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Product / Store Page Sort

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Making this thread to bring more attention to the issue.

There needs to be a feature to automatically sort products ( alphabetically, by price, by inventory stock, etc ) on the store page. Especially since the pandemic prevents customers from browsing inside our physical shop, we're consistently adding inventory to our website all the time. However, with well over a dozen pages with 100+ products, and without this simple and essential feature, sorting newly added products one at a time is pointlessly tedious and sinks away hours.

SQUARESPACE advertised 10,000 products per store page, but it's misleading - even a fraction of that amount is unmanageable and unusable with no basic sorting feature.

If there a script or reliable plugin that can solve this issue, at least?

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@robertwyatt - I have a couple of posts about this because it's an IMPORTANT feature to have on an e-commerce store, especially when they just rolled out the new product pages that can hold 10,000 products! I wasted half an hour the other day trying to drag products on a product page that had 150+ products and it was ridiculous! It's unbelievable that this essential feature is missing. I have already asked for this feature to be added but the SQSP support person said no promises that this would be added. I asked in my other post if there is a script that can be injected that would automatically sort products. Hopefully a SQSP expert will respond.

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On 10/30/2020 at 2:41 AM, robertwyatt said:

There needs to be a feature to automatically sort products ( alphabetically, by price, by inventory stock, etc ) on the store page.

I can see why this is an issue for you. If it helps to add some context, Squarespace only recently increased the product limit from 200 products to 10,000 (July 2020). This is a significant shift for the platform that included a number of other improvements:

  • Nested categories, making it easier to manage large product catalogues

  • Manual reordering of categories

  • Manual reordering of products in every category

I hope these are the first of many improvements that will be made to inventory management and presentation in the near future. Clients are requesting a number of Commerce improvements, but top requests include 'better categorisation' and 'built-in sorting', which is why we're helping clients get online with these additional features. You can add your voice to requests for these features by opening a ticket through Squarespace Customer Care. That's how they collect feedback; this forum is not routinely monitored for product feature requests. 

In the meantime, it is possible to improve inventory presentation with some code. You can sort products by names, prices and so on, and add better categorisation and tagging, but it does require some complex coding. You can hire a Squarespace Expert to do this for you (expect it to cost $300-$800) or you can purchase a plugin (Universal Filter from Squarewebsites) and configure it yourself.

If it helps, here's an example of a Squarespace site that is using filtering and sorting:

sort-and-filter.thumb.gif.a4d0bdd6fd844bceb27818a850cfc596.gif

I hope this helps.

-Paul

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Edited by paul2009

About me: I've been a SQSP User for 18 yrs. I was invited to join the Circle when it launched in 2016. I have been a Circle Leader since 2017. I don't work for Squarespace. I value honesty, transparency, diversity and good design ♥.
Work: I founded and run SF.DIGITAL, building Squarespace Extensions to supercharge your commerce website. 
Content: Views and opinions are my own. Links in my posts may refer to SF.DIGITAL products or may be affiliate links.
Forum advice is free. You can thank me by clicking one of the feedback emojis below. Coffee is optional.

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I have made several calls requesting more efficient organizing of products in catagories. Right now I was informed SS has set it up so that products need to be manually organized in thee different areas from most specific sub-category, catagories and  "All".  It is quite insane!

The answer it seems is to have the organize individual products in sub categories, move entire sub-categories within catagories (drag and drop) and then have this organization reflected in "All".

The current system is a deal breaker for anyone who has to move a lot of individual products.  I would never have started on SS had I know that organization would be so stupid and convoluted.

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@bedeclarke - I agree that the current system is a deal breaker for anyone who has a lot of products. I honestly feel duped when I signed up back in May (and they had a 200 product limit per shop page) because I am now discovering a TON of basic/essential e-commerce features that are missing on the supposedly premium Advanced Commerce plan Squarespace offers. Its Advanced Commerce plan is basically CRIPPLED. And honestly, I think it's just plain ridiculous to shell out $300-$800 for a Squarespace expert to code something that should already come with the Advanced Commerce plan -- whether it's a new version or not! -- and then have me take all the risk of that custom code breaking down the line when Squarespace decides to do another major upgrade.

