If you are looking for a website that at the same time works as an eCommerce site, you need to check this Square Online Store review. Building an eCommerce site requires more additional features than a regular website.
While there are multiple options for general websites, a few excel in making eCommerce sites or online stores. You need to take the help of the best website builder that caters to a similar need to get optimum results in traffic.
The Square Online Store app is user-friendly and does not require technical expertise. Apart from a few limitations, Square offers easy eCommerce payment processing because of the integrated Square POS. This cost-effective eCommerce solution is best for entry-level businesses and entrepreneurs. A Square Online Store review guides you through the setup process and the pros & cons of the platform.
How Square Online Works?
Square Online is an eCommerce solution that offers small or midsize businesses to sell products through their platform. Square is a great space for online side hustlers to explore this side of the business without spending a lot. They provide a built-in inventory management system that allows businesses to communicate with the marketplace and customers easily.
They also have a point-of-sale (POS) system, which allows the business owner to keep track of purchases and transactions while enabling the business to accept payments online.
Although Square Online has a free plan to let, as many entrepreneurs and online business owners as possible join the platform to gain experience and expertise. However, the free plan has many limitations that the paid plans don’t.
If you are not under any budget issues, go for the paid plans to make the most of this platform. Square Online Store review helps you understand the platform better.
Every Square user has free access to a feature-packed online store called Square online. You can access it from the Square dashboard and set it up yourself in an instant. Adding products to the newly created online store from your database is quite easy.
It allows you to successfully manage multichannel sales by synchronizing your store’s inventory management, product description, and customer details. It depends on what website builder works with Square.
Moreover, if you already own a website or eCommerce site, you can add your Square online store to other eCommerce stores. Square allows the payments to integrate with the Square Point of Sale and Dashboard data.
Square helps you process payments and synchronize your online and offline stores even if you own a physical shop. Their integrated social media sharing allows you to sell on Facebook and Instagram as well.
Square Online Store Upgrades
The square online store has three options for upgrade plans for $12, $26, and $76 per month. Each of them has powerful sales and marketing features. Square Online Store review gives you access to the details and discussions of the upgrades.
How does Square Online match up to the competition?
A strong POS or Point of Sale system is what makes Square different from all its competitors. The POS system ensures that your sales are registered and recorded while collecting payments and managing transactions with the customer.
When it comes to POS systems, there are plenty of great options available in the market. You have to choose the one that caters to your needs.
Despite several factors, it is harder to choose the best POS system. Often there is repentance after choosing a POS system, only to realize it doesn’t deliver what it promises. Square Online Store review discusses the feature in detail.
That is why Square is considered the best in POS systems. Here are a few factors you must consider about Square Online-
1. No Hidden Fees
The fact that this platform is clear about the prices helps in getting a clear head on the budget planning. The POS system has a great role in understanding the hidden costs in a business transaction and planning. Square is loved for its straightforward pricing. It doesn’t have any hidden fees whatsoever. There is a transaction fee of 2.75% for each credit card transaction, including the POS software and merchant payment processing.
Generally, the other POS systems ask for monthly subscription fees, credit card processing fees, and many other hard-to-understand hidden costs, which Square does not. Square fee online store review discusses it in detail.
2. Compelling Software
While many POS systems use third-party services, some use their in-built software to do the job. Square has proprietary software with no hidden costs. The user-friendly interface enables anyone with zero or intermediate knowledge of technical parts to use it seamlessly.
Moreover, the innovative reporting mechanism provides easy analysis of the sales records. A Square integrates with online accounting services to transfer all the sales data from POS to the in-built accounting system.
3. Choosing your Own Hardware
Some POS systems need to have hardware packages to use their systems. This set package is going to push you to buy their premium hardware system. Square allows you to use your Apple or Android device to create your preferred hardware setup. In short, you can manage and control your POS data from your phone or tablet.
4. Cloud-based Technology
Square is a cloud-based platform that allows you to use the software from any device, anytime or place.
It dismisses the possibility of involving additional cost while you can accommodate it without hassle. Many non-cloud-based POS systems involve additional charges for expanding the system away from its primary location.
These are the reasons why people prefer Square as a POS system. Keep on reading the Square Online Store review for more.
Square Online Pros and Cons
Although Square Online is great for those planning to start or expand their online businesses; you should go through the pros and cons of the platform.
Pros:
- Availability of free plans as well as affordable paid plans
- Great features at a reasonable price
- Free domain for paid plans
- Unlimited product selling on the online store and integrated Facebook and Instagram
- Easy inventory management
- User-friendly interface and dashboard to overview the analytics and sales data.
- The abandoned cart recovery feature is available in premium plans.
- Integrated features for marketing, such as paid advertising and email marketing.
Cons:
- The interface could be more beginner friendly. Those who are completely new to eCommerce will need help deciphering professional terminology.
- There needs to be more liberty to customize the designs.
