A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Set Up Your First Online Shop
Updated June 2021
If you’ve been stewing on an eCommerce business idea or are finally ready to launch that startup, when better than right now? Today. Why not?! Sure, it’s going to take time to work on all the little details but I’m a huge proponent of the “progress over perfection” mantra. It’s probably easier than you think to move the needle and make a lot of headway in a manner of days or weeks, not months or years. So while your competitors are busy having another meeting to talk about a website, you’ll already be doing business online. Look how savvy you are.
Step 1: Name & Branding
The biggest mistake I see people make in this department may actually come as a surprise. I think most people overthink - and overspend - in this phase. This comes as absolutely no offense to all the brand designers out there (hey, I used to be one so I feel I can say this!) but I see so many clients stall out in this early phase and never move forward. Too much time is spent on perfecting a logo for a concept that hasn’t been proven or products that haven’t been tested and the thing that I can 100% tell you about branding is that it really has nothing to do with design.
I just love this quote and I think it sums things up perfectly:
“A brand is not a product or a promise or a feeling. It’s the sum of all the experiences you have with a company.”
So, step 1 is to just make some decisions and move forward. You don’t have to live with them forever. Don’t overthink things because you can always change them down the road. Names, logos, fonts, colors - all totally changeable.
I would actually rather see a company bootstrap a little on this front as a startup and once their concept, product, or service has been vetted and all the kinks worked out, hire a brand designer to come in and give things a glow up. If you invest heavily in branding as a Phase 2 initiative instead of in Phase 1, you’ll be able to provide data, metrics, real feedback, and real experiences to your brand designer to work from. Early on, it’s all totally hypothetical. The goal right now is just to have something to launch with.
From a web design perspective, here’s what I think you need as a bare minimum:
A simple, text-based logo in just one or two colors. (I love this post from GoLiveHQ on 6 Easy Steps to Create a Text-Based Logo For Your Brand.)
A simple color palette that consists of no more than 3 colors:
One dark color
One light color
One accent color
Favorite brand fonts - two at most, one for headlines/buttons and another for body copy.
For more on building a minimalist brand check out this post!
Step 2: Decide whether you’ll start from a free or paid template
One of the reasons Squarespace is so awesome is that even the free template designs are all pretty great but they’re not your only option. You should think of templates as jumping-off points that will help you get to launch day fast. So when looking for a template, whether free or paid, here’s what you should be paying attention to:
Home page layout - Does it have room to feature the types of things you sell and the content you want to share?
General style - Does it make you feel the same way you want your customers to feel?
General navigation areas - Does it have a layout similar to what you’re looking to replicate?
Free or Paid?
The good news is that no matter what template you choose, you’ll have all the same features and functionalities available to you. This is an improvement over both Shopify and older versions of Squarespace. On both of those, choosing a template also meant you needed to pay attention to what each template allowed you to do - and some came with major limitations that you were stuck with! No worries on that front anymore! 👏
With this in mind, I think it’s more important to use the criteria above in selecting a template versus whether it is free or paid. Another thing to keep in mind is that even paid templates are super affordable compared to the cost of a fully custom web design.
Here are some posts to help:
For help learning how to pick the right template for you, check out this post.
You can browse all the free Squarespace templates here.
If you’re still looking for more options, check out:
The Best eCommerce Templates for Squarespace - the original template post!
More Great Squarespace eCommerce Templates - the encore!
Step 3: Sign Up for Your Website Account
Once you’ve selected your template, it’s time to sign up for a website account! Squarespace offers a free 14-day trial to give you a little time to build your first site before subscribing.
Tip: If you plan on working with a pro like me, ask if you can skip this step. Most web designers can offer you some discounts or perks if they create your account for you and just transfer ownership over to you.
How to sign up for Squarespace:
If you’re starting from a free built-in template:
Go to squarespace.com and click on the “Get Started” button in the top right corner
Click through the initial little questionnaire about who you are and what you do.
Select the template you’d like and follow the prompts to complete your account setup.
If you’re starting with a paid template and don’t already have a Squarespace account:
Go here to create a Squarespace login. This is all you’ll need to do for now.
You’ll be asked to share the username (email address) your account is under when you purchase your template so that it can be transferred into your account for you.
The company you purchase your template from will follow up on how to access your template and get started!
Now you have a website account! Squarespace has an extensive video library and help section but you may want to just start clicking around to explore a bit. Don’t worry if things seem overwhelming at first! Once you get the hang of things, you’ll soon discover that getting around is pretty intuitive and even fun!
Step 4: Domain Name
Your domain name almost matters more than your business name! That’s assuming they aren’t the same thing, of course, which ideally they should be. But great domains can be slim pickings these days so there’s always the chance that you thought you had a great business name but the matching domain name is already taken.
