How to Make Hidden Products Available via Direct Link on Squarespace
Have you ever wanted to offer an exclusive product, a special discount, or a private service on your Squarespace website, accessible only to people who have the exact link?
If you've tried to do this by setting a product to Hidden, you likely realised very quickly that the direct link stops working entirely. Here is why that happens - and the exact workaround you need to use to successfully share secret products.
The Word "Hidden" is Misleading
When you go into your Squarespace product settings and change the visibility to "Hidden," it's natural to assume it simply removes the item from your public shop grid. Unfortunately, the terminology used here is incredibly misleading.
In Squarespace, setting a product to "Hidden" doesn't just hide it visually; it completely unpublishes it and removes it from sale. Even if you send a customer the exact, direct URL, they won't be able to view or purchase the item. Essentially, "Hidden" actually means "Disabled" or "Inactive."
So, how do you create a product that is active, removed from your main public shop, and only available to those with the link?
The Solution: Create a Private Shop
To make products available exclusively through a direct link, you need to place them in a separate, completely hidden Store page.
Crucial First Step: Make sure you create this new shop page first before you try to move any existing products into it! Squarespace will not give you the option to move a product unless the destination store already exists.
Here is the step-by-step process to set everything up:
Step 1: Create a Store in the "Not Linked" Section By placing a store in the "Not Linked" section of your site, it won't show up in your main navigation menus.
Open your Squarespace Pages panel.
Scroll down past your main navigation to the Not Linked section.
Click the + icon and select Store.
Name it something for your own reference (e.g., "Secret Links" or "Private Products").
Step 2: Hide the Shop from Search Engines You don't want Google to accidentally crawl your private store and show your secret products in public search results.
In the Pages panel, click the gear icon next to your newly created private Store page.
Click on the SEO tab in the left-hand menu.
Scroll down and toggle on Hide Page from Search Results.
Click Save.
Step 3: Add or Move Your Product Now that your private store exists, you can populate it.
To Add a New Product: Simply open your new private store and click the "+" icon to create a new product as you normally would.
To Move an Existing Product: Go to your Selling > Products (or Commerce > Inventory) panel. Check the box next to the product you want to relocate. An action bar will appear at the bottom of the screen—click Move, select your new private Store, and confirm.
Step 4: Disable Product Breadcrumbs Do not skip this step! If you have multiple secret products in your private store, a customer viewing one product might see navigational breadcrumbs at the top of the page (e.g., Home > Secret Links > VIP Coaching). If they click the "Secret Links" text, they will be taken to the grid displaying all of your hidden products.
Open one of your private products in preview mode.
Click Edit in the top left corner of the site preview.
Hover over the product details and click Edit Design.
Look for the Breadcrumbs toggle and switch it Off.
Save your changes.
Share Your Direct Link!
You're all set! Your product is now live and fully active, but completely invisible to casual website visitors and search engines. To share it, just go to the product page, copy the URL from your browser's address bar, and send it directly to your VIP customers.
Summary
This article explains how to make products available via a direct link on Squarespace. It clarifies that the native "Hidden" visibility setting actually unpublishes the product entirely. To solve this, users must create a separate Store page in the "Not Linked" section, hide the page from search engine indexing, and move their products into it. It also outlines the importance of creating the new store before moving products, and provides instructions on how to disable product page breadcrumbs so visitors cannot navigate back to the hidden store grid.
