do that there are two layouts for me to choose from, so don't worry too much about which one is the one you want to choose.
Just choose the one that looks better for you, and keep in mind that you can change the layout later on. You can customize it slightly to show what it looks like; now because my internet is super slow these previews are not loading but rest assured that they do look functional.
So I'm going to click on the first one and I'm going to rename the page into Shop. And as soon as I do that Squarespace is going to pop up with the prompt to see the steps necessary to set up a store.
I'm just going to get x out of it because, well, that's what this video is for. And as you can see they have already added some physical products to the store to serve as a starting point that you can customize. However, I am going to delete those so that we can set up a physical product from scratch.
Step 2: Create A Physical Product
Click on Create Product and choose a Physical Product. Right now, Squarespace allows you to sell physical products, services, digital products, gift cards, memberships, videos or master classes, or something like that; as well as any appointments or classes that you conduct with your clients at a set and a scheduled time.
In this tutorial, I'm only going to show you how to set up a physical product and digital download, so you can see the differences between the two. And then you can play around with the rest of the options to see how you can set them up.
So we are going to start with a physical product. Squarespace is going to pop up with some suggested copy for our product, however, I'm just going to enter physical product demo in this case; and I'm going to add some pre-made dummy text so that I can show you where this product description shows up on the product page.
Step 3: Set Up Your Physical Product Options
Then, we are also going to add additional info by clicking into that editor, and then you can add any other block that Squarespace offers by clicking the plus sign. It’s similar to how adding content to a regular page works. You can add more text and format it as you normally would. The only thing to keep in mind is that you don’t really have a lot of freedom in terms of layout as you would have on a normal page.
You can also add images and move it around by hovering over it and when this hand icon appears you can drag it and resize it. When you’re done, click Apply to save your changes.
You can then set the price for the product, so I'm going to say $30. If you want to mark this product to be on sale, you can toggle this on and then enter the sale price, so let's say $15. You can change the stock, so if you only have a limited quantity of this; toggle the unlimited stock off and then enter how many you have in the store. You can also enter the SKU number if you have it.
And then if you have variations of the product you can set them up here by clicking add, and you’ll see that there are a couple of pre-made options that Squarespace offers; such as color, size, and material. Or you can enter custom product variations if you have them here. You can also delete variants at any time by clicking the three dots or you can rename them into something else.
You can also upload the image for each variation by clicking this arrow icon and then you can choose a different image or you can use the one that is already uploaded. So I'm just going to apply that one. You can change the SKU for each individual variation, and you can change how many of each variations you have in stock, you can also enter dimensions, and you can also delete a variation if you so desire.
Once that is done, you can enter the size and weight for each variation, and each product to calculate the shipping rates and provide an estimate to your customers.
Step 4: Set Up Product Categories
Next up, we have the organization which gives you a way to categorize your product. Clicking the plus sign allows you to add categories for your product. For example, you could have a category for mugs, and then you can have another category for glasses, then you can have a category for plates and stuff like that. And then you can also connect related products by using tags. So for example, if you have plates that are made out of ceramic and you have mugs that are made out of ceramic you can add the tag ceramic to it. You can add as many tags as you want.
However, keep in mind that they will not be shown in your store but rather you can use them to show related products on individual product pages. You can also set up a featured product, which will be displayed in summary blocks on your page. This is useful if you want to promote a specific product on any other page on your website. And then, you can enable related products and you can choose to show them based on the category or the tag.
After that, you can choose to show product reviews on all product pages, however this feature is managed separately in Commerce and I will talk more about that when we get to the Commerce section.
Step 5: Optimize Your Product For SEO
Next up, under the Marketing section, you can edit the SEO and the social sharing settings for each of your products. This is where you can edit the URL of the product to make it more search engine friendly. Here, you can also enter an SEO title and an SEO description for your product. When you’re done, click Apply.
Another option here is to set up the social share. If you click on edit, you can change the image that shows up when somebody shares that product on social media. If you do not upload one, they will just use the thumbnail for the product. And then another cool setting is that whenever you add a product to your store, essentially it'll be automatically pushed to those profiles. So if you connect your Facebook profile, it'll automatically share it to your Facebook page, or LinkedIn page, or Pinterest, or whichever social media profile you're using.
Step 6: Customize Your Checkout
And now we have the checkout section, which customizes how the checkout looks. So we can change the custom label for the purchase button. So if you click that, the default is add to cart, but you can change it to buy now. You can also collect extra information for customers when they add things to their cart; so for example, if you offer item customization, you would create a new form here that would ask them for any information you need for the customization.
You can also set up a subscription for this product, so if you sell, for example, tea and you want to offer your customers the ability to subscribe and get their favorite tea delivered on a regular basis, you can set that up here.