Helpful tidbits re: domain names:
Yes, you should really go for the .com version. Vanity domains like .shop or .whatever are becoming more acceptable these days but 99% of people are going to screw that up and type .com so don’t settle for a vanity domain just because the .com isn’t available. Find a .com that works even if it means changing your business name to match. It’s way easier to do this than the other way around. Trust me on this.
Buy up any alternative domains or common misspellings of your domain that are available. Domains are cheap (many start at just ~$10/year) and this is a small price to pay to own and re-route people to your main site. This isn’t totally necessary but you’re there buying domains, why not also at least own the variations to protect your future biz, right?
You can save yourself a login by buying your domain(s) directly from the same place you plan on hosting your website. For example, you can buy domains directly from Squarespace which makes it easy to manage all aspects of your online business from one place. (Bonus Tip - Squarespace offers a free domain for the first year once you sign up for an annual subscription so if you know that you’re going that route hold off on this for now and you can get this for free after you subscribe!)
If you’d like to host your domain independent of your website subscription, I recommend Google Domains. It’s super easy to use, affordable and has a native Squarespace integration that makes it simple to connect to your site.
Step 5: Add Your Pages & Content
The exact pages that your site will have are obviously going to be unique to you and your business but here is a list of pages that pretty much every site out there needs to have at a minimum:
Home
Shop (This may have a different name depending on what you do but the gist is the same, more on this in the next step)
About
Contact
Other page types that you’ll need to think about but that aren’t necessarily super sexy as far as content or layout are concerned are your privacy policy and your terms of service. For my recommendations on those, check out this post: How to Set Up a Privacy Policy & Terms of Service On Your Website.
Remember this is your jumping-off point. If your site has just these pages to start you’re in great shape!
Step 6: Add Your Products or Services
This is the stuff! This is why you’re here! What is it that you sell?
Physical products
Services (Either as packages or consultations)
Digital goods like downloadable or printables
Subscription-based products or services
Memberships or Courses
Bookings or Reservations
Whatever it is, the point of all of this is to be able to do it online. For each item that you sell/offer, you’ll want to be able to present it confidently to the world! To do that, compile these details for each product/service:
Name
High-quality photo(s)
Detailed description (Describe what people are getting in detail, including key features, how it benefits them, etc.)
Price
Variations, if applicable (i.e. different sizes, colors, options, etc.)
Inventory (either the actual physical count or, for things like events, this is the number of spaces available)
Exact product specs (weight and dimensions) for shipping, if applicable
Add each item to your shop page in Squarespace just filling in all the info as you go. If you have lots of items, you may also want to think about:
How you’re going to use tags/categories to organize your shop
Using a spreadsheet to bulk upload your inventory details
How you plan to connect your website with other things like your accounting software, fulfillment center, or other third-party apps/software
Step 7: The Settings
Ok, I lied to you in Step 1. The part where I told you that that was where most people stalled out. I was wrong. This is it. This is where most people give up and call in reinforcements. Why? Because it’s a lot and you can totally feel like you’re missing a tiny checkbox somewhere that is going to have lifelong impacts on the stability of your business. Don’t worry. Worst case scenario, something goes sideways, your customers/clients realize you’re a real person out there just trying to do your thing and everyone has a good laugh. (Unless it is about taxes, in which case, yeah - the government tends to not laugh off you not paying them their cut. When in doubt, it’s worth it to talk to an accountant who is local to you and familiar with your personal financial situation.)
When I first got started doing websites exactly 1,392 years ago, I basically just clicked on every single settings menu available at least 3 times each to make sure I didn’t miss anything. All that clicking boils down to these basics:
Payments (see: How to Choose an eCommerce Merchant Processor)
Taxes (see: How to Set Up Automatic Tax Calculations on Squarespace with TaxJar)
Shipping (see: How to Set Up a Profitable Shipping Strategy on Squarespace)
On Squarespace, most settings that you’ll need to take care of are in the Commerce panel (just click on Commerce from the left-hand dashboard menu) but there are also some additional settings available under Settings. Remember, the goal is just to launch. Taking care of payments, taxes and shipping will get you in business. You can always keep refining settings and options later on as you grow.
Step 8: Subscribe & Launch
When you have everything added and the basics set up, it’s just a matter of subscribing to a plan to make your site live! If you’re not sure which plan to go with check out this post but the TL;DR is that most sellers should choose the Basic Commerce at a minimum.
To subscribe go to: Settings > Billing & Account > Billing > Upgrade > Select a Plan
Congrats! You’re in business!
At its simplest, these are the steps to launching a new online shop for the first time. This will get you to a place where you can do business online on your very own website! There are lots of ways to continue to improve and expand from here whether it’s working on email marketing, SEO, automations, order management, shipping/fulfillment, promotions and offers… the list can really go on and on.
But the goal is just to start, to have something you can grow and build on. The best brands and businesses are iterative, adaptive, and always learning. Your first site is not going to be your best one and things are likely to change (a lot!) over time. To be honest? I would be more worried if they didn’t. ;)
