Hey there @SakredJoiArt. I’m just getting back from Christmas vacation, so I’m just seeing this. Here are a few thoughts from me. As you read them, keep in mind that my online store is just a way of giving ordering convenience to my customers. I’m an ice cream shop, so don’t rely in any way on online sales. I just have that store to allow customers to pre-order and then just show up to pick up their treats!
💡 What’s your biggest lesson learned from setting up your Square Online store?
This one is one for all sellers, but especially for sellers new to the world of online sales. The biggest lesson I can give them is DO NOT fall into the “if I build it, they will come” trap. Building an online store/website is just the first step. Then comes the hard part — SEO, as well as driving traffic to our sites. Honestly, if I were building a new retail store today, I would most likely spend the money to hire a professional to help me get the most out of my SEO. Doing so would allow my store to (eventually) be top ranked in searches no matter the browser that is used. Too many people that I’ve helped here over the years assume that once they create a store, people will just find it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Also, driving traffic to our stores isn’t just a once-and-done thing. It requires constant monitoring, tweaking and more to stay relevant — especially given the number of competitors that are out there.
Another one came up recently when I was assisting another seller with their new store. I don’t care how good a website builder app is. I don’t care how easy or supposedly intuitive it claims to be. Too many people try to jump in and build a website without knowing any of the basics. I always have, and always will, recommend spending some time reading or taking a class. There are great “dummies” books out there. Most local libraries have free or low cost classes. In order to truly build a 21st century website more than just a great tool is needed — so is a great working knowledge of how the internet works, how sites are built, and so forth.
👉 Did you face any unexpected challenges or have any “aha” moments?
A few. For example, I found out that creating an online sale for an item — for example, let’s say I want to do milkshake week promotions — only works for ONLINE sales. If I want to have the same sale in both my online store and my walk-up window, it requires extra steps and unfortunately, right now, there are too many catch-22s that make that all not work exactly correctly. It’s odd, and frustrating. But I’ve developed my work-arounds. I’m pretty sure that as Square continues to consolidate item management into one master list this will be corrected. Please.
I still find pickup scheduling to be a little too clunky and the automate options don’t exactly fit my needs. So, for now, I’m not allowing things like scheduled pickups or future-day pickups. We’ve resorted to displaying (many times!) a message that says when customers arrive, give us their name and we will start their order. Until they do, that order stays on our unfulfilled list. It works, but it could be better.
I wish there was a “pay another way at pickup” option. I have more than a few customers who would love to order online and then pay cash when they pick it up. But, I’ve been asking for this for too many years, and all I get is the black wall of silence. So, I’m guessing that in this case, no response just means no. Heck, I’d even pay a smaller online ordering fee to make up for the card processing fees Square would lose, but that offer hasn’t moved the needle either. Ha.
Lastly, image cropping and scaling options don’t seem to offer enough flexibility. So, for now, I’m just forgoing images, period. Given that my store doesn’t make up even 10% of my total sales, that’s a compromise I can live with.
I’m sure there are more, but those are the ones that pop up in my mind. I’ll close by saying that most of my “issues” with Square Online these days are pretty minor, as you can probably tell. A few years ago the team really added a lot of new features — especially in the UX world. And, it seems to get more features pretty regularly. I hope that the development team decides to add a focus group (like they did for the recent Restaurants overhaul) to allow us to air our “gripes” formally and to help them shape a roadmap for the future.
Feedback matters, ask anyone to look at your website and take their feedback, menus that are inconsistent, colors that are hard to read, these things matter and more opinions = more points to review for alternative perspectives.
My online sales only get better the more i try to implement the feedback i take
Hey there @mitin. So, a couple of thoughts. Yes, if you are comparing just website hosting services provided by other hosts, then Square Online would be on the expensive side, probably. But since you mentioned the integration, that was a great lead-in to my point. We are also paying for seamless integration with our Square accounts, especially item management integration and order integration with our store POS devices. There are third-party apps in the Square App Marketplace that offer something similar and integrate with Square, but my research (admittedly years ago) proved to me that they would in fact cost me more per year. So, that didn’t make sense for me at least. My point here is that you have to look at the big picture — Square is offering hosting services in addition to seamless integration with all of the other parts of the Square ecosystem.
I’ll echo @Hailey‘s post, too. Give us a list of functionality that you are missing. Maybe we know something that you aren’t aware of, yet. Maybe not. I will say that I’ve found that Square Online and Appointments is missing a lot of things — lack of modifiers for online booking, for one, the ability to require that certain services require other services first, etc. But, in order to help you sort those out and give you guidance we need to know exactly what features are lacking for you.
As far as speed, I’ve never had anyone complain, and I’ve never found it to be worse than any other online ordering site I’ve been on. You mentioned Weebly, but you also said you use Square Online. Keep in mind those are two different site hosting services, though Square owns both. So, can you be specific about which one you are using as your host? Also, can you screen shot and post those shots showing what you are seeing? Honestly, as long as customers are complaining daily or regularly, I don’t really care. But that just might be me.
