Meet Our Square Online Team: How can we improve Square Online?

[Tom]

Hello Seller Community! On July 22nd from 10:00 – 11:00am PT, we hosted a Q&A within this thread where Square Online sellers had the opportunity to post about improvements they'd like to see with regard to features and services.

@Justin_N is a product specialist with the Square Online team and @AdamB is a community manager with extensive Square Online product experience. Together, they lead the session focused on how we can improve Square Online features. Learn more about Square Online.

We would love to know more about sellers' experiences with:

• Tasks related to Square Online which take you way too much time to complete.
• Tasks related to your online business which you simply cannot complete today with Square Online.

We will summarize your questions and responses about your “tasks” in a follow-up post soon!

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 our Customer Success team and they'll be able to take a deeper dive.

[SammyGrace2414]

Hi Square Online Team! 

Things I would like to see is:

- the option to add our own payment option the way Shopify does. Most of my customers prefer to pay e-transfer and do not have credit cards. Because of this I'm having to enter their orders myself. 
- The ability to hide variations of products online.
- Automatic Discounts to apply to purchases online the way they do to square retail. I don't want customers to have to enter codes for bundle discounts that are automatic if I enter manually. 
- Is square loyalty synced? I never noticed since I have to enter most orders myself. If not then I'd like it synced! 🙂 

[Jewelz4all]

• I think it's time for Square online to make it possible for us to offer our customers sezzle or any of the other buy now pay later options.  
• We also should have a way to set alerts to come to our phone when an online order is placed.  Yes I have the app downloaded and alerts are turned on but it doesn't make a sound when I get an online order. 

[Justin_N]

Thanks for the post, @Jewelz4all! We hear you clearly on the importance of “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) to enable buyers to purchase items when, without it, they’d be more-likely to abandon the cart.
My question here is, of the available BNPL providers (you mentioned Sezzle), do you have a preference? If yes, why?

With regards to the “order notification sounds”, is it specifically the sound that you’re not getting or are you not getting any type of notification at all? I’m also curious about any thoughts you may have on the need to have more-granular options around sounds (such as, being able to select a sound per fulfillment type)...

Thank you for participating today and I’m looking forward to hearing more!

[AquariusMoon]

agreed 

[Justin_N]

Hello, @SammyGrace2414! Thanks for your feedback here! Yes, Square Loyalty has been integrated into Square Online! You can read about some of the finer details here.

Sticking to the theme of “Square Integrations”, we’re on the same page as far as the desire to strengthen Square Online with the features of Square Discounts that are currently available on other Square surfaces (like, Retail POS). While Square Online has recently released powerful updates like single-use coupons, there’s clearly still a lot of work to be done on more-thoroughly integrating Square Discounts with Square Online.

When it comes to these major integrations with other Square products (like, Loyalty), the team sees them as necessary projects. There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes to bring all things Square together in a way that significantly empowers your Square Online stores.
My question to you would be, what are the other most-significant gaps that you feel between Square products?

Your point about “hiding variations” is very interesting. Do you mind going into more detail on why you need to hide variations/options, and whether there are any other “item attributes” that you’d like to be able to keep “online only” or “offline only”?

Moving on to “payment methods”, I’m curious to learn more about “pay by e-transfer” -- are we talking about ACH payments from checking accounts? If you could “add your own payment method” within Square Online, what else would you add?

When you enter the orders yourself, how do you go about doing it?

Thanks again for the insightful post and I really look forward to hearing more from you!

[MJD]

Hi Square Online Team!

Here's a task that takes far too long when it really doesn't need to (you're probably all fed up with me saying this but here goes 🤣).

PLEASE Make make digital products auto-send! I don't want my customers to have to wait to receive a product that could be sent to them immediately with PHPsendmail or whatever square use, so please, please, make these send automatically!

Also, I'd really like to see new shipping options, like the ones Printful use that prices shipping by product quantity, they then charge the highest cost as the main shipping cost and then other items at a separate lower fee for being the second item going to one place, this is a tool I need when my products are coming from different locations to the customer in one order as well as the fact that I have to ship all my products differently so no one cost fits them all and I don't want to have to overcharge on shipping just incase someone orders a more expensive product, I currently have two shipping setups using weight, but it's too inefficient.

I hope you could consider these points and you also see the urgency for such things being included in Square Online!

For more information on how I want shipping costs to work, please view this link and scroll to step 2 which explains shipping calculation in simple yet thorough steps: https://www.printful.com/shipping   

[Justin_N]

Hey there, @MJD -- thanks for participating today! You are heard! The pain around having to manually deliver digital goods is something that we’ve heard a lot about and we’re looking forward to making that experience much better. I’m curious to hear your take on the ideal experience of purchasing a digital product from you via Square Online.

I appreciate the time you took describing your ideal shipping setup, as well as the link to more information. With the pandemic, our team’s focus as it relates to fulfillments has been laser-focused on improving our pickup, delivery and self-serve offerings. There are clearly opportunities for improvement when it comes to shipping, and we look forward to tackling some of these! What else is on your "wish list" as it relates to shipping?

Thank you again for being here with us!

[MJD]

Hi @Justin_N, thanks for taking the time to reply.

My ideal experience on purchasing and selling digital products would be to have them be purchasable alongside all other products, and then for them to be delivered in the confirmation email or another immediate email. This just seems so much easier and understandable for me and the customer.

