How to Sell Online and Allow for Pickup Orders

[Tom]

This post was updated by a community moderator on April 20, 2020 to reflect app improvements and feature enhancements.

Hello Seller Community,

As news changes by the minute, I see the new reality of social distancing changing my corner of the world. Our team also heard from a few restaurant owners within the Seller Community across the country and we wanted to offer some solutions that can help you find new ways to reach your customers.

If your restaurant faces reduced foot traffic or if your local government instructed you to pause operations, Square Online can help you continue with orders by enabling curbside pickup and local delivery.

How it works:

1. Your existing Item Library automatically imports into your Square Online site.
2. Customer orders made via Square Online connect directly with your Square Point of Sale system.
3. You won’t have to change your current process and can go forward with accepting online orders quickly.
   
   

If you haven't tried Square Online, check out this video for a comprehensive setup guide. Store owners and similar businesses should check out our tutorial for retailers instead.

For more specifics on enabling these features, have a look at these resources:

• Turn on Curbside Pickup
• Turn on Local Delivery 
  
  

As we come together to face these challenges, I continue to be inspired by my friends, family, and my favorite local businesses. If any other sellers have questions or insight on what's worked well so far — please weigh in below.

Hope this helps you navigate through the days ahead, and we'll certainly keep you updated as we're able to remove obstacles!

[LucabeCoffeeCo]

Hi @AdamB, I went online and started setting up a Square Online Store, thinking i could link to it or integrate it into my existing Wix website, but I don't see an option for that anywhere.  Literally spent 3 hours this evening building out menus and pictures and categorizing, and now it won't work... I'm not just going to throw away my existing website.  Do you have any solutions?  I'm happy to add a redirect link from my homepage to it, but not going to reassign my domain name...

[jmking]

@LucabeCoffeeCo You can publish your Square Online Store at a personalized square.site subdomain name for free. For example, you could likely get lucabecoffeeco.square.site - then just link a button on your Wix site for "online ordering" to your Square Online Store ordering site.

What some sellers with existing sites do who want their Square Online Store to appear under their custom domain is to set up a subdomain (like order.yoursite.com), and publish their Square Online Store to that subdomain. There are instructions for how to do that in this article on how to use a custom subdomain for your online store. 

[LucabeCoffeeCo]

Thanks @jmking.  I've tried searching for a way to add an online transaction fee to help offset the very high transaction fee (we're a coffee shop, so 2.9% + $0.30 / transaction is a killer), but I can't find that option anywhere.  I think there is a $0.30-0.50 value in adding a curbside option for us running it out to their car.  

Can you please instruct me on how we can add this in while not simply burying it in the cost of each individual item - which would take forever to implement and be too high for multiple items on a transaction.

Also, looking for a way for the customer to identify the color of their car instead of having them call us - when we have higher volume, calls are impractical.  Can you pass that information onto a transaction somehow?

Thoughts?  I am about ready to launch!

[Vibe]

We have done that with our curbside delivery site. It works great. At the end of an order, our customer can write a note (which we prompted with questions) telling us what make, color and type of vehicle they have. 

You can check out our site if you wish. 

https://vibecoffeeetown.square.site/?fbclid=IwAR2dawz4Ja5vOn05DAyyDPhgAKsv1gnMF5tAmRJxN63zzFk0A56MdG...

I did not add an upcharge to orders but I agree, it is rather pricey but I figure I am getting a free website, so consider this a price to pay. 

It all is great when it processes correctly. BUT! We have been up and running for 5 days and it is declining about 70% of our online orders. I was told there were engineers working on it on Monday but have not heard anything more from them. 

[jmking]

@Vibe Unfortunately, I can't think of a good workaround for applying a global surcharge for pickup/curbside orders.

Sometimes what sellers do who want different pricing online versus in-store, is they create a new location in the dashboard called "Online" and use price overrides for that location. Then they associate the Online location with their Online Store.

This doesn't work well if you want to keep tracking inventory in a centralized location, however. It also doesn't work well if you have multiple pickup locations (as you end up having to make clone locations for each pickup location just to do the pricing overrides).

[bodegawinebar]

We already have the online store set up, but it is the "current online store" not the "new online store" which i believe is weebly. I am sorry for asking the same question 100x but you are saying we have to switch to the weebly version to allow customers to tip when ordering ? We are a wine bar and do not have the need to use the restaurant system, but the normal Square POS has worked great. People have been able to order bottles of wine togo on our website and come in and pick up, only problem is tipping. Clarifying there is no option to add tipping to the "current online store"

[jmking]

@bodegawinebar That's right - there is no tipping option in the original version of Online Store.

Most Online Store sellers have been invited to migrate to the new Square Online Store. If you visit the online store section of your Square Dashboard, you should see a prompt inviting you to check out the new Square Online store.

It should be a fairly seamless process to switch over, and you can preview the new site and make changes without affecting your current site until you decide to publish. There are more details in the FAQ here: https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/6647-upgrade-your-online-store-faqs

[genesisanna]

Is there a way to list 2 or more locations at the time of checkout so that the customer can select which location they would like to pick up from?   We are a rural farm wanting to set up multiple drop points in the city that could be different depending on the day of the week. Thanks in advance!

[jmking]

Yes! As long as you configure each location in the Square Dashboard, they'll become available to enable pickup in Square Online Store. You can even set up which days and times each location is open!

[PanzerGor]

Are customers able to use e-cards or discount counts when they place an online order for pick up? This would help a ton.

[jmking]

Square Gift Cards and/or Discounts configured in the Square Online Store both work for pickup!

[AdamB]

Check out this article in on Square gift cards for your Square Online Store to set those up, @PanzerGor!

[Mai]

I’m a taxi driver using square how can I benefit using your help like curbside delivery 

[Jenjer20]

i am happy y'all are doing something to help, but I'm curious how on Earth, all of us hairstylist/barbers can benefit from any of that? And some of us have loans from you to pay back. 

Please help in Texas

[AdamB]

Thanks for posting, @Jenjer20! We're evaluating all options to help sellers, but don't have anything new about loans to announce at this time.

[Jenjer20]

But I received an email from square capitol telling me they would be taking out my 19% from my daily sales, through the end of March, but they did anyway....

[Jenjer20]

Sorry, that should say "they would *NOT* be taking out".

[Jenjer20]

Where can I post that email so that everyone can see it and understand what I'm talking about?

[TremontCoffee]

Several of those business's here in my local area are selling online gift cards gift certificates etc..

we're all going to have to be more creative right now.  Try selling products that you carry in your store online or offer for pickup.  People are still washing there hair  or need hair care products etc from home.

The other part of this is take the down time to get yourself and your business primed to take advantage of the business when we all start getting back to normal. 

We all need to find a silver lining in this situation or we're going to crazy.. 

I wish you well, 

Mark

[Jenjer20]

That's a great idea, unfortunately, I do not have any of my retail yet, as I just started leasing vs. commission January 2020, and it was already an established men's grooming salon with retail that I sold out of, and was just about to bring in my brand, and this happened,. Not to mention the owners of the building decided to close the whole shop down, for good, tonight! So now I have nowhere for my clients to go, and don't think I'll be able to get in anywhere with everything shutting down now. Soooooo. 

Great idea, for a normal situation. Lol

[jhavens]

You added a button ALLOWING customers the ability to define a pickup time (Which is Awesome).

Can you please allow a button to force ALL orders to require Pickup Time?  (Which would dramatically improve our ability to determine labor force needs - if any at all)