You can set how often it repeats, whether it's weekly or monthly, and you can also set up an expiration date, so if it's ongoing or if it expires after a certain number of purchases or one year or something like that, and then you can click apply to save those settings.
Step 7: Publish Your Product
Finally, we have the option to publish our product so that it’s visible in your store. Under the save option here, you can save, publish, or schedule the product. So if, for example, you have a seasonal line of products that are coming out at a certain time; you can upload them before and just schedule them to go live at a certain date. You will do that by selecting a time and date in the future.
Once the product has been published, you can either send it to the top, send it to the bottom, or you can edit the product. Now what's cool about this is that if you click this duplicate icon, you can duplicate this product and essentially all you have to do then is change out the physical product name, description, and add images; but for example, if you have the same price for multiple products and they all belong into the same category, or say that have the same tags, this saves you a lot of time because you don't really have to go through the whole creation process from scratch. You just have to customize a few things such as the SEO URL, the social sharing image, and basically the description and the images for the product. And then you can simply click publish and it'll publish the new product.
Step 8: Customize The Product Page Design
Once you click on the individual product and then click edit the design, you have the option to change how the individual product pages look. This is where you can see that extra information we added as additional info as well as the recommended products that are tagged with the same tag or belonging to the same category.
You can edit the section and choose a different layout, you can choose between simple wrap like this, a full page layout like this, or a half a page which looks like this. Simple gives you additional options where you can control the width of the product which can be inset or full, the aspect ratio for the image which you can choose between the standard aspect ratios that Squarespace offers, how the text is aligned, product navigation, whether you want this breadcrumb trail to show up or not; I recommend leaving that on for usability purposes, how you can control the spacing between the text and the image.
If you upload multiple images you can choose how they show up as either a slideshow a stacked set of images or a carousel. You can also control the gallery placement and the thumbnail placement, how wide the form is and what happens on when somebody clicks the product image; whether it zooms in on the product or if it pops up in a light box.
Lastly, you can change the colors for this particular section. For example, you can change it to be one of these colors that are already pre-made, or any of the other color themes that you use. To change this, you have to use the Design settings in the Main Navigation menu of Squarespace but more on that in a minute. So I'm just going to save that, and that is essentially how you add physical products to your store.
How to Sell Digital Products With Squarespace
Now let's say you want to add a digital product. The process is pretty much the same with just a few differences. So you would click on Add Product, and then click on Add Digital Product. Name your product, enter a short description for it, and add your product mockup.
And this is where the process for adding digital and physical products starts to differ slightly.
First of all; for Inventory you need to upload a file for your Digital Products. So I’ll upload a dummy product here. Keep in mind that when your customers make a purchase, they will receive a secure link to download the product. But, after 24 hours that link will disappear. So you'll have to regenerate it if that happens.
Then you can set the price, so let's say this is fifteen dollars. The rest of the options here are similar: you can set the product to be on sale; you can add categories and tags as usual, you can also make this a featured product. You can show related products and product reviews, and you can also edit the SEO and URL as you would for physical products, and the social share.
What’s different, though, is that you cannot set a subscription for digital products and you cannot set up product variations. So let's say, I sell several Squarespace templates. I cannot set up just one Squarespace templates and then sell different variations of it. I have to set them up as separate products, even though, essentially, the style is different, and the content is different, but essentially it is just one product.
When you’re done setting up your product, then you can click on Publish.
Now, when we click on Shop, you’ll be able to see what your online store looks like. We have three products in our store. If someone clicks on the digital product, it pretty much looks the same. The only difference is that because I didn't add additional information, it is not showing up here. And, because we don't have any other digital products, they are not showing up. They're not seeing the related products section below.
Now to actually make the purchase, all they have to do is click add to cart icon. And then, they can complete their checkout process by clicking here, entering their email, submitting a payment, reviewing, and making the final purchase.
How to Customize Your Squarespace Shop Page Settings
Now, there are a few more settings that I want to show you that you need to know in order to sell with Squarespace. Let’s take a look at how you can customize and optimize your Squarespace shop page. So if you click the settings icon; you can change the title, the navigation title, as well as the URL slug. You can also control whether or not you have a filter for the categories.
Here, you can also set up your shop page as your home page by selecting this option under categories. You can add or delete categories for your products. So by clicking the three dots next to the category name you can edit it, you can add more categories, or you can delete a category.
Under SEO, you can enter the SEO for your general shop page, so not for individual products; but for your shop page as a whole. You can change the SEO title here, and then add an SEO description here. Another option is that you can change the social image, similarly to the products. And then under the Advanced; you can enable quick view so that when they click on a product it pops up, and they can see more information about the product without leaving your shop page as a whole.
You can manage the tags for your products and if you need to add code like for Facebook ads, or for Google AdSense, or something like that for tracking; that needs to go specifically on your shop page, you can do that here.
And then we can click on Save, and those are the store settings.
