Are you selling online? Which website provider do you use? 🛒 🌐

[ElisabethB]

Hey, everyone! 👋
For those of you selling online, which website provider do you use, and what do you like about it? Reply and let us know in the comments below! 😊

[gourdlady2008]

I had a friend set up a website on square last year and have as yet to sell one thing from it! I'm just not sure about this online selling at all.

Katie Gourd's & More

[Quin10]

No, Currently not at the moment. However I am in the process for creating a website in order to sale online...

[SHHempWorks]

We started with register.com for our 1st website and did not like the functionality. 

We have transfered to wix, it is easier to update and looks more professional.  We use square as our e-commerce.  We were fortunate to be allowed in the CBD beta program, Square has been great for us.  I am looking forward to using more of the features available.

[StrineAndCo]

I too use WordPress + WooCommerce combination with Siteground web hosting. They have been very good. They do the updates to WordPress and WooCommerce when needed.

Fee: site hosting with Siteground

For payment gateways I use Square, PayPal and AfterPay. All of which have WooCommerce plugins that are also updated automatically.

For shipping I use the local Australia Post (no plugin) and Sendle (via plugin).

[ChicksHateMe]

I've done a lot of sites. Here are some warnings.

Don't be too cheap. I went through so many hosting companies and the growing pains it just wasn't worth it. Down time, Lag, Going out of business. It wasn't worth the savings. I like MDDhosting when I build my own sites.

DO NOT register your domain with a cheap hosting company. There are too many horror stories of them holding the domain name hostage, or outright stealing it. I've see in too many times. Best thing is just use GoDaddy, and keep it separate from the Host Companies. 

I HATE paypal. Was ok, but they've failed me too many times. I researched and decided to try Square and really like it. It has its issues, especially when it's taking over other companies and integrating them. just growing pains. 

I wasn't a fan or WordPress. I couldn't program it. I used one called e107 way back. Was easiest me to modify with simple coding abilities, but the people running it are a lil.... NM. 

There are some amazing CMS's out there thou, that can be modified easily and have great, friendly and helpful communities.  Check out opensourcecms.com for some examples.  I think if I were to really do a site again, I'd use MDD, Godaddy and A good CMS and Square for a shopping cart set-up. But I like retirement too much 🙂

So, I don't do much anymore, but I just did a set-up with Square and their weebly. After learning all the little quirks I could not believe how fast I had a site up and running, tied into my bank  and showing products ready to buy. I dunno what else is out there now, but this was so easy peasy.  

[BumblebeeCandle]

I also use Square and have not had a problem. I sell online and at craft shows.

[Zena]

I'm surprised Squarespace is not very popular. We don't sell products on it but their design and layout + commerce seems clean, modern and syncs with every platform. We have a service business but eventually I would like to start selling some products online. www.zenarose.com

[ryanwanner]

Hello @ElisabethB !

For my main coffee cafe we use the Square Online store plus the PoppinPay app. It's seamless with our point of sale--especially inventory controls--and just works. I can't ask for much more than that.

For my coffee roasterie, I use Wordpress with the WooCommerce plugin, which uses Square for the payment gateway. Part of that is because when I set it up a few years ago, the legacy online store really didn't handle shipping well at all. I know the new store does handle shipping a lot better, but the Woo plugin is really slick--I love the fact that I can manage creating and printing shipping labels directly from the Woo app. Makes order management a little slicker than what the Square environment offers.

As for webhosts, both my main website (which is still separate from my online store because it was set up long before online ordering was a thing) and the roasterie website run off of servers down in Florida. I have a good friend who hosts my sites (and keeps them updated) in exchange for drinks and food. Gotta love the barter system! I use Namecheap for my domain names--have for years and they've never let me down. They even held my hand setting up my SSL certificate on my roasterie page.

[shopfybr]

Hi Elizabeth,

We're using Square Online. I really like how seamlessly it integrates with my store inventory. It's missing some important features that Shopify offers, but if you're patient they will eventually come. In the 2.5 years we've been using it, there have been tons of new feature releases that were on my wishlist.

~Kamala

[winebrenner]

I use Wix e-Commerce and Ecwid to sell online for my clients. I just started with Square Online as a new offering to clients. Each of them have their pros an cons depending on each individual business's goals.

[BeerGunVio]

Use square integration into woocommerce. The plug-in and interoperability is ok, but just has professional website built and square has no roll back feature so if you get an issue on go live you are screwed with square. We lost 18mths sales/stock history. A gremlin in square stock history is that it is not able to be exported, it’s hidden in square somewhere and lost if products synched fail or worse still square over writes. Been on square two years and on its own for a retail unit and online it does things ok to well. Start to grow and as per above it struggles and loses you mountains of time and history and huge costs to rebuild. Added bar and the supposed restaurant feature is poor to useless, table bookings don’t work and when you sell a glass of wine it can’t offsite the size against a bottle or give true revenue versus cost analysis. Looks good in the pictures but flawed under the bonnet. Help has been terrible. 

[Bscho]

You can sell on Squaresbay.com if you have a square site.

True Amazon is terrible they never paid me and now I am having to sue them.

[coachsabina]

I use Square's website deal.  It's very user friendly and their customer service rocks! A colleague of my own had suggested I do everything in Square, and at the time I rejected the idea and went on my own.  Well after getting frustrated, confused, deceived, and tossed around on other platforms, I finally listened and tried Square's offerings. Not only was the price reasonable, but the website templates were nice and not hard to figure out, and I've called customer service a gob of times and they are very helpful. Now, I'm quick to recommend them lol

[bscottrockshop]

I use Square/Weebly.  Would you recommend adding an eCommerce service to increase online sales?  

[SammyGrace2414]

I use Shopify. I needed the ability to "lock down" my site with a password so that only certain people can access it, and I needed to be able to add manual payment methods (such as e-transfer and COD) and I wasn't able to do that with square so I had to switch. 

[zcommons]

Does this mean that if i go with a Square ecommerce site, any employee with dashboard access can access ecommerce?

There's no way to give/deny permission to access these?

[PM1973]

I use Zen Cart. This platform allows multiple forms of Payment Methods that you can select. Most of all Zen Cart is a FREE Open Source program unlike Shopify.

https://www.shadowsinthedark.com for a Sample of the Zen Cart Platform

[bscottrockshop]

I setup a domain through Inmotion Hosting about 2 years ago and have since had the domain transferred to Weebly/Square Online.  Unfortunately, since moving the domain to Weebly/Square Online our online sales through Square Online are non-existent.    This has been very frustrating, as I can't get any help or answers from Weebly or Square as to why the sales through Square Online have stopped.  I'm no computer expert, but there must be a way to connect the domain to the Weebly/Square.  Any help as to how to resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated.

[bscottrockshop]

When trying to connect Facebook Store to Square Online, I get this message.  This has been ongoing for over a month now to no resolve.  If Square is "working to get it fixed"  when is this going to happen????  I've reloaded the page too many times to mention, still to no avail.  This also happens when trying to link Tiktok to Square online.

Something went wrong.

This may be because of a technical error that we're working to get fixed. Try reloading this page.

[Bscho]

Best of luck with that I never was able. They say you have to have a business Facebook account still never able to get it to work

Add yourself to squaresbay.com instead.

[Bigbothways]

Best to connect square to Facebook store is a pixel. It took me several calls to square to get the right person to help me get straighten out.