What do you wish you'd known before launching your online store?

Launching an online store can be as easy as choosing your website provider, uploading cool images for your products, setting a price, and selling them or advertising them in a marketplace. However, planning your online store launch thoroughly can help you manage expectations for your business and achieve long term success. To start, some experts recommend: 

• Fully fleshing out your business idea, including researching your business name, target market, and their motivations for purchasing your products. 
• Writing a comprehensive business plan that includes an exit strategy. 
• Creating a budget and researching additional funding sources, like loans or business grants. 
• Following government regulations and guidelines for registering your business as a legal entity. 
• Building your team and creating your branding. 

Because businesses are varied and have different needs, there really isn’t a blueprint you can follow wholesale. Everyone’s timeline is different! Just check out what these startup founders told The Muse on how they fared when they started their businesses.

What do you wish you’d known before launching your online store? Tell us all about it in the comments below.

A tip for those just getting started.

Many folks focus on the design of their site first. It's natural. You want to make a pretty site to sell your product(s). Then they move onto the technical backside of payment processing and such.

I suggest flip that around! Exercise the technical backend bits first! Understand how the orders flow through the system. Run test orders where possible and real orders with an amount of a $1.00.

Get to know the flow from the customer perspective and the merchant perspective.

Once you have a better understanding of the backend proceed with developing the rest of your site.

I wish I had known that Squarespace is more of a front page for someone's Instagram account that it is a sellers platform.  Its been a pain to make more that 10 products shoppable. I had hoped they would make the commerce part of it a bit better, but it just gets worse with each update.

I can make it pretty, but I cant make the shopping any easier with the way it is.  Ill be looking at other solutions in the future.

Im not interested in "likes", I want sales.

On 7/29/2021 at 5:00 PM, Jo_SQSP said:

Launching an online store can be as easy

to stack with Squarespase at many simple questions as: POS comparative, managing store, update it and others.... 

On 8/3/2021 at 3:17 PM, creedon said:

Many folks focus on the design of their site first.

Desin not the biggest problem in commerce, you can have a gorgeous design but no sales at all  

1 hour ago, Remindable said:

Desin not the biggest problem in commerce

Exactly. Which was the point of my post.

I wish I'd known that Squarespace would put me out of business by removing core functionality from the 7.1 commerce platform without any warning. Like almost all artists, my work exists in the form of portfolios, with each piece living within a larger body of work. I relied on Pagination in the Product Detail pages of the 7.1 commerce engine for the "previous" and "next" links that allowed viewers to move between individual works in my portfolios. Squarespace removed Pagination on Product Detail pages from the 7.1 platform without any warning, despite that it had been a core part of the commerce engine carried straight through from the 7.0 platform. Every competing platform offers Pagination on Product Detail pages, including Squarespace 7.0 even. Without it, I was instantly put out of business, as each piece became a dead end road. After six months of trying every possible way to solve the problem, I finally had to shut down my 7.1 site. This is a huge blow to me personally, but it's hard to see how it benefits Squarespace when every artist, craftsperson, or businessperson wants to make it as easy as possible for buyers to see and navigate through all the products they have on offer. Even more troubling is the fact that Squarespace has now shown that they can and will remove core functionality that your business depends on at any time and without any warning. I paid Squarespace to help put me in business, and instead I got put out of business. I've been a huge fan and longtime user of Squarespace, but I wouldn't wish this experience on anyone.

I wish I would have known that the "updates" can come without anytime without any warning.

I wish I would have known how difficult it would be to facilitate subscriptions for my customers (and mine are VERY simple, so this platform has FAILED in that department).

I wish I would have known that Squarespace seems to take ZERO accountability for the areas that they fail both their customers and mine.. what does it matter if something "looks cool" if it can't make sales functional.

Beware this platform, and spend more money on a better one or build your own.

Wish I had known there is no way of integrating squarespace with a till system in the UK. Cant even find a third party. Also discovered it's impossible to create a shipping option in the UK that excludes certain postcodes. The site is built now so can't switch but if I was to choose again or make recommendations to someone else, it would not be squarespace.

I wish I'd known that Shopify is where I want to be if I'm launching an online product-based business - not Squarespace. Now, 8 years in, with nearly 50 products, I'm facing the likely (very daunting) prospect of having to move my site to another platform that has the tools I need.

I wish I knew that Squarespace wasn't integrated with my print lab (Bay Photo). As suggested, it's a good idea to reverse design your site with function and purpose in mind before you think about look and feel. Printique does not offer products (sizes and options) that I want to sell or the control/customization with how it integrates with my Squarespace store. Not saying the same wouldn't be true with Bay Photo but switching labs or website hosting providers for the right combination is not worth it, especially with limitations or unknowns. I will continue to manually build my Squarespace store and submit orders separately through my print lab. I don't benefit from a true integration but at least I have more control with product offerings and how they are presented.

I wish that I knew about the limitations of shipping with Squarespace.  Over half my customers cancel orders because I can't ship to them easily enough without losing even more money on the shipping.  This could be the deciding factor in leaving squarespace, even though I have liked it so far, until I found out 55% of people coming to my small business left because they couldn't buy anything.

The best thing I did was to do a brand building exercise to define my audience and message. I also focus on creating excellent content to attract followers. The best advice I can give is to avoid the common thinking that more is better. Having a small group of loyal followers is better than large volumes of casual users.  

I'm having a rough day as I'm brand new to a squarespace website that is a large one, about 3,000 sku's and I can't edit an order and I'm upset.

I wish I'd known Squarespace was going to scrap its concise 7.0 product interface, where everything in a tab was accessible at a glance on a single browser page, and replace it with a clumsy interface that is mostly empty space and requires a huge amount of scrolling to see all the attributes of a product.

For anyone outside the US the commerce, checkout and tax system in Squarespace is not fit for purpose. If you are not in the US don't waste your time.

Yeah, I wish I'd known that many of my customers would want an installment plan--only to find Squarespace has VERY limited availability through Afterpay. If your customers are not in the country you're in, Afterpay doesn't work for you.

I believe they would benefit from expanding/adjusting the system, but then again there must be a reason for things being set the way they are.