The past year and a half resulted in a massive shakeup in how people view their relationships with work. Among many other things, thousands of people have decided to quit their jobs and open up online stores to make money. Some turned to eBay, and others opened up stores on Etsy. Others may have decided to go with Shopify. Many, though, start a Squarespace site and want to know how to open a storefront alongside it.

That’s what I’m here for; I’m going to tell you everything you need to know to go from “I just found Squarespace” to “I have a functioning store.” Ready to go? Let’s begin.

Laying the Groundwork

The first thing you need to do is decide what kind of store you want to open.

Some of you might already have a good idea of what you want to do.

• You’re monetizing a current hobby, like quilting or woodworking.

• You’re a big fan of a particular kind of product and want to sell it.

• You’re starting a thrift reseller and selling products you pick up from local thrift stores for a profit.

Others of you might not know what you want to sell, only that you want to go into business for yourself. 

For you, there are options.

• You can sell physical products that you maintain in your own inventory, ship and fulfill yourself, and order on your own.

• You can dropship products, acting as a storefront for a wholesaler who handles orders for you.

• You can sell digital products, such as eBooks, courses, or asset packs.

• You can sell your services as a life coach, consultant, or other advice authority.

There are near-limitless options. You need to find something you’re passionate about and put your all into making it into a business. See, that’s the tricky part; most companies, including most online businesses, fail within the first year. It helps if you have the drive, passion, and sincere interest to keep it going and become successful.

Further Reading:

-       10 Foolproof Strategies for Choosing an E-commerce Niche by Neil Patel

-       How To Find Your Niche Online Without Costly Newbie Mistakes by ecommerceSEO

-       How Do You Choose Just the Right Niche for Your Ecommerce Business? A Checklist by Entrepreneur

Picking a Squarespace Template

Squarespace comes in two versions of their platform: 7.0 and 7.1. You’ve probably heard of the Brine template; it’s one of the most popular templates on 7.0. None of the 7.1 templates are as widely known, but there’s a reason for that.

On 7.0, each template family is distinct and uses its unique codebase. A plugin meant to work with Brine won’t necessarily work with, say, Adirondack or Tremont. They each have different sets of features and customization options as well.

On 7.1, every template uses the same base code. The differences between them are simple: enabled and formatted, ready to go out of the box. You can add and remove features (such as site layouts or navigation styles) at will.  

Which do you choose? I’m all about recommending 7.1 at this point. It’s too flexible not to. 7.0 has a few too many legacy issues with converting from one template to another, or implementing specific CSS/code hacks, and so on. In fact, some features that you might want to implement on 7.0 require custom code, whereas, in 7.1, they’re simple checkboxes to enable.  Creating a “sticky” header is one example.

Which template should you pick? That’s entirely up to you. Pick one that offers features you want, has a layout you like, and requires a minimum number of tweaks to get to where you want it. If that means picking a 7.0 template, that’s fine; Squarespace still supports them for a reason, after all.

Alternatively, you can stand out from the pack by getting a custom template. Custom templates are customized versions of existing templates that give you new and exciting layouts, designs, and features you wouldn’t otherwise get.  You can browse a selection of them here if you’re interested in seeing what’s out there. Remember, sometimes it’s worthwhile to pay a little extra to stand out.

Further Reading:

-       How to Choose a Squarespace Template + 2 Pitfalls to Avoid by Christy Price

-       A Guide to Picking a Template for Your Squarespace Website by Eleanor Stones

-       How to Choose the Right Template for Your Squarespace Website by EpicFreelancing

Picking a Squarespace Plan

Squarespace offers a free trial, so you can experiment with their system and figure out what features you want or need. Sooner or later, however, you will need to extend your trial by picking a plan and paying for it. Squarespace offers four tiers of its pricing plans.

• Personal, for $12 per month.

• Business, for $18 per month.

• Basic Commerce, for $26 per month.

• Advanced Commerce, for $40 per month.

You can see a breakdown of the features offered by each plan on their pricing page here. You can also look around the web (or on this page) for discount codes that can save you a bit of money.

Which plan do you need for an online store? At the bare minimum, you need the Business plan. The Personal package does not offer an eCommerce store or any business features. 

If you want a point-of-sale system, customer accounts, the ability to use your domain name rather than Squarespace’s for checkout, or some of the advanced commerce tools, you’ll need the Basic Commerce plan. If you want abandoned cart recovery, the ability to sell subscription services, advanced shipping, and discount features, or an API, you need the Advanced Commerce plan. 

It all comes down to what you want to do with your store.

Further Reading:

-       How to Choose the Right Squarespace Plan for Your Website by Five Design Co

-       Tips for Choosing the Right Squarespace Plan for Your Business by Theresa Chaney

-       Squarespace Pricing + What Everyone Really Wants to Know by Me!

