Q&A: Ask Us Anything About the Square Online Website Builder!

[AdamB]

Update: Due to volume and complexity of the questions, this event was moved to Thursday October 14th so our product team had more time to research and answer your questions. Thanks for your understanding!

Hello everyone! 👋

On October 3rd at 10:30 AM PT/1:30PM ET October 14th at 10:30 AM PT/1:30PM ET, we hosted a Square Online website builder Q&A with @xuanhua, @KSA100, and @BradS-PM  of the Square Online Product team! This was a great opportunity to ask questions specifically about the website editor used by Square Online.

[#2]

Hello Everyone,

Thanks again for taking the time to share your questions and feedback!

We ended up covering quite a lot more than just the website builder, but that’s okay! Everything you’ve shared with us will help us incorporate what you need into future updates to Square Online. If you didn’t get a reply, don’t worry - while there wasn’t time to respond individually to all comments, our product managers did read them and will consider that feedback for future updates.

As we wrap up this event, we wanted to recap a few different themes that came up frequently:

Digital item fulfillment: Though not currently available, this is something we are working on for 2022!

Category and item page customization: You’d like to have more options to add content to category and item pages. Giving you more options to make your item and category pages look how you’d like is important, and something we're working on. Stay tuned for updates in the near future.

Video on item pages: Videos on item pages would add another dynamic way to show off your products. While we don’t yet have this as an option, you might want to consider adding 360º images to provide some more dynamic views of your products.

If you haven’t yet set up an online store through Square Online - it’s super easy! Click on the Online link in your Square Dashboard, then click on Get Started. Square Online will walk you through setting up your online store in minutes.

Square Online will be adding a lot of new features in the coming months, both to the website editor and to many other areas of Square Online. Thank you so much for your participation!

[xuanhua]

It looks like you want wholesale functionality. I can’t speak to that, but I’ll take it to another product manager who will find the feedback helpful. The password protection feature isn't really intended for doing wholesale.

[GourmetOnWheels]

It would be great if we can password protect pages for wholesale. I do not see the point of protecting pages for retail

René

[keicollective]

We've used protected pages for retail when we have member exclusive items. We haven't done any of our clubs/memberships since lockdown though so don't have a current example. 

I do know another user who does their wholesale as discount codes with great success! She setup the discounts to automatically apply the wholesale rate for each vendor. That way she's also not keeping different stock counts or item listings on the backend. Each vendor got their own discount code so she can track how much has been purchased during the lifetime of their code as well (since there isn't a customer account option yet). 

[telinarohrer]

Hello Adam,

I appreciate the chance to ask this. Often when I try to add items to my featured items sections, the items do not appear in the search that was generated in the online store portion even though they are readily available on my square dashboard items list and on my point of sale. I think this is due to the huge volume of items I have. It seems to favor more recently used items. I wondered if there could be a search term added that would pull only from in-stock items? Thank you Telina

[AdamB]

That sounds like it might be a bug or performance issue, @telinarohrer. Can you contact our support team so they can take a look?

[telinarohrer]

It's been like this ever since I made the switch when Weebly started to power the site--the slow editing, that is.

The delay in completing orders eventually resolves itself given enough time. 

The inability to pull up older items with the search function to add them to the website is on-going and I suspect it is because I have so many items. I've been too busy to do a chat with the tech support team. What I think would solve my issue is if they added a search parameter that gives users the ability to sort items by whether they're in stock. That way, when I bring in a new vintage of an old item, sometimes after a few years of not stocking it, add it to my stock,  update the vintage, price, and image on my POS, then it could be bumped forward in the search items like newly created items are, making it easier to put onto the website.

If I get the time to chat with someone I will do so.

[TCSlaguna]

@AdamB 

This is an issue we have consistently had as well. We also have a large item list. There are ways to try to get the items "unstuck" from the void. 

1. In Square Online, click Add from Item Library

2. Go to item from Square Dashboard -> Item, click item, Online Checkout -> Create payment link

3. Wait ten minutes

4. Go back to Square Online, search for item, make Available

If the above fails, untoggle Create payment link, Save Item. repeat steps 1-4

[AdamB]

That's definitely not ideal, but good feedback that could help figure out why it's like this. Thanks for sharing that, @TCSlaguna!

