How to Sell Memberships with the New Squarespace Member Areas
Membership and subscription programs are a wonderful addition to most businesses—especially online businesses!
I’ve shared quite a bit before about how to build membership-protected content on your Squarespace website. And while my MemberSpace set-up guide is still a handy dandy resource if you’ll be using MemberSpace to create your online membership program… there’s also a new method available to you!
Squarespace recently released Member Areas, their new membership-building feature, which can be added on to any Squarespace website. (Yay!)
I’ve recently covered what to know about the new Squarespace Member Areas, as well as a full overview of how Member Areas compares to MemberSpace, the previous method I’ve recommended for setting up membership programs on a Squarespace website.
This post contains affiliate links through which I may earn a commission if you choose to purchase, at no additional cost to you.
In June 2021, I joined the MemberSpace team (woohoo!). This article was written independently, prior to my employment with MemberSpace, and all opinions are my own. I’ve personally used MemberSpace for years, both in my own business and for my web design clients. It’s my favorite tool for creating membership-protected content!
Quick disclaimer: Just because Squarespace Member Areas is a Squarespace product rather than a third-party tool, doesn’t mean it’s innately better—there are some key differences between the capabilities of Member Areas and MemberSpace, so it’s worth checking out my membership platform comparison guide to consider which would be the best fit for your needs. 😊
But, if it turns out Squarespace Member Areas is the one for you, here’s a step-by-step guide to setting it up on your Squarespace website!
How to set up Squarespace Member Areas: a step-by-step guide
Squarespace Member Areas is a simple way to add membership-protected pages to your Squarespace website. Here’s how to get started!
1. Enable Member Areas
Member Areas is a new feature not included in your Squarespace website subscription, though it can be added on to any Squarespace plan. (Pricing varies based on how many membership-protected “areas” you’ll have—more details on Member Areas pricing here.)
You can enable Member Areas on your site via Settings > Member Areas > and toggle to on.
Squarespace allows you try out and start building your new member areas without paying for the service, but you’ll need to upgrade to a Member Area plan to begin enrolling members.
Once you’ve enabled Member Areas, you’ll see a new section appear in your Squarespace pages panel:
This is where you’ll add all of your membership content.
2. Create your Member Area
To create a new Member Area, click the + in the Member Areas section of your pages panel and follow the prompts to name your Member Area and set the fee associated with it.
Member Areas supports one-time payments, recurring subscription payments, and free memberships.
For subscription payments, you can select how often the fee will be charged (for example, every month, every year, etc.). Subscription products will be automatically billed to the member’s card on file until their subscription is canceled.
At this time, Member Areas does not support multiple payments, like a payment plan that lasts only a specific number of billing cycles, but does not continue forever.
Note: Building online membership programs is kind of my thing 😉, so I also have a detailed comparison of features between Squarespace Member Areas and MemberSpace, the membership-building tool I’ve previously used and recommended for Squarespace websites, which does include the ability to offer payment plans if you need them.
3. Create a page for your Member Area
You’ll now see your new Member Area in the Member Areas section of your pages panel. Next up, we’ll add some content to it!
To create a new page within your Member Area, click + Add Page, and add a new page just as you would create any new page on your Squarespace website. Your member pages can be standard pages, index pages (if you’re on Squarespace 7.0), blogs, galleries, product pages, etc.—any type of page you can add to your Squarespace website.
If you have another page already created that you’d like to move to your Member Area, you can simply drag it there in your pages panel.
Just note that index pages cannot be used as a Member Areas homepage (which we’ll chat about in just a moment).
4. Add content to your member page
Continue adding membership pages and adding content to your pages as needed. You can add any Squarespace content blocks to your membership-protected pages, just as you would on any other non-membership-protected Squarespace page.
Each Member Area will need a designated homepage (where members arrive to when they log in), so designate your desired Member Area homepage in your page settings.
Your Member Areas pages will retain the same site-wide design settings as the rest of your Squarespace website. (Unless you custom code them. 😏)
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5. Select your preferred member navigation option
Squarespace provides you a few different member navigation options, depending on the version you’re on (Squarespace 7.0 or 7.1).
