What features does Squarespace Commerce need to replace Shopify?
I've been working with Squarespace Commerce for awhile now because I'd love to use it to replace Shopify for many small stores. Here's a list of the top things that are keeping me from bringing these customers to Squarespace.
Free Shipping Over $xx Shipping Option
This is probably my #1 request at the moment. Squarespace allows creating Free Shipping promo codes, but you can can’t setup your store to automatically apply Free Shipping deal to orders when the customer checks out and the promo works for ALL countries, which is not good at all. Many businesses rarely offer free shipping worldwide because of the costs. It’s normally Free Shipping to the US (or whatever country the business is in). Shopify handles this in the Shipping settings so you’re able to target the deal to a specific country. It will automatically be set to the default shipping method selected if the customer meets the order requirements.
USPS Real-time International Shipping Rates
Anthony Casalena mentioned on the Squarespace Blog that this is coming in the near future. http://blog.squarespace.com/blog/new-usps-shipping-estimates-with-3d-packing-visualizations
Fedex/UPS Real-time Shipping Rates
For obvious reasons, multiple carriers are frequently used with many businesses. Fedex/UPS are commonly used for higher weight packages so it would be great to plug into those rates.
Integration with Fulfillment Apps (Shipwire/Whiplash)
I've gotten a few customers who have asked about integrating with Shipwire and/or Whiplash, which are apps that store and warehouse your products and handle everything in regards to Shipping & Fulfillment. This could potentially be solved with notification "Webhooks".
Order Notification Webhooks
There is no way to push notifications out of Squarespace. Webhooks work beautifully on Shopify and give way to hundreds of potential outbound integrations. I wish Squarespace would focus on creating a general way to get data OUT, then work on other smooth powerful integrations such as ShipStation & Mailchimp.
Mailchimp List Integration for Products
It would be great if we could connect a digital product to a Mailchimp list to create paid digital email-based products. The golden standard right now is InfusionSoft, but many businesses can’t afford it when they’re getting started. Alternatively, Webhooks would provide a solution for this.
Digital Product Content Available Only in the Email Notifications
Digital products only support the sending of a file to the customer. It would be great if we could specify some content that isn't available publicly in the product listing, but is available in the order confirmation email. This would allow us to write some simple content that gets pushed along into the email notifications using the back end Commerce email syntax.
Product Image Captions
When customizing product listings, I’ve gotten multiple requests to display image captions in the product image galleries. Right now the only way to solve it is to use a Gallery Block in the product description, which supports captions.
Customizable Shopping Cart Page
The Shopping Cart page seems to be locked down, even in Developer mode, which makes it almost impossible to do any sort of customization. I’ve come up with a few hacks to get around it, but the results aren’t as good as I’d like to see.
Customizable Final Checkout Page
This has been a common request from potential Squarespace Commerce users. Not many people like the Squarespace-branded final checkout page. Shopify locks down their final checkout page too, but they give you access to the CSS stylesheet in order to design it a bit.
Product Tags
Products support Categories but not Tags. Tags are useful in creating custom “Related Product” Queries on the Developer platform.
Support for Order Variables in Checkout Code Injection
Squarespace added the ability to inject scripts into the final checkout page via “code injection”. This is great for tracking scripts and affiliate program scripts. The problem is they only support 2 variables: OrderSubtotal and OrderID. There are some affiliate programs that require other fields. Ambassador (http://getambassador.com), which is one of the best affiliate programs on the market right now requires the Customer Email address in order to work. There should be support for other important data fields.