Squarespace product uploadsfrom your supplier’s spreadsheet

Squarespace files a product only under a category that already exists on your site, written as the end of that category’s web address: lowercase, starting with a /, like its own example /clothing/blouses. A category your store does not have comes back as “Categories not assigned”.¹ We file each product into the categories you already have and write them the way the import reads them.

Squarespace builds sizes and colours from the file itself. The title, description, categories and images go on a product’s first row, each pair of Option Name and Option Value columns makes a variant, and every combination gets a row of its own.¹ A supplier who lists each size as a separate product hands you three products to look after. We group them under one first row, with every size and colour on a row below it.

The import takes pictures only as web links, each leading “directly to the image, not a page that includes the image” and ending in a file type such as .jpg. It cannot take files from your computer.¹ Importing again cannot change images either, so they have to be right the first time.³ We open every link before the file is built and swap thumbnails for the full-size original.

Weight, length, width and height take numbers and a decimal point only, and the unit comes from your store’s measurement standard: imperial in pounds, or metric in kilograms.¹² We convert every weight to your store’s unit before the unit comes off, so nothing arrives a thousand times too heavy. A product with no weight or measurements brings “Unable to calculate shipping rates” to a store that charges postage by weight.²

Squarespace treats tags as case-sensitive: in its own example, Apples, apples and APPLES make three tags.⁴ Tags are also what a store page’s filters are built from, so three spellings put three choices in front of a shopper for one thing.⁵ We fold every spelling onto the one you choose, and several tags share a cell with commas between them.¹

When an import keeps failing, Squarespace’s help points at the formatting inside the cells and names bulleted lists, links and unusual characters as the common culprits.¹ A supplier’s description is often all three. We write each description fresh from the product’s own specifications, as plain text.

Supplier price lists often open with a company name or a logo. Squarespace’s template keeps its column names in the first row, with Product ID [Non Editable] in the first cell, and an extra row at the top stops the import with “Missing column. Add product ID column.”¹ The file comes back as Squarespace’s template, with nothing above the column names.