What does Squarespace's new Fluid Engine mean for eCommerce?
July 21, 2022
The internet is all abuzz because Squarespace has just dropped an all new editing experience called Fluid Engine. Maybe you’ve heard about it already (or maybe you’re just learning about it now!) and you’re wondering — what does this mean for me and my site??? Here’s the scoop!
How We Got Here
As a reminder if you’ve had a Squarespace site for any number of years, you’re used to what’s now being called the “Classic Editor” which allows you to add any of Squarespace’s trademark “blocks” (things like text, images, buttons, video, etc.) onto your pages at predefined points. You may have had to use things like Spacer blocks to get things to line up the way you wanted. The Classic Editor offered a mostly intuitive design experience but some advanced layouts such as creating full bleed content or overlapping blocks required custom code.
Intro to Fluid Engine
What makes Squarespace’s new Fluid Engine different from the Classic Editor is that it offers the ability to add blocks anywhere in a section - even overlapping them if you’d like! Instead of adding blocks at predefined points in a section, blocks can now be added anywhere you want and dragged, dropped, stretched, resized, layered or manipulated to achieve just the look you’re going for. You don’t need Spacer blocks and there’s a chance you’ll be able to get by with a lot less custom code.
Fluid Engine also comes with one other big change and that’s to how your site looks on mobile. Previously your page layouts were automatically translated to mobile and there wasn’t really a way to change the way they looked without also editing the desktop view. With Fluid Engine, the desktop and mobile views can be edited independently offering more control over how things look on smaller screens.
What does this mean for eCommerce sites?
Good news if you’ve read this far and are worried that how you upload and mange products on your site will change — all of that stays exactly the same! There are no changes to the way eCommerce looks or works at all. Your product pages, shop page and other static pages like your cart and checkout are not changing in either the way you edit them or the way they work for your customers.
Fluid Engine only impacts content pages on your site (more on that below) so things like your home page, about page or other non-shop related pages. One of the biggest selling points for me on using Squarespace for eCommerce has always been in how creative and dynamic your non-shop pages can be versus those built on Shopify, for example. So while the release of Fluid Engine has no affect on how eCommerce works or functions in any way, I do think it makes a stronger case than ever for why Squarespace continues to be a great choice for online shops. After all, how you present your brand on your non-shop pages is as important and influential on conversion rates as any actual eCommerce function.
Who has access to Fluid Engine?
Fluid Engine is available now on all English language sites built on Squarespace 7.1. (If your site is still on Squarespace 7.0, this is just yet another reason to make the switch to 7.1 as there are no plans to release the new editor experience on the 7.0 platform.) If your site was built before early-mid July 2022 and is on Squarespace 7.1, you’ll notice an upgrade button in your Classic Editor sections. Should you click it? Up to you but here’s what that means:
(Here’s what a Classic Editor section looks like on 7.1 with the option to upgrade it to a Fluid Engine section in the top left corner.)
Upgrading a Classic Editor section that used custom code may cause that code to break. This may not be a bad thing (you can probably replicate the layout without code in the new Fluid Engine section) BUT you should know going in that things may not immediately look the way you want.
Once you click Upgrade on a section there’s no going back. This is a one way ticket situation so just be sure you want to board the train, you know what I mean?
If you’re going to be doing any DIY editing on your site, don’t forget to check out the mobile view. In my extensive beta testing of this product, I spent a lot less time writing custom code but a lot more time manually recreating all mobile page layouts.
Do you have to make the switch?
The short answer is not really. As long as your 7.1 site was built prior to the launch of Fluid Engine, all of your existing page sections will remain as Classic Editor sections. However, any new sections you add will be created with the new Fluid Engine powering them so you’ll end up having a little bit of a mixed bag of sections for a bit. In the long run, as you edit and add new content to your site old sections will be replaced with new ones - all built with Fluid Engine.
Bottom Line
This is a big announcement and a big change from Squarespace but don’t let it scare you. You don’t have to make any big changes right away if you don’t want to and how your online store looks and works is not changing in any way. This is just the latest in Squarespace continuing to push things forward in terms of innovative design capabilities. Have any questions about how to use Fluid Engine or adding new Fluid Engine sections to your eCommerce site? Feel free to contact me!
