Squarespace is an excellent platform for building a website and starting an online e-commerce store. Whether you like the platform or not, there’s no denying its ease of use and intuitiveness.
Using Squarespace for commerce is a suitable method for running an online store. However, it can be very limited in some ways and can be more of a hindrance than a benefit to running an online store in the far future.
The solution we’ll talk about how to integrate with your Squarespace site is Shopify! Yes, the world’s biggest and fastest-growing e-commerce solution for running an online storefront.
We’ll discuss & show precisely how you can integrate the Shopify buy button app with your Squarespace site with relative ease.
Why Integrate Shopify with Squarespace?
Squarespace commerce is excellent, but unfortunately, it has limits, especially regarding digital products. Their system for handling inventory and processing payments is excellent.
However, Shopify does have a better system with access to more intuitive store add-ons to help complete processes that would otherwise take a painstaking amount of effort.
If you use a Shopify buy button with Squarespace, you can continue to use Squarespace as your visual frontend part of your store and get Shopify to handle the backend, which would involve handling the inventory of your store and everything relating to processing payments.
What you need:
- Shopify $5/month basic starter plan (or $1/Month for the first 3 months with this offer)
- Functional Squarespace site (Free 14-day trial, then you need to sign up for one of Squarespace’s plans)
- Shopify Buy button app (Free)
Integrating Shopify with your Squarespace site: Step-by-step guide
Integrating Shopify with Squarespace is not as complicated as it may initially turn out to be. We’ll provide an easy-to-understand step-by-step tutorial for you to follow below.
Set up Shopify & Install the Buy Button app
Adding products to your Shopify store
First, you need a functional Shopify store to work as the backend for your Squarespace site. We’ll start by adding your inventory to Shopify by showing you how to create products for the store.
- Ensure you’re on your Shopify dashboard and select “Products” > “Add Product“.
- Create your product using the on-screen options on the next page. Once you’re finished, click “Save” at the top or bottom of the page.
Once you’ve done this, a prompt should appear saying, “Added [Product Name],” and will display some other recommended options for you to set up. We recommend completing whatever options apply well to you.
From here, as long as you’ve completed the process of creating your product, you can proceed with the buy button channel app and attach your new product to a button to import into Squarespace.
Installing the Buy Button Channel app
Once you’ve signed up to Shopify and added your inventory, we need to get the required apps installed so you can start integrating Shopify with your Squarespace store.
First, start with the Shopify App Store. Search Buy Button Channel and it should come up in the app list. Click “Add App“.
2. Copying your Buy Button code
Now that the app is installed, we can explore the app on your Shopify store, add a product from your Shopify store to your button and get the code imported to Squarespace.
- Go to your Shopify dashboard and select “Online Store” or “Apps“. This will include the “App and sales channel settings” option in a drop-down menu.
- Click on the “Buy Button” app within the Apps and sales channels menu. Select “Open Sales Channel” on the subsequent menu.
- Now it’s time to create your buy button. All you need to do from here is select “Create a Buy Button“, add one of your products, and copy the code for the button. The process is displayed in the video below.
Note: Within this process, you have the option of customizing your buy button however you like. You can do this on the menu before you copy the code for the buy button.
Video Tutorial
FAQ
Why should I use Shopify as a backend when I can use Squarespace commerce?
Squarespace commerce is excellent but has many limitations that Shopify doesn’t. Most store owners will run into these limitations in the future, so we highly recommend you set up Shopify as a backend store as soon as possible.
Summary
By this point, you might be wondering why we didn’t go over many other settings in much detail. This is because all the other settings are optional and vary with each user depending on the type of storefront they own.
All the steps above are generalized, straightforward steps with no deviations. We like to get straight to the point here on eCom Teckers. If you have any more questions regarding the steps above, feel free to reach out to us and we can answer any questions you may have.
The choice to integrate Shopify with Squarespace is a very smart decision for those that can afford it. It not only allows you to run most of the backend operations on a separate system that’s entirely designed for this sort of stuff. But also allows you to promote this store on your visual front-end site that’s being run on the Squarespace platform.
