Download our free workbook and get started on your action plan to launch your business
The email you entered is invalid.
Thank you for subscribing.
By entering your email, you indicate that you have read and understood our Privacy Policy and agree to receive marketing from Squarespace.
Starting an ecommerce store is a great idea, especially if you’re looking to grow your small business. In 2021, 2.14 billion people across the world shopped online. That’s a lot of potential customers. With a website-building platform like Squarespace, you can launch your own online store in a few simple steps.
1. Choose an ecommerce website template
Get started on a website builder that offers an ecommerce platform to create your digital storefront. From there, you can start creating your online business with an ecommerce site template.
Every Squarespace template supports ecommerce business features, but this collection has been curated specifically for online shops. You can easily customize website colors and fonts for your target audience and brand, then start adding useful functionalities like plugins for shipping and customer support, email marketing campaigns, and more. Once your website homepage has been created, your domain name has been secured, and your business name is front and center, it’s time to add your product pages and selling features.
See 7 of our favorite ecommerce templates
2. Add products to sell
With Squarespace, you can sell physical products, digital products, services, subscriptions, and gift cards. Regardless of the type of product you sell, make sure you have imagery that speaks to each individual offering. As you add more products to your store, be sure to keep your items organized so customers can find things easily. For easy navigation, add product categories to your store.
If you’re selling physical products, like hand-made ceramics or custom artwork, you can simply take photos of each of your pieces so that your future customers can see your items. If you’re selling digital products or services, you may have to get a little more creative with your imagery.
Don’t have access to your own product photographs? Explore stock imagery options to find something that will work for your site. Try to find imagery that speaks to your brand and your business so customers can learn more about the value you offer.
Add a detailed product description for each product and enable the collection and display of product reviews. That way, shoppers can learn more about each product as they browse your online store, and build trust in your product offerings. You can also include some relevant search keywords in your product descriptions and metadata, to boost the search engine optimization (SEO) of your store and products.
Learn how to choose your product pricing
3. Connect a payment processor
You can give customers more than one payment option to complete a purchase. When they’re given more flexibility and see that your online store supports multiple payment methods, first-time purchasers will start to build trust in your brand.
Squarespace Payments allows you to offer several payment options to customers, including Klarna. Squarespace also supports industry leading payment processors including Stripe, Apple Pay, and PayPal for online sales, and Square for in-person sales. If you’d like to connect to Stripe, you can then process payments from customers paying with debit and credit cards (U.S. only).
Many merchants add both Stripe and Paypal to their online stores so they can give their patrons as many payment options as possible. Apple Pay is also supported on Squarespace, but customers must be using an accepted device that is already set up with their account.
You can also add buy-now-pay-later options like Clearpay or Afterpay, so that customers can pay for a purchase in installments.
The preferred payment method varies from country to country so, before connecting a payment processor, be sure to confirm that the one you’ve selected works for your location.
4. Find a shipping option that works for you
If you’re selling physical products, you’ll need to add a shipping option to your online store. You can offer flat rate shipping, rates by weight, carrier calculated rates, or free shipping. You can also add a local pickup option for customers who want to collect their orders in person rather than waiting for them to be shipped. Of course, you won’t add a physical shipping option if you’re only offering digital items or services.
Many of your shipping options will depend on the kinds of products you’re selling online and how far you need to send them. Browse the different options, compare shipping costs, and see which ones make the most sense for your business. Squarespace shipping labels might be your best option if you often need UPS® shipping labels and USPS shipping labels.
Directly integrated into your Commerce dashboard, Squarespace shipping labels save you time in your workflow and may cost less than retail pricing. Squarespace shipping labels also help you develop more flexible fulfillment operations, as they’re available to purchase and print through the Squarespace mobile app on iOS and Android.
If you want to use a different shipping carrier—or need to ship internationally—check out third-party shipping and fulfillment extensions to help you ship products, manage returns, and keep customers informed with branded tracking and notifications. You can even use Squarespace shipping labels and third-party shipping extensions, ensuring you have all the tools you need to ship anything anywhere.
To customize shipping rules for specific products (e.g., available countries, in-person pickup only), use Squarespace to create fulfillment profiles for individual items.
To make the shipping hands off, you can explore dropshipping options, where store owners sell products that are produced, stored, and shipped by a third party. This is commonly used for online stores with a print on demand business model for selling custom merch.
Learn more about setting up shipping for your business
5. Set up taxes
Squarespace has built-in tools and works with third-party extensions to make taxes simple for business owners. Depending on where you’re located, you’ll have to set up taxes for your online store that reflect the laws in your geographic location.
If you’re selling physical products, you may be required to charge sales tax both in your home state and where your customers are located. Alternatively, you can add tax-inclusive pricing so the sales tax is simply included in the original price of the product.
If you sell in the United States and are on a Commerce plan, you can use our TaxJar integration to automatically calculate sales tax at checkout for free.
6. Promote your online store
Now that your online store is open and ready for business, it’s time to start telling people all about it. If you’re already using social media to promote your store, you can simply post links to different products and encourage your followers to check them out. Connect your social accounts to your website to automatically share content from your site with your followers. Add a Bio Site to your social media profiles to help drive traffic from your social channels back to your website.
Sharing original content is a great way to promote your products and drive traffic to your site. Make professional content in minutes with Marketing Kit in the Squarespace iOS app or Unfold app to help boost your online sales and increase engagement.
If you have an Instagram account, you can tag products in your posts to allow your followers to buy directly from that platform. You could also add a promotional discount for new customers to incentivize them to make a first purchase. You can decide how much of a discount to offer—and how long you’d like the promotion to run—before creating a discount code.
You may also want to take advantage of Squarespace’s Email Campaigns to communicate with the folks who frequent your online store. Simply add a Newsletter Block to your online store and give visitors the option of signing up for your email list. You can create unique email content or use existing blog posts and product listings to populate your emails. Building a mailing list can be a great way to keep in touch with your existing customers to inform them of upcoming sales, new products, and other business updates.
7. Sell in person with point of sale in the Squarespace iOS app
If you sell products in person at marketplaces or craft fairs, download the Squarespace iOS app to access Point of Sale. With this app, you can use our integration with Square to take cash or card payments that integrate with your online store.
Once you attach a supported Square reader, any sales you make in person will automatically update your inventory, display in the Orders panel, and factor into your sales analytics. Square processes the payments, and the funds go to the bank account linked to your Square account. Currently, this integration is available in the Squarespace iOS app only on iPhones.
Even if you don’t plan on selling items in person, the Squarespace app can help you to keep track of and manage your online store, even when you’re on the go.
8. Sell physical products on Instagram, Facebook, and Google
You can help your physical products get discovered by syncing your Squarespace product catalog with commonly used third-party sites. Squarespace offers an integration with Meta that allows you to sync your products to your brand’s Facebook or Instagram, streamlining your marketing and selling to your social media audience.
With Squarespace’s Google Shopping integration, you can sync your physical products so that they appear in related searches, including Google Image search, the Shopping tab, and on YouTube.
9. Use Squarespace Analytics to track performance
It’s important to keep track of how your online store is performing. Squarespace Analytics offers a ton of different options for what kinds of data you can review. For example, in the Sales Panel you can see crucial insights like how much customers order on average, how your sales change over time, and how much a unique website visit is worth on average.
Keep an eye on your Traffic Analytics as well as your Sales By Product Analytics to see how your promotional efforts are working and which marketing strategies and channels drive the most traffic to your store. All of these insights will help you continue to edit and improve your online store as your business continues to grow