How To Set Up A Website With Square Online

Square Online offers a free e-commerce website for small businesses of all kinds, including retailers, restaurants, cafes, ticketed event hosts, service providers, and more. Anyone can use Square to list products for sale, process payments, and deliver orders via traditional shipping methods, curbside pickup, and local delivery.

Square does a solid job of removing any friction from the initial setup. Create an account, and the process walks you through basic questions about what you’re selling, how you plan to sell it and how you plan to fulfill orders. It then takes you through a six-step checklist to design your website, start building your inventory, set up your domain, shipping rates and taxes and – finally – take your website live and publish it.

Some of the steps are relatively complex by nature and may involve a little research. However, the platform makes things easier by explaining what specific terms or features mean and pointing you toward the right tools.

Some steps might not be appropriate for your business, depending on its nature and size, but by covering back-end steps like setting shipping rates early on, Square Online gives you a logical process to work within. In this respect, it’s every bit as good as Shopify or Squarespace.

The free store is fairly easy to set up, and we’ll walk you through the process. If you want to follow along, sign up for your free Square account now. It’s simple and completely risk-free; you can build your store by following the steps below:

Step 1: Create a free Square account

The first step is to open a free Square account with your email address and password. Make sure you choose a secure password since your identity and banking information will be connected to your profile. You can choose to enter optional information, like your business name and type, or do this later in your Square Dashboard settings.

Once you have an account, you can access all of Square’s free tools, including the online store builder, via your online dashboard.

Every free Square Online store ties into the rest of the Square ecosystem and you can manage them through your Square Dashboard. This is where you can sync products, orders, and customers across your in-person and online sales channels. During setup, you will also have the option to choose from one of Square Online’s paid plans, which start at $29 per month.

Square’s paid plans allow you to connect a custom domain, remove Square branding, send abandoned cart emails, and more.

If you’re just setting up a simple site for occasional pickup orders or to sell on social media, you can likely stick to the free plan. However, if you want to scale an online business or sales channel, you’ll want to choose a paid plan. You can upgrade or downgrade at any time.

Step 2: Configure your initial store settings

After creating your free account, you can start building your online store. Square guides users through the process with automated prompts; no technical skills are required. Additionally, all settings can be changed later—nothing you choose now is permanent.

The platform will redirect you to the Square Online control panel in your Square dashboard after you enter your basic information.

Step 3: Add your products

The first thing Square suggests that you do is design your site. However, we recommend adding your products and product categories first, as you will want to showcase them on your site. Adding them ahead of time will make the site creation and design process easier.

Creating your product categories first will allow you to assign items to categories as you enter them. This removes the need to go back and categorize all of your products later; this order is easier if you have an existing inventory.

However, you can choose to either create either your categories or products first. Both ways are fine.

When you click “Add Category,” once you have your first category set up, you’ll also have the option to create subcategories from that screen. Like with most of Square’s settings, there are multiple ways to get the same result, it’s just a matter of personal preference and what is easiest for you.

Step 4: Design your square website

After setting up your products and categories, it is time to design your online store. Return to the homepage of your Square Online dashboard and click the “Design now” button.

The button will take you to the Square Online Website Builder, where your first selection will be to pick a style from Square’s pre-made templates. This will be the overall look of your website, but you will have the option to change font and color later.

From there, you simply select a style that appeals to you and matches your brand. The template will expand so you can get a better view, and if you like it, select the “Customize” button to start adding the rest of your design.

Here you will have a series of initial design options including adding your logo, changing the color scheme and fonts, and choosing the shape of buttons, images, and form fields. If you opt for a paid plan, you can access additional customization options for buttons and your website width and spacing.

Step 5: Set up your domain

During the design process, Square will likely prompt you to set up your domain or your website address. You can choose to do this now, or close out of the pop-up and add it later.

Either way, you have three options for your domain:

Use a domain you own somewhere else: If you already own a domain from a third-party service like GoDaddy or Google, you can connect it to your Square Online store. This option also requires upgrading to a paid plan.
Find a custom domain: This option allows you to create a custom domain for your site, and Square will check for its availability. This option also requires upgrading to a paid Square Online plan.
Use a free Square subdomain: This option puts your website under Square’s subdomain, e.g. jimmyarnis.square.site.

Note: Using a Square subdomain will keep your store free, which works for occasional sales or if you are using Square to supplement an existing website. But, if this is your main site, upgrading to a paid plan so you can use a custom URL will make your site appear more credible and trustworthy.

Step 6: Add order fulfillment methods & settings

Although you selected some fulfillment methods when first signing up for Square, now is when you’ll enter details and adjust your chosen methods as needed. Choose from in-store pickup, local delivery by your staff or a third party, shipping, and self-serve ordering for restaurants and cafes.

Self-serve ordering is only available on Plus and Premium plans.

Step 7: Set up taxes

Next, you can adjust your settings to collect the proper taxes on your sales. Square prompts you to do this step from the homepage of your Dashboard; you simply need to select the “Set up taxes” button to get started. Clicking this button will take you to your Sales Tax page, where you will select “Let’s get started” to begin your configuration.