- Only the Square payment gateway allows you to avoid high transaction fees.
How easy is Square Online to Use?
Here, in this Square Online Store review, you will learn the ease-of-use Square Online. Square online requires no technical expertise.
Setting up an eCommerce store with Square is easy. The interface allows beginners to understand the functionalities and get potential sales. The wide range of features adds advanced functions to the site.
Here are the features that make Square Online Easy to Use-
1. No Need for Designing
Square Online has limited scope for designing or customizing the site. There is a limited number of customizable themes, typefaces, color schemes, etc. The unavailability of enough editing options makes it easier to use.
Although it doesn’t offer much design flexibility, the site editor has a truckload of features to advance your eCommerce store.
Although the store itself could be quite limited to designing, you can customize the content for each page easily. Square Website Builder review has it all in detail.
Square Online website builder uses preset content blocks where you can add media like images, text, galleries, links to your social media feeds, Google Maps, and more.
Though these are less liberating than the drag-and-drop design, making new pages is easier. Start by taking a blank template and keep designing the pages with available features.
2. Multiple Features in a Single Interface
The multifaceted use of the platform gives it another reason to be easier to use. It doesn’t make you move from app to app to perform a single task. Square Online is capable enough to handle multiple functions. For example-
- You are capable of managing your items and inventory using Square Online
- Square Online enables you to rack the inventory of physical products
- You can sell digital products with this platform
- It helps you by arranging for shipping or local pickup
- Square Online prints UPS labels for all your online orders
- Create order notifications for up to three different recipients
- Sell multiple categories of products such as food for pickup, in-house delivery, or on-demand delivery
- It collects the taxes based on the regulations in your location
- Square Online generates sales, discounts, and single-use coupon codes.
3. Processing of Payment is Easy
Payment processing is extremely easy with Square Online as it has multiple payment options.
The higher-paid plans come with some robust features, like sending automatic follow-up emails to those who have abandoned carts. There are also options for individual products review and accepting payments via PayPal.
You can use Square Online to track the sales and inventory individually and synchronize your Square sales information. Keep on reading the Square Online Store review for more interesting facts.
The customer support is excellent with another eCommerce solution, Fynd Platform. One of the most efficient online business website builders, Fynd Platform, has the best customer service and end-to-end logistics support.
How Good Are Square Online’s Designs?
Square Online lacks the availability of various templates or, for that matter, even a template library. Unlike most website builders, it has very limited design options that hinder the scope of customization with each eCommerce store.
If you love working your way on a blank canvas and dislike using a pre-made and rigid template design, you might prefer to use something other than their website builder. But, if you think carefully about it, their designs are great from the selling perspective.
They are made in a certain way that attracts more buyers than you would have made. Also, a site with a theme complies with the various eCommerce best practices that generate more sales.
Apart from that, Square Online gives you much relief with its feature-packed customization options. With eCommerce sites, there are more needs for a design with multiple features to support the sales and businesses as a whole rather than beautification of the theme or aesthetically pleasing template designs like a fashion magazine.
Your features must be appealing and efficient rather than a great theme. A complicated theme can sometimes hinder a potential customer and an eCommerce site. Thus, a simple design with more sales is what you would expect than a complicated theme with no customers. That’s why reading the Square Online Store review beforehand is important.
That concludes Square Online is a good fit for a design. There is no denying that the themes need to be more flexible, but they follow the industry’s best practices. That matters the most to setting up and running a business more than anything else.
As long as the navigation is good and it’s easier for a new user or a potential customer to access the site without any issues, it’s a good design. That makes Square Online the best website builder for small businesses.
Square Online’s Sales Tools and Features
Square Online has amazing compelling sales features that help when you use the Square POS system for your physical store. Accessing all these features gives great value to your store.
Adding Products
Square Online makes it easy to add a product to your store via your database. It is also easy to add a different variety of products as well. There are options to add modifiers that allow the customers to personalize their products, ideal for gifting eCommerce platforms.
Setting up new categories or sections on your site with Square Online is easy. Additionally, the platform itself suggests different categories for the types of products you stock. Uploading and organizing products is a dream with Square Online.
Managing Stock
Square Online has an excellent inventory management system. That means it minutes follows the sales data and figures out the products that are out of stock and the ones that are still available.
It informs you according to that so that you know which things need to be restocked. Inventory management tools are a boon to see the sales data and restock items on time to avoid unwanted unhappy customer relationships and complications in returns processing.
Regarding eCommerce solutions, Fynd Platform is a leading name in the industry. It is similar to Shopify and works as the best eCommerce website builder.
Payment
Square Online has only one specific payment option that has come with Square-centric features. Other than that, you can add a PayPal option only if you upgrade to a premium plan.
