September 2019 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 September, read more below!

Week: September 3 - September 8

Google Recaptcha For Donations

Beginning today, September 9, you and your clients who accept donations will have the option to add Google reCAPTCHA to your Donation checkout page. Enabling this option adds an “invisible” reCAPTCHA, which only displays if it detects suspicious behaviors or traffic patterns on the page.

Once this feature is live, you can enable it in the External API Keys panel. Note that if you’re not using a plan that supports Checkout on Your Domain, you’ll need to disable domain validation in your Google reCAPTCHA settings.

Strong Customer Authentication

Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is a new requirement within a European regulation called Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) that makes online payment processing more secure. This requirement goes into effect on September 14, but you and your clients don’t have to take any action.

Squarespace is fully compliant with PSD2 and we’ve already built a two-factor payment authentication into Commerce checkout, called 3D Secure. This extra layer of security will help verify a customer’s identity and protect merchants from fraudulent payments.

Squarespace will update the forum with more resources as we have them..


Week: September 9 - September 15

Transactions API Beta

Squarespace launched a beta of Transactions API, which you can use to build apps and integrations that pull transactional data about orders, refunds, and donations. The API also supports exporting order data to accounting systems.

If you’re a developer interested in building transaction-related apps or integrations, see the announcement post to read more and to sign up. You’ll need a site on the Commerce Advanced plan to generate API keys

Display Related Products

You and your clients can now display related products on a product details page. Enable the feature in Inventory settings, then choose whether the related products are random, recently added, or the most in stock. This is available on the Commerce Basic and Commerce Advanced plans.

Squarespace is especially excited to launch this as it’s been a frequent feature request from Squarespace merchants. Many people were adding Summary Blocks to display related products, and can now use this feature instead of the manual workaround.

Strong Customer Authentication

As Squarespace mentioned last week, Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) went into effect on September 14. On Commerce sites, this means customers with credit cards issued in the European Economic Area (EEA) might see an extra authentication step during checkout. This could be a pop-up in their browser, a push notification from their banking app, or a similar notification. The exact authentication process depends on the customer’s bank.

Squarespace is already fully compliant with SCA, and you and your clients don’t need to take any action.

Week: September 23 - September 29

SEO And Social Image Settings For Portfolio Collection Items

Portfolio collection items in version 7.1 now have SEO and social image settings, which you can use to improve your content’s search rankings and preview how your content appears when it's shared on social platforms.

Set Image Width In Email Campaigns

In Email Campaigns, you can now change the width of images in Image, Blog, and Product sections, using the Image Sizing setting.

Checkout Page Visual Refresh

Squarespace made a small design update to the Checkout Page for consistency across the platform. If you share screenshots or screen recordings with clients, you may need to update your materials to reflect the new design.

Browse Freely

Squarespace retired Browse Freely, a tool that helped customers find their browser specifications. Instead, you can use their Help Center to see a list of supported browsers, and visit your browser’s settings to see its specifications.