I would have gone with Shopify if I had enough time to evaluate and discover features, but I was coming from another e-commerce platform, AuctivaCommerce, whose owners/developers have apparently abandoned and stopped developing -- a shame because I was with them since 2014 and they had the very best features IMO (they just didn't seem interested in developing it further or continuing with it and my store has outgrown it) -- and I needed to move as soon as possible. Right now, I'm stuck with Squarespace and have managed to get my store to work how I need it to work. But it's looking that I will have to move my store to Shopify later on.

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5 minutes ago, sruss76 said:

I am now discovering a TON of basic/essential e-commerce features that are missing on the supposedly premium Advanced Commerce plan Squarespace offers.

I can understand your frustration which is why I'm always upfront with clients about what is and isn't possible, before they commit to Squarespace. You'll find my list of the missing ecommerce features here.

To be fair to Squarespace, no platform is perfect at this price point, and Squarespace can work really well in their target market. It can be a case of 'swings and roundabouts' as Shopify is missing a number of key features too, and Squarespace already has these. Shopify do fill gaps with a huge range of third party apps but the cost of these can quickly mount up for store owners.

I'll be really interested to hear about the shortcomings that you have experienced with Squarespace @sruss76. Were there particular issues that you faced?

About me: I've been a SQSP User for 18 yrs. I was invited to join the Circle when it launched in 2016. I have been a Circle Leader since 2017. I don't work for Squarespace. I value honesty, transparency, diversity and good design ♥.
Work: I founded and run SF.DIGITAL, building Squarespace Extensions to supercharge your commerce website. 
Content: Views and opinions are my own. Links in my posts may refer to SF.DIGITAL products or may be affiliate links.
Forum advice is free. You can thank me by clicking one of the feedback emojis below. Coffee is optional.

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@paul2009 - I don't expect perfection. I have been doing business online since 2000 and have plenty of experience using a variety of e-commerce platforms. So I have a pretty good idea of what features are essential and should come built-in at a price point and what features are acceptable as extensions (and therefore I can expect to pay). If I had come across your list of missing e-commerce features on Squarespace back in May, I would have gone with Shopify instead.

But back in May, the 2 glaring features (for me) that were missing with the Advanced Commerce were: the ability to create orders manually and the ability to manually create gift cards. In fact, while I was on the trial period, I went back and forth with customer care about these 2 missing features and asked why they weren't just there.

Then there is the missing wishlist feature -- I found out that if I wanted to have a wishlist, then I can't have a shopping cart. It has to be one or the other. Shopify and my old e-commerce platform (heck, most other platforms out there) have a built-in wishlist to help make customers' shopping easier. (Plus being in the industry/market that I'm in, I used to run promotions wherein my customers would submit their wishlist links and they get to win products from their wishlist.)

Then there's the crippled subscription feature. Why would there not be a way for me to manage subscriptions and see all the subscriptions I currently have? (As a workaround, I have decided to go with MoonClerk because at least I'll be able to manage subscriptions and even let my subscribers manage theirs.)

Then there's the fact you can't edit orders. In my previous e-commerce platform, I was able to remove/add products on an order and add extra payments made by the customer (if it warrants it). If a customer couldn't check out easily online, I would give them another way to pay (check, money order) and then I would manually create an order for them with payment pending -- that when I receive their payment and it clears, I can go in and change the status of their order from payment pending to pending shipping.

Also, you can't message customers from within the Squarespace admin, something I was able to do in my old platform. If I needed to refund a customer, I would go in her order, refund the amount, and then include a message for her. If she has an account, she would login, find her order number, and then respond from there. In Squarespace, there's no way for me to do that. If I needed to refund a customer, I'd go ahead and do it and then go to my email client, find her order #, copy her email address and start a new email to let her know what the refund is for. (I had recently made a request to customer care if they can add a memo field -- even for just 25 or 30 characters -- in the refund box so the customer knows what the refund is for.)

I can list some more but I'll stop here.

At my old platform, the cost for all the above features (and more -- I can go on) is only like $3 more than what the Advanced Commerce costs. But again, the folks over there have stopped developing and/or have lost interest in making further improvements and while everything is still working over there and they still have many existing users, I feel it is only a matter of time until they stop offering the service and tell store owners to find another platform to sell. I had a long talk with their customer service too and she was upfront with me -- and that's actually what prompted me to start moving to a new platform. I was testing 3 at the same time: 3dcart, Shopify, and Squarespace.

