Announcing the New Square Square Online Discussion Board

[Tom]

More and more sellers in our community are pressing on with Curbside Pickup and Local Delivery by opening up online stores for their business. With that in mind, we created the Square Online Discussion board — a space within our Seller Community where you can share your experiences, ask questions, and discuss all things related to your Square Online site.

If you're just getting started, check out our latest feature releases in our Product Updates section and have a look at some of our most viewed topics. If you don't see what you're looking for, feel free to start a new thread and we'll make sure you get the resources you need.

The Community is looking forward to hearing from you! Click reply below if you’d like to introduce yourself, share a link to your store, or let us know if you have any questions or suggestions!

[sweetartist]

Hi,.  My husband and I own Sweet Arts Bakery in Geneseo, NY.  We've used Square for 8 1/2 years.  We're in a college town and have wanted to add an online ordering option for the past 5 years.  With the shut down of the college, and no large gatherings, our income could have been drastically cut. However, my husband, a "stay at home" high school teacher, was able to quickly get the online site up and running, and our sales have been surprisingly good.  One person said, The best thing about the pandemic is that Sweet Arts delivers!

We'd be happy to help with any practicalities, or things that we may have been able to tweak over the past 6 weeks.  One thing we've found is that we use the modifiers for the flavors or scones, soup, etc, so it's easy to hide them when we sell out.  If it's a variation, we have to track stock, which is next to impossible for a bakery.

One struggle we have, and I know Square is aware of it, is the delivery time selection.  That would really help!

Best of luck, and we're looking forward to any new ideas and suggestions.

Ruth Ann and Brian Lewis

https://sweetartsbakeryny.square.site/ 

[aarontw · Accepted solution]

Hi @sweetartist, @manyhats, @Evey, @manyhats,  & @Donnie-M,

Thanks so much for sharing the stories of your businesses and for giving some insight into your experience with the store. We love reading your stories and appreciate you taking the time to post them to the Community. Thank you for being here.

The teams working on Square Online Store have been putting in extra hours to roll out features as quickly as possible, and are checking for feedback on the Community. 

Please do continue to share thoughts and questions.

Wishing the best as we navigate this difficult time,

Aaron

[vhovar]

Another option you might consider: For our simple cup of coffee we have three variations, Regular, Large, and Refill. Of course, we aren't going to be able to offer Refill for our curbside or carry-out service. Rather than just removing this option and affecting the in-house POS I set the Refill variation to track stock and set it to "0". Now when you select that on the online store it displays "Sold Out" and won't allow that variation to be ordered. This does not seem to prevent it being ordered in-house on the POS.

[sweetartist]

From the square dashboard go into the item library (Not the item library when editing your online store). Open your item to edit it, go to the variation you want to hide and go into "manage stock" then make it unavailable at that location.  You won't get the "Sold out" message anymore and it won't show up as an option in the pull down menu. 

[vhovar]

Thank you for that hint. I do see, however, that this also removes the variant from the POS, which is what I didn't want to happen. We still need the ability to allow customers to get a "refill" if they are on premises and ordering through the POS. Now, maybe this is an error as I am surprised that I can still add the zero stock variant to my receipt at the POS. 

[CoffeeRoaster]

Thank you so much for your offer of help. We are a coffee roasting business in the Baltimore, MD area. I did graduate from Houghton College and used to study in the SUNY Geneseo library. I grew up in the Finger Lakes Region north of Ithaca and in my high school band days we went to the Gorham Pageant of Bands. Okay enough of the nostalgia.

I do have a question about online stores. We have presently have six Square online stores. We use them for fundraising and they work well. Since Square purchased Weebly (GR8 move!!!) I haven't figured out how to start new online stores. Is there a tutorial on how to do that somewhere? We do coffee fundraisers and have raised thousands of dollars for individuals and organizations and it is appealing for each fundraiser to have their own store front. We have started doing some things on WIX because they take Square (We are Square top to bottom), but would come back to Square for these storefronts if we could figure out a way to start more through our Square account.

Thank you for any help you can give us.

Warm Regards,

Dave Baldwin

Furnace Hills Coffee

[delibee]

Created online store . site url not shown in dashboard .how to know site url

[Joe]

Hi there, @delibee 👋 You can find your personal site url on the Online Store Dashboard. Here are the steps for locating: 

• Login to the Online Store Dashboard
• Select the Website dropdown from the left-hand menu >
• Select General Settings >
• Select Site Address which should be located in the middle portion of your screen

This space will display your current customized domain, as well as give you the opportunity edit or purchase a new domain if you so desire.

Let us know if you have any further questions! We are here to help. 

[BCBBQ]

Yes, desperately need to allow customers to choose specific day and time window for delivery.  

Have you found a way to remove the default automatic delivery time, this is confusing my customers.    Customers want it Saturday at 5pm, but for example the system says Thursday 2pm which is the first day/time my store is available for delivery.   Any tips would be great!

[RLiss]

@BCBBQ unfortunately not, even if they want to switch from "immediate" to "schedule" it will keep telling them their order is ready at the next possible time until after they put in their email address. Only then do you have the option to schedule and this is really confusing especially for our older customers.

Unfortunately as of now you can't toggle this feature off. I even had a friend who is a website coder to look at it and he couldn't remove it. It really needs to be an option in my opinion. No matter how many times I tell folks how to place orders and to choose their preferred pick up times people are still confused and can't figure it out. It's very problematic. 

