SHOP PAGE: LESSON TWO
Customizing Your Shop Page
Customizing your Shop page can feel overwhelming if you’ve never worked with Squarespace’s e-commerce features before. But don’t worry — this lesson will guide you step-by-step through updating your Shop page so it feels professional, inviting, and perfectly tailored to your books and brand.
Your template is designed a little differently than Squarespace’s default e-commerce setup — and that’s intentional.
Squarespace includes a built-in Store page, but the design options there are very limited. You don’t have much flexibility to adjust layout, spacing, or add creative design elements. To give you more control over how your Shop looks, your template is structured like this:
Unlinked Store (Back-End): This is a hidden Store page in your Unlinked section. You’ll use this to add and manage your products (title + checkout link/price). Readers never see this page.
Custom Shop Pages (Front-End): Your Shop is actually a folder that contains three individual pages (Series 1, Series 2, and Series 3). Each page uses a combination of image blocks, text blocks, and product blocks. Only the product blocks are connected to the hidden store (showing price + Add to Cart), while everything else is styled separately for full design control.
Why This Matters:
You get the best of both worlds — Squarespace still manages the products and checkout process through the hidden store, but you have full creative freedom to design the Shop page your readers see.
This setup allows for more on-brand styling, which is especially important for authors who want their site to feel polished and unique.
In this lesson, you’ll first load your books into the hidden store, then connect them to the visible Shop page, and finally adjust the design so your storefront feels clean, professional, and reader-friendly.
Step 1: Add Your Products to the Unlinked Store
Go to the Unlinked section in your Pages menu and open the Store page.
For each book or product, add a new item.
At minimum, include a title and price.
Adding product descriptions and images here is optional — readers will never see this page. You’ll add all images, blurbs, and design details directly to your visible Shop page in the next steps.
make sure your checkout and payment options are set up under Commerce > Payments. we will go into more detail about this in the next lesson.
Step 2: Connect Products to the Custom Shop Pages
Your visible Shop pages are built from multiple block types:
Image blocks for your book covers.
Text blocks for your book titles and blurbs.
Product blocks (with only “Price” and “Add to Cart” turned on).
What the product block does:
It pulls pricing and checkout functionality from your hidden store.
Readers won’t see titles, descriptions, or duplicate covers within this block, just the price and Add to Cart button.
How to swap placeholders for your own product block:
Open one of the Shop pages (Series 1, Series 2, or Series 3) in edit mode.
Hover over a placeholder product block and click Edit Block.
Select the correct product from your hidden store.
Make sure only Price and Add to Cart are toggled on.
Save your changes.
How to update the rest of the content:
Replace the placeholder image block with your actual book cover.
Update the text block with your book title and a short description or tagline.
Edit button styling (font, size, color) in Design settings so the Add to Cart button matches your brand.
step 2.5: Rearranging Your Shop Pages
Your custom Shop is built for flexibility. Instead of locking you into one design, it’s designed with pages and sections you can duplicate or delete depending on how many series and books you have. Here’s how it works:
1. Shop Folder Structure
Your Shop is actually a folder with three pre-set pages: Series 1, Series 2, and Series 3.
Each page is already formatted to display one series of books.
What to do with the series pages:
If you have 3 series, use the three included pages as-is.
If you have more than 3 series, duplicate one of the Series pages and rename it for your extra series.
If you have fewer than 3 series, delete the extra Series page(s) so your navigation is clean.
2. Book Sections Within Each Series Page
Each Series page is preloaded with 4 book slots (sections).
Each slot is made up of:
an image block (cover),
a text block (title + blurb), and
a product block (price + Add to Cart).
What to do with the book sections:
If your series has 4 books, use the existing setup.
If you have more than 4 books, duplicate an entire section (image + text + product block together). This keeps formatting consistent across your page.
If you have fewer than 4 books, delete any extra sections you don’t need.
3. The Duplicate Button Is Your Best Friend
Duplicating is the easiest way to keep everything styled consistently.
To duplicate: hover over a section, click the Duplicate Section button.
Then just swap in the new cover, title, and product block.
This saves you from rebuilding formatting from scratch and ensures your Shop stays uniform.
4. Reordering Series or Books
To change the order of series in your Shop, drag and drop the Series pages inside the Shop folder.
To change the order of books within a series, drag and drop entire sections up or down.
This is especially helpful if you want to highlight a new release first or reorder a series when you add a new book.
Step 3: Adjust the Design and Layout
Since these are regular pages, you can style everything however you like.
Add banners or dividers between series.
Adjust spacing between rows for a polished look.
Experiment with the number of books per row until it feels balanced.
Step 4: Test Everything
Click through each book to confirm the price and checkout process works.
Test each Add to Cart button and walk through the process to confirm payment settings.
Save your work.
Action Steps
Add products to your hidden Unlinked Store (title + link/checkout setup).
On each visible Shop page:
Replace placeholder image blocks with your covers.
Update text blocks with your book titles and blurbs.
Connect product blocks to your store with Price + Add to Cart turned on.
Duplicate or delete sections/pages to match the number of series and books you have.
Style and arrange blocks into a clean, branded layout.
Preview on desktop and mobile.
Test all buttons and checkout links.
