August 2018 Squarespace Product Updates
Every week as a Squarespace Circle Member (sign-up if you regularly build client websites) we get the latest product updates sent to our email. We realized that even though this community is growing, there are a lot of other Squarespace users that don’t get these updates, so the Brad Good team wanted to compile the most important changes every month in a easy to read blog post.
If you are wondering about all of the new updates Squarespace released in August, read more below!
Week: July 30 to August 5
Squarespace in Italiano
Squarespace is now available in Italian! You can now change your account language to Italian and create an Italian site using templates in the Brine family.
Cookie banner redesign
To better align the cookie banner’s style with the rest of Squarespace, we updated its default design last week. Instead of an unstyled grey box, it’s now a black, full-width banner across the top of a site. This update might have affected any custom CSS you added to style your clients’ cookie banners.
Changes to Facebook sharing options
Facebook now restricts third-party platforms like Squarespace from automatically pushing content to personal profiles. Now you can only push content to Pages, which are typically used for businesses.
To accommodate this change, we’ve updated a few areas of the platform to remove automatic sharing to profiles. Most notably, if a Facebook profile was selected as the Push Target for a connected account, it was removed.
If you or your clients automatically push content (like blog posts) to personal Facebook profiles, there are a few alternatives. First, copying and pasting any URL from Squarespace into personal Facebook posts will always work. Or, you could create a Facebook Page and select that page as the Push Target.
Shipping zones for location-based fees and restrictions
By popular demand, more location-based shipping options are available. With this update, you can create shipping options and fees restricted to specific states or provinces—not just countries. Customers will only see shipping options available to them when they check out.
You can use shipping zones set up these common shipping practices:
Offer in-store pickup or delivery limited to a specific state
Charge more for expedited shipping to faraway states or countries
Comply with state/province laws that may ban sale or delivery of specific products
A few things to note:
This feature is a replacement for the previous country restrictions option.
Shipping zones are only available in the United States and Canada.
Restrictions by zip code aren’t available at this time.
If a store has always restricted shipping to the United States or Canada, all states and provinces are currently selected by default. If a client doesn’t want to ship to specific states, you could edit the shipping option and add these restrictions.
Week: August 6 to August 12
Accept Apple Pay for donations
Your clients can now accept Apple Pay as a form of payment for donations collected through Donation Blocks. Apple Pay is available by default for any sites already connected to Stripe. To learn more, visit Accepting Apple Pay. PayPal support for donations is coming soon.
Week: August 13 to August 20
Removed this message: “Your site may be using Premium Features…”
After hearing feedback about the experience, we removed the “Your site may be using Premium features that are not supported on the Personal plan…” message that appeared before subscribing to the Personal plan. We’re exploring more useful ways to highlight Premium features during the upgrade process in the future.
Facebook Pixel integration
Facebook Pixel is a tool that tracks visitor activity on a website to help Facebook understand and target users for ads. For example, if a visitor views a product, Pixel can read that information so you can show ads for the product to that same visitor.
Previously, setting up Pixel required injecting code, making the process prone to error. With this new integration, setup is more seamless, plus it unlocks more site data for dynamic ads and cart-tracking.
A few things to note:
If you’ve set up Facebook Pixel for clients using the old Code Injection method, that code should be removed. As long as you set it up the new way soon after, you won’t lose any previous data sent to Facebook.
The Facebook Pixel guide is updated and walks you through those steps.
In the guide, you’ll find a list of data points Facebook can access through the integration. These lists may be useful for creating site policies.
New social icon: TripAdvisor
If you work with Tourism and Hospitality clients, here’s an update to note: You can now add TripAdvisor social icons. To add the icon, connect a TripAdvisor account (in Settings > Connected Accounts) and enter the profile URL for the link.
Inventory management improvements
The Inventory panel has a new look and functionality to make managing products easier. It also lays the foundation for more inventory management tools in the future. It includes:
A new overall design
Faster load times because it’s now paginated to show 50 products at a time
Enhanced inventory search
Ability to sort products by name, stock, or price
Ability to expand to show variant information within the panel
Removed site title and description prompts from “Welcome” screens
The dismissible pop-ups asking you for a site title and description no longer appear when you start a new trial. You can still add site titles and descriptions in Settings, though the site description only appears in a few templates.
Week: August 20 to August 26
Link images in email campaigns
You can now turn images in email campaigns into links, just as you can on Squarespace websites. (This feature went live earlier this month but accidentally skipped a mention in the Weekly News.)