Both versions allow you to choose between:
displaying Member Area navigation (i.e. a list of the pages your members have access to) in the Customer Account panel, which is something you can link to from your site’s primary navigation bar
or not displaying the Member Area navigation in your Customer Account panel.
(If you choose not to display the Member Area navigation there, you’ll just need to be sure members have a way to navigate to all of your membership-protected pages from their member homepage—I chat through that more in the Membership Lab, as that’s also how member navigation is set up with MemberSpace.)
If you’re on Squarespace 7.1, you also have the ability to choose having your member navigation (all the pages members have access to in the particular Member Area they belong to) replace your site’s primary navigation when a member is logged in. (Cool!)
There are some pros and cons to each of these methods—which, again, I chat through in more detail in the Membership Lab.
6. Connect your payment processor
If you haven’t already (this would be set up if you have an active Squarespace Commerce shop), connect your payment processor via Settings > Member Areas > Payments.
You have the option to collect payment from your members via either Stripe, PayPal, or both. (I use and recommend Stripe!)
Your Payments page is also where you’ll select the currency for your Member Area, if needed. If you’ll be collecting taxes from your members, you can set that up via Settings > Member Areas > Taxes.
If you’ll be offering any discounts or special promotions for your Member Area sign-ups, you can set that up via Settings > Member Areas > Discounts.
Click the + to create a new discount code, and complete the form as applicable—for example, the code, specific amount or percentage off, start and end date, etc.
Note that, at this time, Squarespace Commerce discounts apply to all Member Areas and Commerce products on your site—the same code would apply the same discount to any item (membership, product, or service) being sold through your Squarespace website.
7. Customize your Checkout screen
Your Member Areas memberships use Squarespace Commerce as their checkout process (makes sense!), so if you haven’t already for other commerce purposes, you can update your Squarespace Checkout page via Design > Checkout Page.
There’s not a ton of customization potential here, but you can add your logo and update accent colors.
8. Customize your customer email notifications
Your members will receive automated email notifications when they join (or leave) your Member Area:
a Membership Welcome Email when they join
and a Membership Cancellation Email when they cancel
These emails can be customized (somewhat 😅) via Settings > Member Areas > Customer Notifications. You can customize some of the wording and font styling, as well as the email subject line. The email footer should be updated with your business information.
Note: Member Areas does connect nicely with Squarespace Email Campaigns, if you’d like to further communicate with your members there… but it doesn’t have a reasonable integration for connecting to other email tools (like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Flodesk, etc.)—members would need to be manually exported and added to those other email platforms, which is certainly a pain, and one of the reasons MemberSpace may be a better fit for some programs.
9. Customize the Access Denied Screen
When a non-member (or not-logged-in member) happens upon a membership-protected page, they’ll, of course, be stopped from accessing it. Instead of viewing the content of the membership-protected page, they’ll be redirected to your Access Denied Screen—a specific page that allows members to log in, and non-members to sign up.
On this page you can customize the headline and description displayed. Squarespace allows you to customize a unique Access Denied Screen for each Member Area you host.
10. Add your sign-up button
We’re almost done! The bulk of your Member Area has been set up, and now we’ll need a way for new members to purchase or sign up for it.
Your Member Sign Up button is simply a Squarespace content block, which you can find by clicking the teardrop icon to add a new block to your page, and scrolling down to Member Sign Up, which you’ll find in the “More” section.
Depending on your membership program needs, you can add your Member Sign Up block to any existing page on your Squarespace website, or you could design a specific sales page for your new Member Area.
Within each Member Sign Up block, you have the ability to customize which Member Area it applies to, as well as the button text, and how much information is set to display with the button (you have the option to include the Member Area title, description and price, if you’d like).
11. Test your Member Area
And, finally, before officially launching you’ll just want to do a quick walk-through to test your new Member Areas sign-up process and content and be sure everything looks great on desktop, mobile and tablet screen sizes!
