Squarespace is an affordable website builder offering various templates. Their templates are intuitively designed for easy navigation while providing full control over CSS & HTML coding. However, competitors like Shopify provide more advanced features and superior support services for their customers.
Data capture is one of the hallmarks of any successful ecommerce website, and although Squarespace doesn’t come equipped with inbuilt forms, custom forms can still be added using code blocks.
Enabling Quick view
Enabling Quick view in Squarespace is straightforward – all it takes to turn it on is clicking Advanced and toggling the Enable Quick View toggle switch on. Once enabled, clicking will bring up a lightbox that displays all product images when clicked; you can customize its background color, padding color and font color as well as adding any relevant text about its features.
Squarespace provides another effective method for you to collect data: its built-in form block and newsletter block. Both blocks enable you to easily construct custom forms that can then be sent straight to Google Sheets or Mailchimp accounts via integrations; you may even use Google’s reCAPTCHA service within forms to prevent spam submissions.
Both of these features are quite impressive and certainly compare favorably with the 650+ third party apps and integrations provided by competitor Shopify. If however you require something specific not currently offered ‘out-of-the-box’ (such as conditional logic for form submission or file upload support for newsletters) then an add-on app may be necessary.
Squarespace provides website builders with a flexible option for customizing template designs to their liking through a range of styling options on the right hand side of your screen. While these may appear comprehensive at first, taking your time over this stage is highly recommended in order to keep sight of the bigger picture and avoid becoming overwhelmed.
Enabling per-store page
Squarespace is a versatile builder offering an abundance of sections, blocks and widgets. According to testing, it was found to be one of the easiest ecommerce site builders. Unfortunately, Squarespace does have some drawbacks, including its inability to move elements around pages as desired and limited editing options; if more flexibility is desired there are other ecommerce platforms which provide greater options.
Add Quick View to your Squarespace store to provide customers with an easier shopping experience by showing an “Add to Cart” button below each product, making the shopping process familiar for them. You can enable this feature per-store page or block; to do so, add the “Product Quick View” icon to product lists or overview pages and “View Products” icons on individual product pages – or enable it on per-product pages by adding both icons together on those pages.
To customize the Shop page, navigate to Design > Site Styles and scroll down to Shop settings. Here you can modify layout, product details and Products Sort & Filter settings; as well as set the number of columns & rows displayed on your Shop page. Adding a header image by clicking on the settings cog & selecting Edit can also be accomplished here.
Modify the text used for the “quick view” button that appears at the bottom of each product page, as well as enable zoom and hover effects for product images – the latter will display a larger version when a visitor hovers over them.
Last but not least, you can create custom URLs for every product to help search engines index your site more easily. Furthermore, adding questions to each product page allows you to collect customer information, such as if selling custom rings or service appointments.
If your Squarespace template lacks these features, they’re easy to add with CSS hacks. Implementation doesn’t require a developer and shouldn’t cause your website to break – but be wary if any third-party tools are used – which may break it!
Enabling per-block
Squarespace provides users with several helpful and powerful tools for creating websites. This includes pre-built ‘content blocks’ that let users add text, images, video and forms directly onto pages; as well as dynamic effects like ripple, film grain and parallax scrolling that add polish and professionalism.
Squarespace is intuitive enough for most people to master quickly. The Fluid Engine builder makes this task effortless by allowing users to drag content sections (empty areas, images and text as well as forms) anywhere on the page, then arrange and rearrange them according to their needs on any page.
However, Squarespace’s lack of an accurate version history can pose issues if you accidentally mess up your website. Since Squarespace doesn’t keep a record of changes made to a page and allows no recovery of old versions easily, this can be particularly vexing in this era of GDPR and data protection regulations.
One of the key components of any website is its ability to capture email addresses, so it is vital that it offers an efficient method for collecting these details. You can do this either through integration of an external app that allows file uploads and conditional logic or connecting Squarespace directly with an email marketing service of your choosing.
The latter option can often be more challenging to manage and can result in an inconsistent experience for mobile and desktop users. Furthermore, this additional work creates extra tasks for website owners while potentially necessitating additional hosting services to be purchased.
Another drawback of Squarespace is its limited support for third-party apps, creating difficulties for business owners who require integration between different applications such as payment gateways or shipping carriers and their website. Furthermore, this CMS does not permit users to install custom scripts of their own.
Enabling per-product
Squarespace provides many features and templates, but doesn’t have everything required for ecommerce. For instance, it doesn’t include a feature to make affiliate links nofollow; while this won’t be a show-stopper for most small businesses, it would be beneficial if Squarespace included this capability into its platform.
There are ways around this problem; one such tool is YUI Rewire, a third-party plugin which adds nofollow links and also lets you add custom classes or modify display attributes of links on certain pages and blocks.
Squarespace’s ecommerce solution is easy to set up and manage, enabling you to add multiple payment methods such as Stripe and PayPal, integrate POS systems for in-person sales, support buy now/pay later services such as Afterpay/Clearpay.
Squarespace makes data capture an effortless process thanks to two tools available on their platform, the “form block” and the “newsletter block”. Both tools are easy to use and look great — plus you can connect them with email marketing apps such as Mailchimp, Google Sheets, Zapier etc. You can even add reCAPTCHA for additional security against spam submissions!
Not to be missed is that stores built with version 7.1 or earlier won’t support changing template designs, though you can still use CSS to modify how components appear on your site.
Squarespace does not currently support conditional logic or file uploads for form submissions, which could present challenges to some stores with complex data capture requirements. You may be able to work around this by employing third-party forms apps or adding custom code directly onto your website.
To enable Quick view, first open a product page and toggle the Product quick view toggle. To add buttons for Quick view to other pages using Product blocks or Summary blocks is easy. Custom CSS editor offers you plenty of control to customize its lightbox: background color, font size, text transform value and padding settings can all be adjusted as needed; additionally you can even include a close X button within its confines!