Creating and Configuring a Site and Store

Once you’ve chosen a template, you need to buckle down and get to work setting it up. Here’s a checklist of the things you’ll want to do. 

I’ve also covered a beginner’s tutorial for setting up a Squarespace site here if you want another perspective on it, with greater detail than I’m putting into this section.

Create Your Site. Sign up with Squarespace, choose your starting template, register your account, and start setting up your information.

Create Basic Pages. Every good store has critical pages, such as the About Us page, the Privacy Policy page, and the Contact page. Create new pages, name them accordingly, and start adding content. You can find templates for a Privacy Policy if you don’t want to draft your own.

Create Additional Pages. You’ll probably want a page for your Store, after all, and a Blog won’t go amiss.

Customize Your Header. This section is where your site name/title, logo, and navigation menu live. Customize this. Add and organize your links to main pages like Store/Blog/About/Contact. 

Choose your store name and upload a logo. If you don’t have a logo, there are logo generators out there, or you can use a system like Canva to make one.

Customize Everything. You’ll want a consistent design across pages on your site. Choose site colors, position elements, and add or remove features for a consistent layout.

Create Product Pages. Each new product needs to be a new Page that you create. Click Pages to make a new page, click the Shop page style, and click the + to create a new product page. Choose your type of product (physical, digital, service, gift card) and fill out the details. You’ll need information such as the product name, SKU, price, description, and more, as well as photos. There are a TON of options here, depending on the kind of product you’re selling.

Connect to a payment processor. Squarespace supports PayPal, Stripe, Square, and Afterpay. I recommend choosing at least Stripe and Square, but setting up all of them (except maybe Afterpay) is a good idea. Advanced processors and options like Afterpay you can worry about later.

Set Shipping. Shipping options include free shipping, flat rate shipping, carrier-calculated shipping, and weight-calculated shipping. Free or flat rates are generally the best, though you’ll want to adjust the pricing of your products to cover them accordingly.

At this point, 80% of your store should be ready to go. You’ll need to go through and add all the products you want to sell, as well as their variations and details. You may also want to connect with some eCommerce plugins or systems to manage details on the back end, but that’s not strictly necessary.  

At this point, you want to test your site. Load up your site in a new browser and see how it looks. Does it feel and function the way you want it to, or should you change some things about it? Load it up on a phone or mobile device, and test out the functionality. Does it work? Google highly recommends optimizing for mobile and puts more weight on your mobile site than your desktop site. It’s critical now that your site looks and feels excellent on mobile devices.  

Test a product order, too. You can do this in two ways. If you’re using Stripe, you can put your site into Test Mode and submit a test order through the system. This mode will test the system but not process a charge. 

If you’re not using Stripe, or if you want to test other payment processors, buy something from yourself and immediately refund yourself. Don’t worry; your payment processors won’t ban you if you do this. It’s the recommended way to test a store.

Further Reading:

-       Connecting a Payment Processor by Squarespace Help

-       Adding Products to Your Store by Squarespace Help

-       The Ultimate Guide to Setting Up Your Shop in Squarespace by My Billie Designs

Plugins and Extensions to Consider

You don’t need any fancy plugins or extensions to get a store up and running. However, they can do two things for you. First, they can give you added functionality that can help you show off products, convince users to click, and make sales. Second, they can set your store apart from the pack. 

Remember how I said that the last year and a half has shaken up the world? Yeah, that means there are thousands of new stores cropping up, and a lot of them are using the basic Squarespace templates and configurations. 

You want to look like you’ve put more care and effort into your site than all the rest, so people trust you more.

Squarespace has its own Extensions gallery now, which has 26 (as of this writing) plugins and extensions you can use. These range from TaxJar, an accounting system that handles taxes and other financial info for you, OrderDesk, an order management/fulfillment system, and integrations with systems like AfterShip and Mailchimp.

You can also get plugins and extensions from third parties, like me, for example. I’ve curated a list of useful plugins, including lightboxes, sidebars, related post plugins for blogs, product color selectors, testimonial sliders, and more. 

Check them out!

Wrapping Up

When you see everything laid out as I’ve done above, it can seem like a daunting task to get a store up and running. And, well, it is. There’s a reason the vast majority of businesses fail. It takes work to set up a good site; it takes work to maintain it; it takes work to market, source new products, managing a blog, feeding it with content, and all the rest. I’m not going to lie; businesses are hard work.

The thing is, I trust that you can do it. The internet is packed full of information on getting a business up and running and people like me who want to see you succeed. So, if you have questions, particularly about useful plugins but also about Squarespace in general, feel free to reach out. You can also browse the rest of my blog for a wealth of information on all things Squarespace.  

Take your time, cover all the bases, and get to selling. You’ll be able to break through and succeed in no time!