Live Q&A: Ask us anything about Weebly and eCommerce

[katieand]

On Thursday, April 25th, we hosted a Live Q&A about the new Square Online Store (powered by Weebly) and eCommerce right here on this thread. We recently announced the new and improved Square Online Store. With the Square Online Store, you can manage sales tax, shipping, fulfillment, and automatically sync orders, items, and inventory between your online store and your Square account. Spend less time building and more time selling!  

When @AdamB isn’t answering lengthy threads in Square’s Seller Community, he’s helping out the people of Weebly. He’s also built his fair share of websites so understands the process that goes into optimizing sales online and telling your business’ story on the internet.  

A couple example questions:

What are some integrations that can help me attract new customers/make more sales?

Do you have any tips for improving my site’s SEO?

[AdamB]

Thanks for trying it out, @Littlepnuts , and thanks for the additional input @Briggs.

1. We’ll be adding more section types and options in the future to cover more possible ways to add content to your pages. I don’t know whether we would add any kind of drag and drop functionality, since this editor wasn’t designed with that kind of interaction in mind. We’re also going to be adding more font options.
2. The image will sync when you first add the product, whether it’s part of the initial sync when creating your store or if you add it later. After that you’ll want to manage your images from within Weebly.
3. To add, click on the footer of your site and click on the text that has the copyright. We add copyright text by default, though you can add any text you want there and add links to that text.

[Littlepnuts]

Adamsmasher,

Weebly as a stand alone would sync everyday so that any new items that you add on the Square side, new products etc, would sync with images and descriptions. Are you saying that this is not the case? That every single time we add a new product to square we will now have to add it separately and it's description and image? This seems to be really counter productive!

[AdamB]

If you create an item in Square, the image and description will both sync over just like you would expect. If you add additional images for the item in Weebly, those extra images won't sync back to Square, though, since items in Square can only have one image. Hopefully that makes more sense!

[Littlepnuts]

Thanks Adamsmasher. 

It appears this hasn't been working for me. How often do the items sync?

ie. We did a fast group product upload from a file as it was a mass amount of inventory so we could run labels quickly and put the merch out on our shelves. Now we are going back in to add descriptions and images. Will these update or am I SOL since it synced the initial import without the details..??? Please tell me it will sync the newly added image and description...pretty please! 

[AdamB]

I'm doing a test right now, @Littlepnuts - I will report back. I can say right now that it will definitely sync your descriptions if you add them after the fact, and normally syncing is pretty quick.

[Littlepnuts]

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I am holding off launching the site for this reason as well the designability and customization that I brought up prior.

I really do hope ya'll will provide more options and customizations for the website pages themselves to allow us to create a website that will also work with the online store. Versus it just being a store site. I'd like to add all the usability of our retail and online store as one. 

It's much easier to have one website vs having a square site that is linked to via squarespace site....does this make sense?

This Weebly/Square merge could be a powerhouse if those few little things could be added.

[Littlepnuts]

One to check on if you can access our site is this item:

Baby White BabyPlui Djeco

We just entered it into Square with the image and description...it synced with Weebly but is not showing the image or description in Weebly.....

[AdamB]

The description for that item should sync; it might take a minute but it shouldn't take very long.

[AdamB]

Ok, I was mistaken in regards to images. It works like this:

1. Descriptions will always sync going both ways, meaning you can edit it in Square and it will sync to Weebly and edit it in Weebly and it will sync to Square.

2. Product images are only brought over from Square when you first create your online store. Any items you add after that point will get brought over to Weebly, but without images. 

[Littlepnuts]

That stinks. That needs to change. They should both sync. It's completely counter-productive for them not to. 

I now have to put the item into square and then need to put it into Weebly. Double work. 

Please have this addressed as it makes no sense. Why not update all upon entry. If it syncs it should sync all.

Don't you think?

[Littlepnuts]

Sorry...to add on...

I mean, isn't the point of an online store to sell a product with an image. Without an image there is not point, so syncing only the description is really odd. The description, image, price and availability should all sync. It's an ONLINE STORE! Right?

[AdamB]

Oh, I don't think I was very clear in my other answer. Sorry about that! In addition to the description, the price and inventory also sync - it's only the image which doesn't. I 100% agree with you that the image should sync when adding a new item, though. I can understand why it doesn't sync the image when you are editing an existing item, but a new one isn't the same scenario.

[Littlepnuts]

Exactly. The purpose to sell an item is to show the item. The customer wants to see what they buy! 

Seriously....a priority on the list needs to be this!!!!

[Littlepnuts]

By the way. Thank you for the responses. I use exclamation points for everything so just be assured I'm not yelling at all.

However, how long do you think it would take for them to adjust the coding to sync the images and descriptions? We are about to add over 500 sku's with our new store here in a week, do you think it could be done by then? I would hate to have to duplicate efforts as this will kill me and my team might just quit on me....

[AdamB]

It would be difficult to say; it's very possible there are technical reasons why it is this way which would make it more complicated that it seems. 

Oh, and no worries about the exclamation points! 🙂

[Silverprairie]

I recently started using Weebly online store. When I get a website order, it transfers the info to my square account but it shows up in the reports as a "custom amount". How can I see the actual item that sold?

[AdamB]

Hey there @Silverprairie - If you go to the Orders page in your Square account and click on an order, it should show the items purchased there. ✅

[Silverprairie]

Thank you for responding but it never showed up in square. We were notified with an email from weebly that there was an order. But there was no order in Square. We were only able to find record of the transaction in the square by running a sales report. Is there anything else to try?

[AdamB]

Oh no @Silverprairie! It sounds like you should contact our support team directly about this. They'll be able to look into this for you.  

[flugelboy]

In a digital age when selling files is a viable option (in my case, pdfs of sheet music, but could be articles, manuals, etc) why can’t we have a store that doesn’t require an uploaded image/photo for every single item? I would love my store to just include a list of clickable titles.

[AdamB]

That’s a good suggestion, @flugelboy. It isn’t possible to completely turn off images for products right now, so what might make sense in the meantime is make a generic image that makes sense for your digital products. I highlighted this use-case to our product team a few weeks ago, too, so maybe this will change in the future!