Squarespace vs The Competition: What Your Data Says

When we built our payment method preferences feature, we didn't expect to discover that nearly 40% of successful Squarespace transactions would come from digital wallets. But the real surprise? Most store owners had absolutely no idea.

The Challenge Nobody Talks About

I was on a call with Sarah, a jewelry designer running her Squarespace store for three years. She was frustrated. "My cart abandonment rate is killing me," she said. "I've A/B tested everything—product photos, descriptions, even my shipping costs. Nothing moves the needle."

I asked her a simple question: "What payment methods are your customers actually using?"

Silence.

"I... I don't know. Credit cards, I assume?"

This conversation happens more often than you'd think. We've talked to hundreds of Squarespace merchants who obsess over product pages and email sequences but have never once looked at how their customers prefer to pay. It's the blind spot that's costing them conversions.

What the Data Revealed

When we started analyzing payment data across Squarespace stores, we expected to see the usual suspects: Visa, Mastercard, maybe some PayPal. What we found instead completely changed how we think about checkout optimization.

Here's what the numbers showed across 200+ stores:

But here's where it gets really interesting: stores that prominently displayed digital wallet options at checkout saw 23% lower cart abandonment than those that buried them or didn't offer them at all.

The Surprising Insight

We dove deeper into the data, and one pattern kept emerging. It wasn't just about which payment methods customers used—it was about when they chose to use them.

Mobile shoppers hitting an "Apple Pay" button converted at nearly 2.3x the rate of those filling out card forms manually. Desktop users who saw PayPal as an option were 40% more likely to complete checkout than those who only saw card fields.

The insight hit me during a product demo with a home goods store owner. She pulled up her Squarespace backend and showed me her checkout settings. Apple Pay? Enabled. Google Pay? Enabled. But when I loaded her store on my phone, I had to scroll past a wall of shipping information and card input fields before I even saw the digital wallet buttons.

"How many of your customers do you think give up before they scroll that far?" I asked.

Her face went pale.

That's when we realized: it's not enough to offer payment options. You need to know which ones your customers actually prefer, and then make those options impossible to miss.

Taking Action: What We Tell Every Store Owner

After seeing these patterns across dozens of stores, we developed a framework that's helped our clients dramatically improve conversion rates. Here's what actually works:

1. Know Your Numbers First

You can't optimize what you don't measure. I always tell merchants to start by running a payment preferences analysis on their existing transaction data. This takes about 30 seconds and reveals exactly how your customers prefer to pay.

One fashion boutique we worked with assumed their professional clientele preferred traditional credit cards. The data showed 34% were using Apple Pay. They'd been optimizing for the wrong 66%.

2. Match Your Checkout to Your Audience

Once you know your numbers, the next step is adapting your checkout experience. If 40% of your mobile customers use digital wallets, those buttons need to be front and center—not hidden below the fold.

We helped a Squarespace electronics store reorganize their checkout flow. They moved Apple Pay and Google Pay buttons above their card input fields on mobile. Cart abandonment dropped 19% in the first week.

3. Test, Measure, Repeat

Here's where most people stop, and it's a mistake. Payment preferences shift over time—especially as new technologies emerge and customer demographics evolve.

I recommend running your payment analysis at least quarterly. Set a recurring reminder. Make it part of your routine, like checking your cash flow (speaking of which, understanding when payments actually hit your bank account is just as critical).

4. Don't Forget the Low-Hanging Fruit

Sometimes the fix is absurdly simple. One Squarespace merchant we consulted had PayPal enabled but didn't realize it wasn't showing up on mobile. A five-minute settings adjustment increased mobile conversions by 12%.

Another store discovered that 8% of their customers were trying to use Afterpay, which they didn't offer. Adding it took less than an hour and immediately captured sales they'd been losing to competitors.

Results and Lessons Learned

Three months after we started helping Squarespace merchants optimize their payment options, the results spoke for themselves:

But the biggest lesson? Your customers are already telling you what they want—you just need to listen to the data.

Sarah, the jewelry designer I mentioned earlier, ran her first payment analysis and discovered that 42% of her successful orders came from mobile shoppers using Apple Pay. She'd been spending hours perfecting desktop product photography while nearly half her customers were buying on their phones with a single tap.

She redesigned her mobile checkout, prioritized digital wallet options, and added Google Pay. Two months later, her cart abandonment was down 24% and her mobile revenue was up 31%.

"I can't believe I was ignoring this for three years," she told me. "It was right there in my transaction data the whole time."

Your Next Steps

If you're running a Squarespace store and you've never analyzed your payment method preferences, you're almost certainly leaving money on the table. The good news? This is one of the easiest wins you'll ever implement.

Here's what I recommend doing right now—not tomorrow, not next week, but today:

  1. Run a payment preferences analysis on your last 90 days of transactions. Our analysis tool pulls this data directly from your Squarespace store and breaks it down by device type, order value, and more.
  2. Identify gaps. Are customers trying to use payment methods you don't offer? Are digital wallet buttons buried in your checkout flow?
  3. Make one change. Don't try to fix everything at once. Pick the biggest opportunity and implement it this week.
  4. Measure the impact. Give it two weeks, then run the analysis again. Track your cart abandonment and conversion rates.

The stores that win aren't the ones with the fanciest designs or the biggest marketing budgets. They're the ones that pay attention to what their customers actually do—and then make it easier for them to do it.

Want to see exactly how your customers prefer to pay? Run the payment preferences analysis now. It takes less time than brewing your morning coffee, and the insights you'll get are worth hundreds—if not thousands—in recovered revenue.

And if you're serious about optimizing your entire Squarespace analytics stack, check out our full service offerings and step-by-step tutorials. We've helped over 200 stores turn their data into action, and we'd love to help you do the same.

Because at the end of the day, your data is already showing you the path to better conversions. You just need to look.