Shipping
You get plenty of options for setting up shipping on your eCommerce store with Square Online. Upon selecting the way, you’d like to calculate the delivery charge for a specific area you are shipping the products. There you get options like flat rate shipping, and free shipping, depending on the order weight, total value of the order, quantity of items, real-time courier rates (available with premium), etc.
If you have a Performance or Premium account, Square Online allows you to print shipping labels through your account and mark pending deliveries.
Tax Calculations
Manual tax calculation can take away your good night’s sleep. Square offers you an automated tax calculator. If your products are delivered to another state, Square calculates the taxes for both states for an error-free calculation
If you’re shipping across states, Square Online will automatically account for the taxes in both states. If you’re shipping within your state, it recognizes this too, and you’ll only get one rate. Although the accuracy is not guaranteed but is sure to make your job easy.
Square Online’s SEO and Marketing Tools
Square Website Builder is well-equipped with great marketing tools.
SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which determines whether your site can come under search engines or not.
It runs on specific on-page and off-page features, especially keywords that enable the site to rank on search engine searches, generating more traffic and sales.
Pop-ups
Like any other eCommerce building platform, Square Online also enables pop-ups to promote any specific product page, online sale, promotion, email notifications, etc.
With Square Online, pop-ups are available for:
- Collect emails
- Offer a coupon
- Make an announcement
- Verify age
Your Square Online account automatically sends out the following emails to a customer who has registered with your store via email:
- Order confirmation
- Items shipped
- Items refunded
- Items canceled
With an upgradation to the Performance or Premium plan, you can access the following features:
Abandoned cart notification – your customer receives a follow-up email if they have forgotten their cart after adding items to it.
Item reviews – this pushes your customers to review a certain product that they have recently bought. Reviews play an important role in increasing sales.
And, of course, you can personalize your email’s theme and content to make them fit with your brand’s look and feel.
How Much Does Square Online Cost?
Square online offers you a free plan with enough features to run a small business.
However, they have three paid plans with more chances of adding features to advance functionalities. With Square Online, you get cheap web hosting.
Here is an overview of the plans which help you understand how you can choose one depending on your requirements. You will get an idea about the Square website builder cost.
| Plan Name | Monthly Cost (If Billed Monthly) | Monthly Cost (If Billed Annually) | Transaction Fee |
| Free | N/A | N/A | 2.9% + 30¢ |
| Professional | $16 | $12 | 2.9% + 30¢ |
| Performance | $29 | $26 | 2.9% + 30¢ |
| Premium | $79 | $72 | 2.9% + 30¢ |
What Help and Support Does Square Online Offer?
Square Online Website Builder has 24/7 customer support for any technical or non-technical issues via phone calls, live chat, and email conversations. There is a huge community of experts who provide you with correct guidance.
At the Square Online knowledge center, you might get your answer in one of the 180 helpful articles that solve various problems. They answer even the basic questions like ‘How to build a website’ with patience and in detail.
Square Online Review: Summary
Square Online is a great platform for smaller sellers and those who are already using Square products.
It provides a great path to online selling, with innovative marketing features like delivery capability, easy payment processing, and Point Of Sale mechanism that many celebrated eCommerce solutions lack. Square Online is among the best free website builder platforms.
Overall, Square Online can be considered an excellent solution for those small or mid-scale merchants. A Square site integrates flawlessly with Square’s other products. You can also get the software if you need 500MB of storage, hosting, and technical support for free. You must have found the Square Online Store review helpful.
FAQs
Here are some frequently asked questions about Square website builder-
1. Is Square a legit website?
Yes, Square is an authentic website. This third-party website offers transparent costing and great customer support, which are ideal for small-scale businesses.
2. What is a Square online store?
Square online is a leading eCommerce builder platform that is easy to use and affordable. Although the design option is a bit limited, it greatly benefits your business from its sales features and customer support.
It also works as a great payment processing platform with access to many payment gateways. It also is a great POS platform with great efficacy.
3. Is Square Online completely free?
Square Online offers a free plan comprising a POS and in-built inventory management, allowing you to accept payments online. Using the basic plan for Square Online is completely free. It’s only when you make a sale you have to pay 2.9% + 30¢ as a transaction fee. Also, the website hosting cost is your own.
4. Should I use Square online?
Square Online is one of the best eCommerce platforms. If you are running a small business, Square Online is an ideal platform for you to grow your business. You can use their free or premium plans according to your requirements and business goals. If you are indecisive, start with the free plan to understand the features and the sales performance and then upgrade to the premium plans in the future. Moreover, its free version is also loaded with functions and features that many free eCommerce platforms lack.
5. Is Square free to use?
The basic plan in Square does not have a set monthly fee. However, it has a standard 2.9% + 30¢ transaction fee. With that said, we can say that Square Online is a cheap website builder.
6. How much does Square cost per month?
Although the basic plan comes for free, the Plus plan with numerous advanced features costs you $29/month and Premium for $79/month with an additional transaction fee of 2.9% + 30¢