[vhovar]

@RLiss Yes and I've found that is a problem having only been back open a week and using our online store. We close at 6:00pm and have a lead time of 15min. We had someone put an online order in at 5:46pm on this past Saturday and the system told them it would be ready After 7:00am on Monday.. oops. Of course, they ignored the message and fully expected to come and pick it up. Fortunately, our staff didn't realize the 2 day advanced order and went ahead and made and the customer came by (albeit, after closing) and picked up their order, non the more aware that they had missed the message.

I would suggest we also need a way to actually stop ordering outside of our cafe hours or at least only in xx number of hours/minutes before the opening time. I'm now faced with having to log in every day and turn off ordering and then remember to go back in and turn it on for the next day of business.

[RLiss]

@vhovar agreed! We had someone order food last week, but for pick up this week. Some of our menu items will have changed by then so this is frustrating. There needs to also be an option about how far ahead you can schedule an order as well as a way to turn this off if you don't want folks pre-ordering at the end of your week. 

[raylab810]

Time selections though necessary for some businesses is not good for others. I own a restaurant and we will come in on the weekends when we do brunch and dinner and there will be tickets for 7pm in the kitchen when we walk in at 9am. The ability to first not loose the ticket and second for the kitchen to remember to fire it in the middle of a rush can be near impossible. That would be a great feature that you can toggle on and off. Thank you

[RLiss]

@raylab810 agreed! Now that so many different kinds of businesses are using square e-commerce there should be a toggle option.

[kingmoney1985]

hi am king I have two business the clothing and also promoting, maybe I can promote your brand  money

[Personal info redacted by a Community Moderator to protect your privacy]

[dabblrscre8ions]

Hi!  This is Sherry of The Dabbler's Creations in Virginia.  @sweetartist -- It's so very kind of you to offer help to me and others setting up our new online stores.  I, too, have been using Square to accept payments for many years, but after the old Square Marketplace went away, customers had trouble finding my page.  Since most of my business is in-person sales paid by cash, I was processing fewer and fewer transactions through Square, until I eventually lost interest in maintaining the detailed catalog of my products and tracking inventory.

But with the COVID-19 situation forcing changes to the operation of the local farmers' market in which I participate, I've been online the past few days working on the new online store (https://thedabblerscreations.square.site) It still needs work, mainly better photos and a real logo, but for my first real website, I'm okay with it.  The goal of creating the site was to offer 2 or 3 of my most popular items which shoppers of the farmers' market can pre-order and pick up.  @sweetartist -- your tip about variations vs modifiers is good; I'll have to revisit my page to see if I should change my item set ups.  The bigger challenge I faced last night was just getting the items to appear as available for purchase.  I don't want "Shipping" as a fulfillment option at this time, but having it or "All" selected was the only way I could get that to happen initially.  I kept playing around with the settings (until about 3 a.m.!!) and somehow finally got them on there with "Pick Up & Delivery" as the fulfillment method.  I sure wish I knew how I did it though because I will be adding my other merchandise as time allows.

[Evey]

Hi I'm Evette with Jacksonville Cake Decorating Supplies out of Jacksonville, FL. I sell decorating supplies, for cakes, cookies, chocolates and more. I also teach cake decorating for all skill levels. We have suffer during this COVID 19 due to cancelling all my classes which is our main money maker. We also make speciality cakes and desserts for weddings and large events. Getting my store online has been a struggle. I love using the square, I've been a square customer since we opened in 2015. But the layout options online store are very limited and the shipping option is also very limited unless you are paying top dollar. My shop has been physically open during this ordeal, but as everyone else we had to reinvent ourselves to survive.

My you all stay safe and my your business flourish with success.

[eCoalitions]

ECoalitions.net provides website services to coalitions and small businesses. We design, host, and maintain websites with e-commerce functionality and square payments integration. Perhaps a more robust site is what you’re looking for. 

[Donnie-M]

Hi, I am Donnie and am the multi-location manager for a vending company and we currently operate 4 different restaurants that share some common menu items but have different branding/pricing based on location and favorites.  We too are setting up our first square online store with weebly and finding ways to do things that can't be done until square adds the functionality.  My biggest current request is the ability to have an online store for each of my brands and their domains.

Another feature mentioned that would be beneficial is the ability to adjust the expected pick up time.  The ability to mark an order as in progress and then as completed does work well.  We have made a note in our pickup instructions to look for the order complete message to know for sure that the customer's order is ready to be picked up.

[skomeh]

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The color of Komehsa Balm changes from season to season.      Komehsa Emulsion softens, moisturizes, and relieves pain. 

16 ounce Emulsion, 2 ounce Balm

My formulation of anti-inflammatory and analgesic essential oils is patented and it works WITH YOUR BODY to heal and repair.  The Balm and the Emulsion are ideal for massage and physical therapy.  Just rub it in where you have pain.  The bath salts soak pain away while the essential oils adhere to your skin, just rub it in.  The bath soap is reported to soothe irritation from shaving and problems like acne.  In spite of the abundance of the**bleep**utic oils, the lather is luxurious.  If you have chronic pain or if you treat/care for people who have pain you would be wise to add Komehsa products to your pain relief tool kit.  

https://www.komehsaessentials.com