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! 😊

[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. 

[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.

[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. 

[Sierra]

I've sold on eBay off and on since 1998 but very seriously since December 2020. I've sold on Etsy since August 2006. I had my own web site but, even though it got a fair amount of traffic, I wasn't selling much so I redirected my domain name to my Etsy shop in 2009 or so. I prefer selling on marketplaces because there's a lot of built-in traffic! I sold on Amazon Handmade for awhile but it wasn't a good fit for my products ... and it was a PITA to use. 

[ThamaniGems]

I use Square Online. It is nice. Hopefully, now that things are a bit better and I can get back outside I will see better results for my Jewelry business.

[BLUEPROVIDERZ]

Hello Elizabeth,

My name is Gabriel and I'm very familiar with the E-commerce industry. I'm currently a solutions partner with Square and A marketing partner with Google. The best site to sell your product is going to be your very OWN site. The better question to ask is which platform. You wanna ask yourself which platform offers more for your money including marketing. In all my years of experience I have watched Square grow since their first year and I truly have to say here at Square is your best option. Purchase a domain here and use the many resources Square has to offer, then reach out with Google analytics and Google store which is an additional sales channel for your site that will allow you to be selling on two sites. Anything you post on Square will automatically be posted on Google and can be found in googles search engine. Square makes it all available to you and Square is my suggestion for everyone. Great pricing with so many trials to try it all. 

[Studio1883]

We have a Brick and Mortar using square and an online store using WooCommerce. We have some more complicated features that we needed to have on our site and Square couldnt handle them, so WooCommerce was the way to go. It seems Square Online has progressed a lot the last few years, but we are very invested in WooCommerce now, so moving doesnt seem feasible. The big problem I have is that the inventory syncing seems to be a buggy and will just stop syncing randomly. 

[cookiestogo]

WIX is a free website building company. Its a great place to start.

[coachsabina]

Hi,

you know what? I thought it was just me, but the syncing on Square is a little buggy. It will say that something is out of stock for no reason. From time to time customers will contact me and say that an item is out of stock, im thinking “impossible” because I don’t it set to keep stock. I’m going to complain about it in the morning. They are very good at accommodating requests if enough sellers bring the glitch to their attention.

[Donna04]

I use Square Online. Initially I was interested in how it syncs with my Square inventory, so I though it sounded like it might save some steps in the end. I really like the Weebly integration and the look & feel of it. The multiple drop down menus really clinched it for me - I had wished and asked for this feature on my other site for years. I only have the "personal site" which is $72/yr, but this are plenty of features and bandwidth for my little one-horse independent jewelry shop.

My other site, which I've had longer, is through SupaDupa.me. Their standard fees are pretty high (I think) but I got in on an "earlybird" deal when they were still a brand new site. Because of this I pay only the fees for payment processing integration, so for me (and anybody else who got in on this deal) it is virtually free.

In the past I have tried selling on ArtFire (I started there), Etsy (I ditched them in 4 months), StoreEnvy (I found their 10% selling fee ridiculous, and a place called Scott's Marketplace, that was supposed to somehow bridge a gap between local business and online traffic. I don't really think that part of it worked at all, but was a nice idea. I actively avoid Amazon Handmade, Etsy, Ebay.