On the side of shipping I'm happy with everything but I really want shipping to be calculated based on product, it'd just make my pricing options more flexible to me and make it easier to price shipping based on which warehouse the product would be coming from.

Thanks for your time : )

[radconjon]

How does one go about getting actual help???

[FRICKENFACO]

Hello!  We use online ordering with Square for our food truck.  We would like our employees working in the food truck to be able to  turn online ordering option ON/OFF from the Square register.  Thank you

[GWTS]

ABSOLUTELY!  I KNOW THAT I COULD GET TO THAT ABILITY BUT A QUICK ON OFF BUTTON OPTION WOULD BE REALLY REALLY GREAT!  AS A FOOD TRUCK SOMETIMES WE GET SLAMMED AND CANT HANDLE ONLINE ORDERS ON TOP OF WALK UP CUSTOMERS.  ALSO IF WEATHER GETS BAD OR WE DECIDE TO START OR LEAVE EARLY I WOULD FEEL MORE CONFIDENT THAT I WAS NOT GOING TO GET AN ORDER AS IM PULLING OUT

[Jdscoffeeshop]

This is true for food truck and brick and mortar locations as well.  I also added being able to "hid/unhide" items that are not available at the time, instead of sold out.  (Food product can be "out" with out having to sell it because of accidents or shelf life.)  Maybe having a Certain special on a specific day on a  consistant basis can cause this trouble too.

[Justin_N]

Thank you again for sharing your feedback with us, @Jdscoffeeshop -- it is very valuable!!

[Justin_N]

Hello, @FRICKENFACO!  I was hoping that we would hear from some food truck operators today!!

There has been a lot of work going on with regards to improving the interface between Square’s hardware and Square Online, and there's still quite a bit of room for improvement. In addition to being able to ‘pause Square Online orders from the POS’, what other Square Online settings would you like to control from the POS?

When it comes to your Food Truck, would you mind talking a little bit about your experience with Square Online? I’m curious about things like managing your “location” or anything else that may be a bit tricky given your use-case. 

Thank you for being here with us today!

[Donnie-M]

The ability to IFTT modifier settings for scripted ordering experience.  So If the customer orders a burger, Then the option for a combo, the system will offer the choices of drink and the choices of sides.   This could be also continued to checkout where it will pop up: would you like desert?

There is one other pain point:  With the saved credit card information, a customer will get a code when they have their info on file.  Invariably once or twice a week, a customer gets the code and puts it in, but doesn't go down and click submit order.  We need something to prompt them to hit that button or tell them "click submit or your order is not done"

It happens often enough that it becomes a problem when the customer shows up looking for their order.

Thank you all for all you do and have done in the past year!!!

[Justin_N]

Thanks for posting, @Donnie-M! Just to be clear, what you’d like to see is your drink and sides modifiers show up only AFTER the buyer selects the combo modifier for the burger item? I like your description of it as “scripted” -- it makes a lot of sense to me and sounds like a great buyer experience. Overall, the entire experience of “bundling products together” is something that deserves a look from our team, and your perspective here is greatly appreciated!

Ah! Great feedback about some of your buyers feeling as though they’ve completed checkout when they’ve only verified their checkout information. This ‘saved payment information’ feature is very important to us and we’re continually working to make it better. The experience you’ve laid out is pretty rough both for that buyer and for your business, and I’ll be sure to pass it along to the team.

Thank you for your time!

[Donnie-M]

@Justin_N yes, the modifiers would show up after the "combo" is selected.  The issue we get into is needing to modify a modifier............Burger..YES...want a side item..YES...what kind of side item?   ahhh crap.  What I have been creating are modifiers that look like:

20oz drink & fries

20oz drink & fried okra

20oz drink & crispy fries

32oz drink & fries

32oz drink & fried okra

32oz drinks & crispy fries

NO COMBO

So I will have the first option pre-selected with the upcharge and the "no combo" would be the 0.00 charge item.  I have a lot of side item choices so I end up with a very long list.

Hope this helps give the team some ideas.  But scripting is great as it increases ticket totals.  Kinda like suggested add ons.

Thank you all for all you do.

Donnie-M

[jjsmeatshak1]

Hi! Thanks for the Opportunity to ASK! 

1. A way to turn ON/OFF Online orders from being accepted in Restaurant Version of Square 

2. A Way to change the Estimated Time Until Ready for ALL upcoming orders. NOT INDVIDULLY 

3. (This last one may be a bigger issue/ request) A Way/better way to mark items unviable for sale from/on our Square Registers that run Square for Restaurants. Currently... To mark an item Unavailable, we have to mark it Unavailable on the 1 Register, so that it updates to the other registers & Then having to mark it Unavailable on an IOS Device running Square for restaurants as well... In order for it to mark Unavailable online. So in total, it takes upwards of 10+ minutes to update an item to be marked unavailable. 

[DSander]

we use square restaurant. When we mark something unavailable, it's unavailable on all devices instantly. Not sure why yours is not. 

The est. time for item, is that for online ordering? If so, there is a way to set it for all items. You set the standard default timing. And then set each item on fulfillment to "use location default"

[GWTS]

I AGREE WITH THE ABILITY TO CHANGE ESTIMATED TIME UNTIL READY WORKS FOR ALL ITEMS BUT I'M PRETTY SURE THAT jjsmeatshak1 MEANT ON THE FLY WHEN GETTING SLAMMED.