Edited by sruss76
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It's always helpful to hear about others' experiences, good or bad. Thanks for sharing.

About me: I've been a SQSP User for 18 yrs. I was invited to join the Circle when it launched in 2016. I have been a Circle Leader since 2017. I don't work for Squarespace. I value honesty, transparency, diversity and good design ♥.
Work: I founded and run SF.DIGITAL, building Squarespace Extensions to supercharge your commerce website. 
Content: Views and opinions are my own. Links in my posts may refer to SF.DIGITAL products or may be affiliate links.
Forum advice is free. You can thank me by clicking one of the feedback emojis below. Coffee is optional.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Interesting post, thank you for sharing the insights. I am at a stage where I am trying to select a platform for my new business namely organic products store ... Based on your experience would you still recommend SqSp for this purpose or do you believe I will be better off with Shopify? Thanks

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Paul, could you add to your list of features Squarespace lacks, the shipping features? That's where I'm thinking about switching a client to another platform. Shipping issues are driving us nuts.

Part of it is the inability to test carrier-calculated shipping on a site copy with just a few products. The only option seems to be to add dimensions to over 400 products of varied sizes, just to test to see if it works well for my client's needs. 

The other big shipping issue is carrier-calculated shipping for foreign sales.

Edited by CatherineJoMorgan
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  • 5 months later...

Hi!!! Can we PLEASE get some help with this? Although I'd love to display 10,000 products in my shop, my customers can't stand sifting through even 20 products let alone 200. The search bar doesn't really cut it and since I've already purchased the advanced plan I'm really not okay with spending more on coding or plug ins. Are we waiting for a contract to end? I'm confused why they have a plug-in but aren't offering to advanced plan members at least. I love squarespace and brag about how it's better than shopify but for shops... We need help managing this. 

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15 hours ago, Radicalthrifts said:

Hi!!! Can we PLEASE get some help with this? Although I'd love to display 10,000 products in my shop, my customers can't stand sifting through even 20 products let alone 200. The search bar doesn't really cut it and since I've already purchased the advanced plan I'm really not okay with spending more on coding or plug ins. Are we waiting for a contract to end? I'm confused why they have a plug-in but aren't offering to advanced plan members at least. I love squarespace and brag about how it's better than shopify but for shops... We need help managing this. 

Not sure what help you're asking for. What I did for a client with a lot of products was figure out the best way (from a prospective customer's point of view) to organize the products into product pages, and within those, into categories. I added tags to make it easier for me to filter products for blog pages and summary blocks. This can be hard work, but it's just part of the job. Some 7.0 templates make this easier than others. See https://www.phelpsrefinishing.com/ for my example. The Bedford template I used makes it easy to navigate categories within a menu item.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 5/20/2021 at 11:37 AM, CatherineJoMorgan said:

7.0 templates make this easier than others. See https://www.phelpsrefinishing.com/ for my example. The Bedford template I used makes it easy to navigate categories within a menu item.

In 7.0 this may be the case (and even it is clunky to a degree, but for smaller stores I am fine with it) but 7.1? No. Every complaint on this page resonates soundly with my experiences and agree that Squarespace needs to address this severely lacking platform, especially WRT to eCommerce sites.

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  • 1 year later...
On 11/20/2020 at 8:26 AM, 44degreesnorth said:

@paul2009 could you share where that Universal Filter plugin is from in your first post on this thread?  I'd love to install that for clients.

 

[UPDATE! Found it here: https://www.squarewebsites.org/products/universal-filter]

Does this work for sorting by product size?
Example, I'd like people to sort by size of what's in stock:
https://www.pinestreetcreative.com/shop/spirit-wear/batavia-bulldogs-2022

Edited by PineStreetCreative
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  • 1 year later...
10 minutes ago, Scottytea said:

Any updates for sorting?

As of this time SS does not provide native sorting features.

You can of course use the Universal Filter plugin.

Find my contributions useful? Please like, upvote, mark my answer as the best ( solution ), and see my profile. Thanks for your support! I am a Squarespace ( and other technological things ) consultant open for new projects.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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