Using Square Online as my flower shop website.

[Kristyw94]

I have been with Square POS since I opened and I am constantly learning more about what all it can help me with and loving everything I have learned.  I am a small town florist and I have someone else hosting my website, but I am unhappy with them.  Was wondering if anyone has created a flower shop website with square and if so, how is the traffic?  How is the ordering and delivery?

[Donnie-M]

@Kristyw94 I think you can create a GREAT website with square.  I am working on my 3rd site for restaurants and there are lots of features and it will integrate seamlessly with your point of sale.  But  SquareSpace is NOT SQUARE.  They have a similar name but are 2 different wholly owned companies.

Squarespace is a web developer/website maker.  If you want to do a website with square go through your online dashboard and you can set it up for free and try it out.  Then you can convert it over to a paid plan for more robust marketing, custom web domain, etc.  I have integrated a square online order site with a customer who had squarespace and I found squarespace nice but more expense for not a lot of bang for the buck.  ymmv.

Hope this helps,

Donnie-M

[Kristyw94]

I was thinking it was called SquareSpace.  My mistake.  But yes website offered through the square dashboard is the one that I am talking about is Square.online.  But again, I'm a flower shop.  I have seen lots of restaurant websites with Square and those are great, I am just really curious about a flower shop website and how the traffic may be compared the traffic I have now on my website.

[Donnie-M]

Your traffic will depend alot on how you market or co-market your website.  Functionality wise, the sales part will be great if you do good descriptions and good photos of your product.  If you have an active facebook page, use that to urge people to order online.  Optimize your key words etc.  Also make sure to put that domain name on everything everywhere.  All the traffic from your old website if they are going to that domain should go right to your new host.

Couple other things, make sure you fill out your google business profile and keep it up to date.  It is free and really you don't want to miss out on the free stuff.  Check local websites and do searches like...florists in chicago, il or wherever you live and make sure if there is an aggregator website that you get listed on it.  For me it is downtownknoxville.com has all of the restaurants downtown.

[Kristyw94]

Thank you!! Another question for you.  With the website provider that I have switched to recently, one of the only things that I am happy with is the amount of addons that come with each order.  As a restaurant owner, does your site offer add-ons at the end of the purchase?  Like Dessert? There are several different options that I offer as add-ons and the increase in sales of those add-ons have been tremendous, so that is something I would like to carry over with Square but haven't seen if it is an option.  Do you know? 

[SouthgateVR]

Honestly square is great from taking payments all the way to advertising what I found that works great is creating the website with square and then going to GoDaddy to go get a domain and then forwarding square to GoDaddy is very easy

[wavychef]

Hello, so do you have a website or is there a way for ppl to see your square store?

[Windswept-garde]

Not a flower shop but we do sell flowers.  www.windsweptgardens.com  and we have an online shop now for people to order online for curbside pickup.  

we do not do much delivery but if you want to check out how flowers look online check it out.

[StuffInBalloons]

I have a flower shop/balloon business and we use the Square site for our online ordering. It has a lot of benefits and some drawbacks. They are continuously improving the options for delivery to allow us to make that process much easier on us as we add products and on the customer as they order. The biggest problem is that for delivery, there is NO OPTION for the customer to put the name of the recipient or a phone number for them - only the ordering customer's info is passed forward by the system. We created a work-around for that and include a "name of person we are delivering to" and "Phone number of person we are delivering to"  modifier and ask that they fill these in for delivery orders. (you can make it a required field if you need to). The issue is that because it's a text modifier, we haven't found a way to force it to each item in our catalog that has the delivery option. If you forget to put it on an item or add the item from the POS instead of from the PC it can get easily be omitted and then you are left without a recipient name or number.  Most of the things that are problematic do have work-arounds, but I really hope they continue to add features. You can see our site at: stuffinballoons.com if you want a look at how we solve the "name/number" issue - 🙂 MOST of the floral items have been updated to include the work-around.

