I am in the process of opening a small retail location and was planning on using Square Register for POS, and then using the online offering for ecomm. I have really liked other shops I have purchased from in person that use and it like the smooth transactions, but the more I use online the more I want to just shift to Shopify.
First some context on my position with a bit of venting of frustrations, then a plea for what I'm missing to make me stick around.
I am still on Free everything while I evaluate. I used Shopify years ago for an ecommerce only site and was always pleased with the theme/template options, but Shopify POS hardware has seemed behind Square Register.
Creating my first store and seeing that it's backed by Weebly was definitely a first red flag for me. I have pretty extensive web and development experience (my day job is a software engineer for the last 10 years, and the 10 years before that was in web development + digital marketing), and Weebly seems like a terrible platform for ecommerce.
Next the frustratingly limited flexibility with the themes is driving me crazy. While I understand the simple theming for less experienced users, the complete lack of access to anything else is hard to get past.
Next, the site editor is frustratingly bad and every time I try to be at peace with the lack of customization and use the tool as it is, given my initial focus on in-person, I am hit with reminders of how limiting it is. Maybe it's because I'm still on free and plus has more advanced aspects, but I'm not convinced yet to do the trial, but the amount "some times it works" is making me extremely uneasy about the reliability when I'm ready for production.
1. I'll be doing skateboard and vinyl records so filtering will be critical. I'm still just testing with small groups of items for now, but attempting to structure my items to be filtering with Option Sets are proving to be hit or miss if the options will actually show in item lists. For example, I have created a single vinyl record with genre, artist, format, color and a skateboard with deck size option sets. I have added both to their categories. On Shop All I'll see the deck size in the "filter" list, but in another item list with this item present it's not there. Also not being able to manage the way this filter list is orders or appears other than basic font sizing is also infuriating.
2. I added a test item that sync'd, added some more items that sync'd, and then went a different direction with the variants and deleted the item, but not a test item is continuing to show in the preview that no longer exists in the item list in my dashboard or the online site.
3. I have attempted to edit the navigation menu with category items that add all subcategories with the intent of using what the marketing site calls "mega menu" in plus when I upgrade, and sometimes the menu items show in the preview and other times they disappear.
4. Beyond the UI ignoring the hours I was adding the first time, It took me 5 times to edit my location & hours as I'd get to Thursday and it would go black and I'd have to start over.
5. I've attempted to create items with what seem like relatively tame option sets (multi size/color options) and when I go to save I simply get "Something went wrong, try again" never to work and never any indication of _what_ went wrong. I have to remove most of the options and then it will save, but I'm left with an incomplete item.
These bugs, paired with being completely at the whim of how the Square theme wants to display things (sometimes options are drop-down, other times they're awkward ul/li lists), the unusable footer placement options, the minimal header configuration, the outdated oversimplification of "desktop" view in the name of "mobile first" type of design, the WYSIWYG item description editor being non true to what the site will display if you do anything more than a simple description (list items break styling completly in the editor but appears to turn out ok online), don't make me confident that the site is going to be usable for me.
I considered the approach of headless site with the Square API, but that seems very overkill for something that should be more usable given Shopify being the main competition here and their stellar templating customization options. The entire editor seems fairly dated in terms of the areas they let you update. I also find it frustrating while exploring the disjointed back and forth between the online editor and the core dashboard editor, but maybe that's more a symptom of not having a real life product offering in there yet.
I also don't see how the editor item list will be scalable in the online editor when I have 1000+ records, and 100+ skateboards as well as all the other skate goods + apparel etc.
All that said, am I just not a good fit for Square if I have this level of want for online? Is it worth upgrading to online plus to see if the editor options at least do more? Some examples look passable. The vague marketing speak of the "advanced" options don't really give me a good grasp of what to expect.
While online is not going to be my initial emphasis, it may in the future and I am hesitant to jump in if I'm going to battle it when I need it to work. It's unfortunately as the in-person offering seemed great.
So, what am I missing with Online or do I just need to lower my expectations for Square Online, or lower my POS expectations and head over to Shopify?