Customizing Shop Page Design
One other thing that you can do to your shop page is customize the design, somewhat. You cannot really change the section with the products; other than change whether it's full width or inset. A few more options include customizing the spacing between the columns and the rows, and how many columns there are in total, set up the aspect ratio for the images, text alignment, image and text spacing; and you can choose where the categories show up. They can be as a sidebar here or they can show up at the top.
And of course, you can enable or disable breadcrumbs here so when they click on glasses, they have that breadcrumb trail available.
You can add more sections to your store. So you can add any of the sections that you see here, that are built with the Fluid Engine or you can add Classic Editor sections here.
You can add a blank one and then add the blocks yourself; or if you're looking for the sections that were built with Classic Editor, you can do so by clicking on this link here... and then you can add any other section that existed in the Classic Editor version. You can add sections to the top and to the bottom, and there is no limit on how many sections you can add to each page. And that's it as far as customizing how your shop page looks.
And then if you want to change colors and fonts, you will do so here under Design and then Site Styles, and then you can choose Fonts and Colors by clicking on edit palette. Then, click on the color you want to change and then enter the hex code for that particular color or you can choose some of these pre-made color presets that Squarespace generated for you.
Setting Up Your Squarespace Commerce Settings
So we are going to head into the Commerce section next. This is where you can basically manage all the settings connected with your Squarespace store. So I'm not going to go through all of these because we'll be here until spring... But I just want to walk you through a couple of important settings that you do need to set up before you start selling, and then you can play around with the other tools and options later on.
Managing Inventory And Orders
So the first thing, you can see all your orders by clicking on orders. You can manage your inventory by clicking on Inventory; and then you can export all the products or you can import products from Etsy by clicking import or from a CSV. You can use these to basically import your products from platforms like Magento, BigCartel, WooCommerce, and others. You can also add products from this tab as well.
Managing Customers
The Customers tab lets you see all the people who have made a purchase in your store. Squarespace will create what they call profiles so you can keep track of your customers, and leads, and subscribers, and basically send them more targeted email campaigns. They have also automatically created smart lists which you can use to see everybody who has ever bought from you before, and you can also create segments by using filters in profiles. So if you click on Leads, you can see all the people who have basically signed up for your newsletter, and you can see them here and manage them here, and then use that list to create a targeted email campaign for them.
Creating Discounts
Under Discounts, you can create discount codes for your customers. So let's say you have a Valentine's Day sale coming up. So you can create Valentine's Day sale. You can have automatic discount which applies automatically at checkout but, you do need to upgrade to the Commerce plan on Squarespace. Or you can just enter discount, they need to enter a discount code themselves. If you already have something in mind like three days sale, you can enter that as the coupon code. Or you can have Squarespace generate a code for you. And then you can decide whether you want to have percent off amount, or free shipping, and whether it applies to any order, a particular order, a single product, or a certain category; how many times it can be used, whether it can be used only once per customer, if you want to exclude a certain subscription products.
And you can set when the coupon starts and expires and then click on save and now the discount code is active in our store. You can also schedule discounts to go live at in certain date, and once they are done and expired you can see them here under the Inactive tab.
Collecting Payments & Checkout Options
The next most important thing that you'll want to set up is a way to collect payments from your store. So here you can connect Stripe, PayPal, and Square. And you can set your store currency, the process is pretty much straightforward. Once you click on an option it'll take you to their page and you will sign in into your account, or you will create an account and set it up there. And once that account is connected, you'll be able to accept payments in your store. And here you can switch the currency for your store, and as you can see they accept or they have a lot of currencies here that are already accepted. So find yours and then set it up as the currency for your store.
Then here under cards and checkout, you can if you update to the Commerce plan: you can toggle the abandoned checkout recovery to be on. You can also set up a minimum amount before they can check out. If you sell Services you can limit how many can be sold at one time. You can also assign the next total number and customize how the receipt looks.
You can take a lot of these options here that I'm not going to go into in detail because that basically is different from one country to the next; so I'm not going to go to that. The best thing I can tell you is to consult your local accountant and ask them if you need to issue receipts and what information needs to be included on them.
And here under the checkout page you can collect email addresses and you can either set them up to go immediately to your subscriber profiles and to be added to the mailing list that Squarespace will create, or you can connect MailChimp if you want to save your leads there. And then you can select to have that enabled by default, I don't recommend doing this because a lot of people will miss that when they're checking out and you actually need their explicit consent to send them marketing emails. So leave that off.
Then this is where you will also need to enter your default billing address; or rather allow customers to select the default to use, the shipping address as their billing address, pre-select the country for shipping, and billing addresses if you need to collect additional information such as phone numbers or if you need to have a custom checkout form, that again, asks for item customization or something like that, or a gift note or something like that you can enable the custom checkout form here, and then you can edit it by adding form fields that are usually available with Squarespace forms.
