[CA] Q&A with the Customers team: How can we meet your business branding needs?

[Tom]

Hello Seller Community — we want to hear from you!

I'm thrilled to invite you to this Q&A session focused on business owners who are looking to take their brand to new heights with Square. On March 15, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. PDT, we will host a discussion within this thread where you can share your insights on how we can improve Square products to help you elevate your brand.

Joining us for this discussion is @skhan, a seasoned product manager on the Customers team. With her prior experience in branding and strong seller empathy, Sarah understands the challenges that come with managing branding features, such as adding logos and customizing receipts. She and her team are working to enhance the branding experience, and they want to hear from you!

How to participate — we would love to know more about:

• Branding-related tasks that take up too much time to complete.
• Branding-related tasks that you cannot accomplish with the current set of Square tools.

Click Reply below to make your post ahead of time, and we will do our best to respond to as many posts as possible on Wednesday, March 15! After the event, we will summarize your questions and responses about your “tasks” in a follow-up post!

Note on account-specific questions: For your privacy and security, we are not able to address issues related to specific account status details in our public forums. If you need account assistance, please contact the Customer Success team and they'll be able to take a deeper dive.

[TechEspresso]

I think “real world” advertising is key. We have done everything under the stars in regards to digital advertising with some good results, but when consumers see your brand in the real world, it sure drives it home. What are your opinions on this and how can square help?

[Shambhala]

This is a great question. I second this question.

[skhan]

Hi @TechEspresso - Thank you for bringing this up! Square is exploring opportunities to help sellers deliver consistent and cohesive branding across all Square customer touchpoints (POS, printed receipts, digital receipts, loyalty, gift cards, etc.). In doing so Square would be able to help sellers manage their brand elements (logo, color, etc) within Square and express it across our customer touchpoints in a manner that is consistent with “real world” branding across other touchpoints (e.g. advertising).

[JamesY]

I would like to be able to brand according to the different arms of my business. I have an umbrella company set up with square. I have two companies that I run.

Square does not let me set up two separate Square accounts with the same bank account. So, I only have one Square account.

Square does not let me send alternately branded invoices. So, I can inly send one invoice with one brand.

This means that, either 50% of my customers get a confusing invoice with the wrong company name and logo attached. Or, all of my customers get a confusing invoice with both my company name and logos attached.

If the two business were related then it would be less of an issue, but they are not. 

Solution .....

1 - Add the functionality to set up differently branded invoices
2 - REPORTING: Allow us to 'TAG' customers. This means we could use tags to reported on different sections of customers.
3 - BRAND INVOICES: Tagging a customer would also allow us to send the alternate invoice branding according to tag.

Just setting up the ability to choose which branded invoice would be great.

Thanks in advance. 

[skhan]

Hi @JamesY - Thanks for taking the time to share this feedback with us. Today, brands are associated with locations which may be what is limiting your ability to select the brand elements you intend to use for each different arm of your business. We have heard this feedback before and are currently looking into how we can support sellers, such as yourself, to have multiple brand identities for their business. We do not have a timeline yet for when improvements would be available, but every bit of feedback we get helps us decide what’s important. Thanks again for this input and for your patience as we work to improve support in this regard!

[challam]

Re: Branding

• Building an online presence has taken longer than anticipated. Linking my Square Account & setting up an online store with my Shopify website has proven to be more challenging than I thought it would be. More online resources and videos on linking across these platforms and Instagram would be incredibly helpful.
• Also, a method of easily collecting a mailing list from customers that is built into the checkout process would greatly help
• Offering newsletter templates that link to this this list and can easily be distributed would also be wonderful

Re: POS sytem

Numerous customers that use the terminal keypad for non-tap purchases struggle with only a numerical keypad. I would suggest this be changed to the more common Alphabetical/Numerical keypad as many people remember their passcodes using letters.

[skhan]

Hi @challam - Thanks for the honest feedback. We’re always listening for ways we can help sellers with brand expression and customer engagement. We appreciate your input!

[SNI]

More customization options . Specifically for email marketing automations , appointments booking app/site .

automated client emails … 

we are very limited with square . Also no shared settings with websites as some run different brands and sites under one account 
Square helped me grow from 1 to 12 locations but as I grow staying makes less and less sense . 

A cool feature would be branded apps that connect all our square services in one client facing app with company branding . 

[skhan]

Hi @SNI - Thank you for sharing this feedback! We are exploring how to improve branding and customization for sellers across all Square products and value your input here.

There will be some Marketing editor improvements in 2023, including adding Video and GIF blocks, adding more fonts and font sizes, more options for images & image layouts, etc.

Regarding the lack of shared brand settings, we understand! Rest assured that the product team is exploring ways to improve this but do not have a timeline for when changes will available just yet. Hope we can continue to support your growth down the road!

[TheGrain]

For small (very small) businesses like ours, which is profit based but also community based, I'd love to see more tiers for pricing. We're currently using the free version with our Square credit card hardware, but the pricing for what we'd like is just too expensive for us. We certainly understand Square needs to make money, but it would be great to see more pricing tiers so smaller, less profitable businesses, can get some of the features they need, like full inventory management, without the other features. Square is a great service, but this will be a game changer for us!

[GotFog]

Totally agree! very similar to my post. All I need is the google calendar sync. I cant justify paying over $400/yr for that one feature if I don't need any of the other features!

[TheLittlestGift]

Hello! One of the biggest challenges of using Square to brand my shop are the automated emails for abandoned carts, new orders, shipped orders etc. The template editing features are VERY ridged and don't offer much customization and the ability to test how it looks like is also very unreliable. I would setup the template and email myself a copy to test and it looks nothing like what I designed.

[TheEmbZoo]

Unsure if this falls under "Branding", but the tools available for the webste are, well, lacklustre.  Modifiers for items to allow the customer to customize the product are severely lacking. As of right now, there are only 2 methods of modifiers on the website, a dropdown menu, and textbox with no ITTT (If this then that) functionality.

We operate an embroidery business, and want to set the pages up to allow a customer to buy our items as blank, or with embroidered based on the information they provide. Yes, I can 'technically' set this up, but it looks awful because it displays ALL the options regardless of the selections.

Example:

We have small stuffed animals that we embroider on for sale, we add the option to have it embroidered, or not. (Drop down menu) and then a text box to allow the customer to type in what they want to have embroidered.

Now, if the customer didn't want embroidery done to the product, that's fine and dandy, but the option for the textbox is still being displayed, which leads to customer confusion, especially when there are more options thrown in the mix to allow for more customization.

If the customer chooses to not get the product embroidered, the options for the embroidery information should just not be displayed.

Additionally, more modifiers than just a drop down and text box would be wonderful..

Radio Buttons, Sliders, Calendar (Or even a format restricted textbox), Color Swatches, among many other types would be welcomed by many people I'm sure.

I get that Square is meant to be easy, and generally it is, but sometimes making things too simple, makes it more of a hinderance than anything else.

Not branding related, but being able to select multiple items in your dashboard and being able to delete the selection of products would be welcomed by many as well. You shouldn't need an export / import workaround for a feature that should be native to a system where you can have thousands of items.

Regards.

[johnobc]

Hi @TheEmbZoo,

Thanks for this feedback. Modifiers are something we’re looking at — though we don’t have a time frame on when there’ll be improvements. As we’re exploring designs for this, if it’s OK with you, would you mind if we reached out to ask you more questions?

[TheEmbZoo]

For sure! Anything to help make the platform that much more usable for different types of businesses and business needs. 🙂