[Quetzalli]

At the moment having a Password Protected Page or area at square online is like having land that is protected by a door but no fence. Anyone can do a google search using your website name and any word inside the "secured area" and they can access it and bypass the password needed and just roam around inside the "protected section or page" Can you fix this? We tried removing all SEO from our website including each product individually. And not ideal or something you would want to do but it seemed like our only option to try and deter people we do not want inside certain sections to be able to get in it. And even removing all SEO still we are getting retail sales and we are wholesale only. So we do not want to sell single items to people jumping through the password protection. It is not working and this is a real problem, we are still building our website, it does not have our actual domain and we already have gotten people shopping in "restricted" areas, so we know for a fact that password protection does not work unless you are going through the actual website and try to get in through the door. But of course, many people get to websites through a google search, not the actual domain. So this issue won't stop until Square improves its way of securing items to be sold and also or creating peoples login that can access to specific areas that are only to be seen by an account holder. 

[mainstreetbook1]

Last week, I began having issues with my Square/Weebly website.

1. Due to having thousands of items on my site, I usually use the SKU to add items to a Featured Items section. Unfortunately, the search algorithm no longer works; , it doesn't seem to be searching for an exact match. When I plug in my 13-digit SKU, I will not see the item with the exact match at the top, and there will be hundreds of approximate results.

2. I used to be able to make edits very rapidly; the editor was responsive and I felt like I could make a new page and edit many elements in a 5 minute timeframe. Since Wednesday 10/6, every change triggers an autosave, which renders Chrome unresponsive for about 30 seconds. If I want to add or remove or change any element, it triggers a 30-60 second wait period. 

Thank you for doing this Q&A.

[AdamB]

Hi @mainstreetbook1. Your first point about searching sounds like it might be a search indexing issue. Can you contact our support team about that? With your second concern, try clearing your browser cache, quitting your browser, then opening your browser and trying again.

[ObscenicAtelier]

How can I set up a section or category with age verification?

[JJ_]

Hello @ObsenicAtelier 👋

Here are some great tips on Selling Alcohol with Square Online. But in regards to your specific question you are able to create a pop up on your site to confirm age verification. 

To create a pop-up for age verification:

1. Go to the Square Online Overview page.

2. Click Communications > Pop-ups.

3. Choose the Verify Age pop up.

4. In the Layout section, click on a thumbnail to view an example.

5. Edit the pop-up, Style and Content, and Settings to best fit the needs of your business.

6. Click the Publish button to enable the pop-up on your live website.

[byakki]

Will there be an option to customize the appearance of customer reviews and where they're placed on the item listing? Having an option to feature reviews as automatic slides in a module would be great too.

[KSA100]

Thanks for your question @byakki. That’s great feedback and will definitely take your suggestion into consideration.

[thoctagon]

Currently, you can only apply coupons to specific items or categories.  I do sales by the Vendor. So in order to create a coupon I have to search for and select each individual item for the Vendor I am discounting.   It would be so easy to just say - everything by VENDOR is 15% off - and select the Vendor and be done. (Same question for the squareup.com side of things)

[getBackOnCourse]

I'd like the ability to be able to embed code for ads on my site for affiliate marketing purposes.

[AdamB]

Depending on how the provider wants you to embed the ads, you can do this one of two ways right now:

1. Create a Header Code for code that needs to be included in the head area of a website.

2. Use the Embed Code section to add an ad to a specific place on a page.

[getBackOnCourse]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your response. I wouldn´t want the ad to appear on every page so the Embed Code section would be the better option for me. I tried to embed an Amazon Native Shopping Ad using the Embed Code option but when I paste a code, the ad doesn´t display on the page. Instead there is a just a blank space.

Warmly,

Shannadora 

[getBackOnCourse]

There is not an option to send an automated email when users enter their email in subscription fields. It would be great to have this feature.

[getBackOnCourse]

Why can't Square Online coupons be redeemed when someone books an appointment?