And here under store policies, is where you will want to enter your return policy, your terms of service, and your privacy policy; because these are a legal necessity. So to be just legally covered and make sure you're compliant, you'll want to enter them here.
And then under checkout page customization, this is done under the style tab, style settings tab, so when you click on that it'll direct you there. And there's not a lot of options here. You can upload your logo, you can change the background color, like it was in previous versions of Squarespace. And you can set the colors to something else, so for example you can set the background to be a different color like so, and yes you can enter a hex code here. So let's say that we want this color to be this one, like so and then here let's go with this color, or you can choose any of these colors that are here.
You can also choose to show the site logo if you have it uploaded, you can change the title color, and the header color, and then the header alignment; whether you want it to be left, centered, and then you can choose the button color to be. Let's say we want this for the bottom color, like so, and then when you click on Save that is how your checkout will look essentially. But that is found under design and then checkout page.
Shipping Options
So now we'll go back to Commerce, next up if you sell physical products; you'll want to set up the shipping options here. So when you click on the shipping option, you can choose between flat rate depending on weight, carrier calculated through FedEx, UPS, or USPS. You can choose any of these methods; I'm not... again this is not something that I'm going to go too much in depth into because I have no experience selling physical products, so I can't really advise you on that.
You should consult with your accountant and basically decide how you how what the best course of action would be to for you to charge for shipping. But essentially, this is where you would set up those options. So, if you choose for example flat rate you can call it flat rate shipping like this, and then per order fee... let's say you want to charge 15 for shipping for every order, and you can also choose to charge an additional five dollars if they have more than one physical item in that order. Or you can leave that as zero or you can charge basically per item so no fee for every order but five dollars for every item that is in their cart.
And then you can set up shipping zones, so basically you can choose between countries here individually, if you ship only to select countries, or you can set the entire world by simply choosing rest of the world. And then that will be set for all the countries in the world. And then if you have pickup options, so if you have a physical store on top of your online store, you can set up a pickup location here by clicking add pickup option and then you can enter the name give the address and the opening hours here and you can also add optional information right here.
Setting Your Tax Rate
And then lastly you'll probably want to set your tax rate, which can be done here; however, again, I am based in Croatia I don't know how it works in United States, or United Kingdom, or Germany, or Australia, or New Zealand, or basically any other part of the world, so I can't advise you on that. You will want to talk to your local Chamber of Commerce, accountant, or whoever is in charge for tax rates for physical stores. And you will want to set them up right here for your specific country. Other the rest of the options here are pretty straightforward you can play around with them. Click on each one discover what it does and basically use it to set up your store.
Using Commerce Extensions
What I find convenient here, is that if you go to settings and then extensions; you can basically connect a lot of extensions to your store that make it easier to manage your products. So for example Ship Station, Easy Ship, Aftership, Fresh Books, Tax Jar, if you sell by if you sell already on Printful or Printify, or if you're using a Printique; you can basically connect those extensions here and they will automatically populate your Squarespace store with those products. So that setting is found under settings and then extensions.
Connecting Your Social Media Profiles
And then, one last thing that I want to mention is; remember how I said that whenever you upload a product to your store you can essentially have it automatically pushed to your social media account? Where that is done: under settings and then connected accounts, here you would connect an account and you have the option to connect Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, 500px, Flickr, Instagram, and Foursquare; so if you select something like Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter; whenever you add a product Squarespace will push it to that platform. It won't do that for Instagram, however you can connect an account here to pull your Instagram photos and display them in the photo of your website or something for example.
But that's a whole different topic that I'm not going to get into right now and that is the basics of setting up your online store with a Squarespace. There's a few more settings that you can go through here, such as enabling wait lists and managing your related products. And product reviews, if you toggle this on request reviews then you can have Squarespace automatically send out an email that asks customers to leave a review on your website and then when somebody submits a review you'll get an email notification and that will show up on your individual product reviews.
You can also import reviews from Etsy if you have an Etsy shop, or if you've been selling on Etsy beforehand. So by clicking import you can log into your Etsy store and then import those reviews here. You can also connect your Facebook and Instagram to sell there, if you qualify with their requirements. You can connect with Facebook to add the tracking pixel to your site and then your product catalog will be synced with Facebook and you can begin selling on Facebook and Instagram. And the same thing basically applies to Google. They will give you a small piece of code that you need to add to your site header and then you can set up shipping and publish your website to have your products show up on Google Shopping.
And if you want to learn how to sell memberships and scheduling with your Squarespace website, then you can click on more ways to sell; and they will link you to those particular guides from Squarespace.
Final Thoughts
And that is it for this tutorial. I hope you enjoyed it, if you have any questions don't hesitate to leave them in the comments below and if you're looking for more help building your Squarespace website, I have a free training that you can sign up to watch instantly so be sure to check it out.
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