[Kristyw94]

Ok so you are the one that seems like I need to talk with.  I am going to play around on your site and may give you a call sometime if that is ok?  When would be good times for you?

[StuffInBalloons]

That is fine. If I can help you out, I will. Best times for me are mid week mornings (Central Time) - so Tue, Wed or Thur between 930-11-30 or late afternoons (3-4) on those same days.

[COMEAUXSFLORIST]

So glad to find this feed! Customer service seems to have NO IDEA what I'm referring to. How do you keep customers from seeing "order will be delivered sometime between now and 3 days from now"?

THANKS for any advice.

[StuffInBalloons · Accepted solution]

We had to set our daily delivery hours, set the default "timing" for delivery (15 minutes to several days), set up the option for customers to choose a later delivery date, and then we honestly had to play with trying to order products and see how they showed up, make adjustments and keep working on it until we figured out the best way for us. I have several items that are "same day deliverable" those are set outside the default "1 business day" - we only do same day when ordered by 11am for online orders. If I can work them in and they call, then we can often accommodate but the site wont' let us get that particular without a lot of extra work. I do note in the pick up instructions that although they can choose a delivery date, they cannot choose a specific time even thought the software shows them times. Once you have the orders in, you can go in a change the times to match your routes and the ordering customer will get an updated delivery window.

The biggest issue we had with getting the "delivered between now and 3 days" problem controlled was to be sure that our time it takes to deliver (time from shop to delivery location) was not set for a ridiculous amount of time. Our county (zip code) is 380 square miles so we worked out the radius for delivery on web orders and only do 12-13 miles out instead of the whole county. Call in orders may be able to get delivery, but we can give them a better idea of when it can happen unlike the website. Initially, I had the delivery time set to around 1-3 hours thinking it was like setting a timeframe for delivery - it's not. If someone ordered a regular item (non same day) the system would take the next business day, add the delivery time and if there were other orders push the time-slot forward to the next available -- which could be the next day after if you have filled your available slots. You can tell the system how many orders you can deliver within a set amount of time or how many can be scheduled for the same time/day.  You really do have to play around with it on a day when you can work through several order scenarios for different products.

By no means is it perfect, but the upgrades throughout COVID have made if work much more smoothly without so many work-arounds as were needed before the pandemic created an immediate need for online with delivery for more business types.

[COMEAUXSFLORIST]

You're a doll for answering with so much detail! I've spent a lot of time adjusting settings to see what does and doesn't work, and I think I have finally figured it out. (and added a blurb about times for the customers) 

Your website is nice and clean! You're hand succulents are awesome, I love them so much. And I really love the way you design funeral work. The bamboo cross is so pretty.

Thank you for advice and time!

[Kristyw94]

How do you get notified that you have an order?  Right now I get a text which is great.  I have had a phone call which was great as well, but if only an email.....that could be an issue.

[StuffInBalloons]

We have a Square Register and it pops on that (if you set it to do so) with a notification tone and a pop-up. It tells me there is a way to auto print orders with a connected printer, but so far that isn't working for us. We also get email notifications (you have to set this as well). When logged in to the dashboard on a PC, the bell at the top will have a blue dot - it could be a square notification but could also be an order. I always check orders from the "online" portion because I can print them from there and they are easier to read/fill. Pro Tip - unless it's a looong order with a LOT of extra add-ons, you can probably just print the first page - check in the print view and see if you really need page 2.

Card messages are the tricky part of Square's system since there is only the "this is a gift" checkbox that allows a message - if your customer doesn't click the box, there is no place for a message. You can work around it by adding a text field for messages. We've tried both - the text field works better since many people don't check the box.

[Yazchannel]

I have my flowers shop with the square system to and I have use the square apps to created and I am very satisfied with the traffic I am getting and the delivery is through DoorDash.  

[FloralAccents]

what has been your experience with using doordash to deliver your arrangements? It makes me a little nervous you use them because I have seen how they have handled my food orders in the past and i would hate for someone's flower arrangement to get damaged or just left on a door step