Should You Sell Your Products, Courses, or Programs through Squarespace?
Please note: throughout this post I have affiliate links listed for products I use myself and recommend to others like you. If you choose to use the link and invest in the software, I receive a small kickback.
You will see all of my recommendations listed out at the bottom of this post as well.
If you’re a business owner who has product offerings, online courses, in-person courses, programs, paid ebooks, webinars, etc and also have a Squarespace website, you may be wondering if you should be selling these things on your Squarespace website.
But let’s talk about exactly what I mean here.
What I am referring to is should you host your cart on Squarespace. The actual payment processor for your orders. The thing that actually takes the money from the customer and give it to you.
This is different than hosting a sales page on your website, where you give people information about the thing you’re selling.
So, the question remains: Should you host your payment processor through Squarespace (which integrates with Stripe, Apple Pay, and PayPal)?
Let’s jump in.
What I specialize in and why this matters
First off, who the heck am I? I’m Lex and I specialize in helping health and wellness professionals with all things tech. I work with online business owners and brick-and-mortar business owners on all things websites, SEO, backend systems and automations, email marketing and more. You can learn all about what I do here.
The reason I want to answer this question for you is because I’m asked about it ALL. THE. TIME.
No, really. I know influencers say this, but I truly am asked all of the time.
And TBH, I want to make it easy and I want you to be informed and make the decision that’s best for you.
What goes into selling a product on a platform, logistically?
Listen closely: there are THREE important parts when it comes to selling a product.
A sales page that has a button that links to your product
The cart to buy the actual product
The follow-up email that goes out with information about the product and a thank you to the customer
[Optional] Thank you page, which is quite handy and informative and also a nice touch
This is the ideal situation, step-by-step:
A potential customer/buyer comes to your sales page that is hosted on your website (yeah, that’s a topic for another day) and they read all about the product.
They click a button that takes them directly to the cart. ONE CLICK, people.
They purchase the product by typing in their credit card information
They get an email after they complete the purchase
…and all of this happens automatically while you are playing beach volleyball and away from your computer (okay, that’s where I am, but you may be doing something else). The point is: it happens automatically.
You’re not inputting names one-by-one, you’re not emailing them personally.
You are completely removed from this part.
Now, let’s not be confused. This is not me saying that this is passive income. Also a topic for another day. What I’m referring to is backend tech systems that allow you to have your PCF (page-cart-follow up) automated.
What tech do you need to make this happen, then?
Here’s the dealio: this is where I’m going to tell you very specific platforms to invest in. But hold off until the end of this blog post, because your determination of what you think you need may change.
Part one: Your sales page/information page
Your sales page/info page should be hosted on your website. Not some random platform (ie leadpages or whatever else).
On. Your. Website.
Platform recommendation: Squarespace, always.
PS: If you don’t have a website, I do have Squarespace templates that I built specifically for health and wellness entrepreneurs. Check out my Squarespace templates here to get started.
Simply put, this page has a button to buy on it. That button will take the person to your cart.
Part two: Your cart
The big question. of this entire blog post. I’ll break it down further below, but there are three different options for your cart.
Squarespace
ConvertKit (email marketing system I recommend… keep reading)
We will go into each of these below, so please don’t think you need all of them right away or at all.
Part three: Your email marketing system
My rec will always be ConvertKit. An email marketing system, in short, is a way for you to send mass emails. We don’t use Gmail for this and we certainly aren’t emailing our purchasers through Gmail, either.
Inside of ConvertKit, you can set up what we call automations that will lead to the following happening:
A purchase is made inside your cart (Squarespace, Kajabi, or ConvertKit)
The person gets a thank you email from ConvertKit
The main event here: what cart should you use and should it be Squarespace if that’s where you host your website?
I want to start with a few very specific points here.
You may need more than one cart (I have two different places where my carts are hosted, four if you count my call booking and invoicing software suites).
You will need to decide how much you want to spend and how much you’re willing to lose.
You will always have payment processing fees/credit card processing fees. Get over it, it’s a cost of doing business (tough love).
The software you choose and the software that I recommend all connect together and talk to each other. The automations you need to happen can happen naturally. This is what you want.
Cart options based on what you are offering:
Sometimes where our cart is located is determined by what product we are offering.
If you are hosting courses, use Kajabi for your cart
Here is one hard and fast rule for you about courses: If your product is a course, your cart should be on Kajabi. By having your cart on Kajabi, you can give folks access to the course through that Kajabi cart when they buy.
And no, please do not host your course on Squarespace. Kajabi only.
Outside of using Kajabi as your cart for courses, where should your carts be otherwise?
Here’s the tricky part and where you can make decisions.
If you are hosting your cart for courses on Kajabi, you could easily host your cart for webinars, ebooks, products, and the like directly on Kajabi too and not bother with Squarespace at all. It’s just about creating an offer in Kajabi for folks to buy the thing with and instead of a course, they’d be buying a webinar and all webinar details would be sent though your email marketing software.
But, you may choose to use Squarespace or ConvertKit for your cart instead, especially if you’re NOT payig for Kajabi already.
So, Squarespace or ConvertKit if you’re selling products outside of courses?
The bottom line: the only way you can use Squarespace is if you pay for the highest Squarespace plan (Commerce Advanced), as it is the ONLY plan that allows you to connect your Squarespace cart to your email marketing system, ConvertKit.
We need this in order to automate our info page, purchase, follow up email process.
That’s it. If you’re not willing to pay the $550+/year, then I suggest you host your cart on ConvertKit to start.
If you are willing to pay the money, then host it on Squarespace and then connect ConvertKit to Squarespace
PS: I have a course that will help you link ConvertKit to Squarespace if you DO invest in the Commerce Advanced plan on Squarespace. You can check out the course here. It’s $37 and will save you a million hours of time. I promise.
So, if you’re not willing to pay for that plan and host it on ConvertKit, you can just make a product on ConvertKit and send folks to the cart on ConvertKit rather than your Squarespace cart.
PS: I have a course all about ConvertKit, too. You can find that course here.
The payment processing fees on every platform are great, just don’t connect PayPal to Squarespace, only use Stripe and Apple Pay. PayPal tends to have high fees.
Wrapping it up, next steps, options for working with me
So, there you have it. You’ve got hard and fast rules and options based on what you’re selling and what you’re willing to spend.
But, the only options I gave to you are ones that allow you to automate the process of PCF (page-cart-follow up) to be automated.
If you want help making this happen, I’ve got you. This is one of those things that really gets me going. I’d love to help you get your upcoming launch set up, get those emails automated, thank you page and sales page built, whatever you need. I’ll drop some links below so you can learn more and reach out if you’d like.
Details for how to work with me:
Courses I recommended:
Affiliate links and software I recommend/mention:
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