You know what they say — knowledge is power. Staying on top of the data and metrics around how your business is doing is crucial to your success. Square Analytics makes this easy. When you sign in to your Square Dashboard, you have a bounty of statistics right at your fingertips — everything from your peak business hours to your best-selling items. Here are five ways you can use Square data to help you run (and grow) your business:
Know your customers
Knowing whether your customers are new or repeat can help you determine what promotions to offer. For example, if you have a lot of regulars, you may want to create a loyalty program. But if you have a lot of first-timers coming in, you may want to offer some kind of reward — your first coffee is free, for example, or get $5 off your first order — to encourage new customers.
Track your sales
Say you own a clothing store that also sells accessories such as handbags, backpacks and wallets — how do you know where the majority of your sales come from? What’s your best-selling item? You may think most of your sales are coming from clothing, but you could find out that people are purchasing more accessories and decide to dedicate more floorspace to that part of your business. Square makes it easy to digest this information with easy-to-read charts and graphs. Chester Wong of FUEL+, a healthy shakes and coffee shop in Toronto, says, “Square Analytics allows us to establish a benchmark of how well we’re doing. The number of daily transactions gives us an idea of how busy the store is. We can compare this data to last week, last month or even last year. Square helped show us that business grew 22 percent this year.”
Know your team
Understanding who your top salespeople are is just as important as understanding your bestsellers. With our mobile staff feature, you can log in to your Dashboard to view how much each staff member sold. Once you know how your team members are doing, you can schedule your employees strategically and also identify who could use additional coaching.
Understand your peak hours
Having access to sales data broken down by hours helps you make smarter decisions. Gabriel at Café Névé in Montreal uses sales reports to determine closing hours and how many people to staff throughout the day. “We were debating whether to change our closing time from 7 p.m. to 6 p.m. Our sales reports gave us hour-by-hour sales information in a neat chart. We actually noticed that sales dropped off after 6 p.m., so we decided to close an hour earlier. We also noticed our peak times were between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., so we increased staffing during those hours.” Sales reports can help you make critical operational decisions about your business hours and your staffing needs.
Keep up to date when you’re on the go
You can check your Square Dashboard from anywhere via your smartphone or tablet. Your sales charts and reports update in real time. That means you can keep track of every transaction as it happens, even while on vacation or away from your business.
Learn more about how Square Analytics — which comes free with Square Point of Sale — can help you run your business.