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Website Builder Squarespace Launches New Ecommerce Tools for Business Owners 'We want to show we can compete head-to-head with major commerce competitors,' said Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena.

By Laura Entis

entrepreneur daily

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Squarespace

Squarespace, the web publishing platform, just launched a suite of new ecommerce tools for small-business owners.

Features include additional templates designed specifically for ecommerce transactions; a mobile commerce app to allow owners to manage commerce on the go; an abandoned checkout recovery feature, which sends out email reminders to customer who have pending items in their cart; and a real time carrier calculator that provides more accurate shipping estimates.

"Commerce is going to be really big with us, and we want to show we can compete head-to-head with major commerce competitors," said Squarespace's founder and CEO Anthony Casalena, a group that includes Weebly, Wix, Shopify and GoDaddy, all of which offer specialized commerce features for small businesses.

Commerce plans on Squarespace start at $26 a month.

With the new commerce product offerings, Casalena wants to enable small business owners to create sites on Squarespace where commerce is the focus, not an add-on feature. Most importantly this means updating the backend navigation for commerce sites, so that inventory and orders are highlighted over features such as website statistics and pages. When a small-business owner logs in to his or her site," it's not presuming you are building a website – it's presuming you are building a store."

On the other side of the spectrum Squarespace is launching Cover Pages, a low-price plan that allows users to host a single page website starting at $3 a month. There are many use cases – such as a 'coming soon' page for a store or business, an event page or a personal bio – where "paying $8 a month is too much," Casalena said.

Related: How the Founder of Squarespace Mastered the Tricky Role of CEO

Laura Entis is a reporter for Fortune.com's Venture section.

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