Squarespace is today announcing the launch of Squarespace Commerce, a suite of tools that will allow users to turn their Squarespace-built websites into online shops. CEO Anthony Casalena says that an e-commerce offering has been “one of the most requested things pretty much since the company was founded,” and that the launch of Squarespace 6, an updated version of the platform that made its debut last year, has allowed the team to build a product that wouldn’t have worked as well with previous versions of the service.
Squarespace Commerce allows users to sell both digital and physical goods for $30 per month ($24 per month if users sign on for a full year), $10 more than the company’s “unlimited” package, which comes bundled with the Commerce subscription. Casalena says that users will be able to post an unlimited number of items, or SKUs, and that Squarespace built the tool to handle both physical and digital goods.
Commerce customers are able to accept payments via Stripe, the “payments for developers” company that provides a better experience than some of its older rivals, which may or may not rhyme with “MayMal.” Stripe’s usual “2.9 percent of cost plus 30 cents” fees will apply to every sale, but there is no additional charge or hidden fee.
Maybe the most interesting aspect of Squarespace Commerce is its integration with the core Squarespace system. Users are able to drag and drop their products into blog posts or other areas of their site, allowing the announcement of, say, a new handbag to feature an image of that bag, its details, and a “buy” button without having to worry about funky embeds, wonky HTML, or other technological snafus. Squarespace Commerce isn’t something the company bolted on to its existing product — it’s a key feature that will help Squarespace show that it’s more than a blogging engine.
Note and Portfolio, two other apps launched by Squarespace, shipped with the same goal. “Squarespace is about your content living anywhere,” Casalena told me when Portfolio launched. Squarespace’s previous apps, and its core service, considered content to be sentences or images. Commerce expands that definition of content to include merchandise, putting the category on the same pedestal as blog posts, illustrations, photographs, and other types of media.