Square will then walk you through a series of questions where you will have the option to delineate your fulfillment, apply different tax rates for different items, indicate your business as tax-exempt, and then add your location so that appropriate tax rates are applied.

Based on the answers to your questions, the platform will recommend a tax rate to apply to all purchases through your site. To activate, simply click save and your tax settings will be ready.

Step 8: Create checkout policies

With your taxes set, you are technically at the end of the Square-prompted setup process. However, we recommend also adding in your checkout policies before going live with your site.

To begin setting up your checkout policies, head over to the “Settings” tab in the right-hand menu and select “Checkout.” The first thing that you will see on the Checkout page is the Collect Payments section. All Square Online accounts are automatically configured to process online payments through Square Payments.

Square Payments is set up to accept all kinds of payment methods, including credit cards, debit cards, Square gift cards, and mobile payment options like Apple Pay.

Once you have verified your identity and enabled Square Payments, the settings that you can adjust here include:

Whether you will be accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay
Whether you will be offering an Afterpay option
Whether you will be accepting PayPal payments (paid plans only)
Whether you will be accepting Cash App payments

All you need to do here is toggle your preferences on/off and then hit Save.

Step 9: Set communication preferences

Like the step above, setting your communication preferences isn’t part of Square’s prompted setup guide, but it is helpful to navigate these settings before launching your store.

From the main navigation on the left-hand side, select “Communications.” From there, you can edit Email & Text Alerts, Pop-ups, Messenger, and Abandoned Carts.

Step 10: Preview and publish your site

Finally, your Square Online store is ready to launch. At this stage, you will want to give everything a final check from the customer’s point of view by previewing your site. Simply return to your website editor by selecting the “Website” tab from the left-hand menu, and click “Edit Site.”

Click the “Preview” button in the upper right corner. Make your final check, adjusting and editing your site as needed. You can even share the preview via a link if you want fresh eyes. Once you’re satisfied, click Publish in the top right corner to take your site live.

Even after your site is published, you can adjust any element (including design product pages, inventory, store policies, and shipping or delivery details). You can also add pages such as an About Us page, customer testimonials, or social media channels. Finally, you can include more features like collecting customer emails to grow a newsletter, selling tickets to events, and starting a membership program.

Pros and cons of Square Online

Pros

Free plan available
Affordable paid plans
Sell unlimited products on your site, Facebook and Instagram
Built-in inventory management
Free domain for paid plans
Abandoned cart recovery feature on high-tier plans
Advanced reports on top-tier plans
Lower processing rate on Premium plans

Cons

Customer support issues, limited days and hours
Transaction fees can add up for high-volume sellers
Limited customization options

How easy is Square Online to use?

Square Online’s sign-up process involves answering a few questions about your business. Once you have an account, it only gets easier. This is a Weebly software, and Weebly has the second-highest customer score of any builder put through user testing.

It’s virtually impossible to “mess up” when creating your online store with Square, and the setup process is really quick. You’ll be given a general layout to work with, which you can edit to include your company’s logo and your desired colors and fonts. You don’t need any prior technical knowledge to start selling on Square Online.

However, the tradeoff is that customization options can be limited.

Pricing

Square doesn’t so much offer a free trial as it does a free subscription to its e-commerce offering. They started as, essentially, a payments services provider. Square’s revenue came from their transaction fees, and that’s no different now that they’re going online.

Still, an online store should be more than just a digital sales terminal, and it definitely shouldn’t contain advertising for the company that makes the digital sales terminal. So, there are premium plans that are more what you’d expect from e-commerce software.

Free, $0/mo — unlimited products, 500MB storage, SSL security, inventory management, in-store and curbside pickup option, syncs inventory and sales with the POS, Instagram & Pinterest integration, gift cards, coupon codes, lead generation forms, 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction
Professional, $12/mo (annual billing only) — all of the above (including the same 2.9% + 30 cents transaction fees), plus: publish to a custom domain, free domain registration for the first year, no Square branding or ads on your site
Performance, $26/mo (billed annually) — all of the above (including the same 2.9% + 30 cents transaction fees), plus: customer reviews, discounted shipping, and abandoned cart recovery
Premium, $72/mo (billed annually) — all of the above, but lower transaction fees: 2.6% + 30 cents. Also includes: higher discounts on shipping and a Real-Time Shipping Rate calculator

Manage your Square Online subscriptions and services

If you sign up for one of the paid-tier versions of Square Online or purchase a domain or email address, you can manage your subscriptions and services for Square Online directly from the Account Settings area of your Square Online Overview page. Learn more about how to manage your Square Online subscriptions.

Note: To manage account settings for your Square account, go back to your Account & Settings page in the Dashboard. The Account settings area of your Square Online Overview page is for Square Online only and doesn’t affect your Square account or other Square products.

How To Set Up A Website With Square Online

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Overview of Square Online