Customers appreciate the convenience of ordering online — and it shows. This year, e-commerce sales are expected to rise between 3.7 and 4.2 percent, according to the National Retail Federation. And studies show that consumers tend to buy more when they are given more ways to interact with a business.
So, if you have an online store, you should be thinking of how to make the process of buying as easy as possible so your customers buy more, and more often. If you don’t have an online store yet, it’s time to get started.
When you’re thinking about your online store, there are two things to keep in mind: You want to have a great e-commerce platform to build on, and you want to be able to take payments easily.
You know that Square makes taking in-person payments easy for you and your customers. But Square’s online payment services also seamlessly integrates with a variety of e-commerce platforms.
By using the same payment system for your brick-and-mortar and online stores, you can get a better view into how your business is performing without having to manually reconcile your books and inventory. By seeing all your sales (online and in-store) in one view, for instance, you’re better able to determine what inventory you have in stock, where it’s selling best, and when might be the best time for a promotion or sale.
To make integrating Square and your online store easier, we’ve partnered with some of the most popular e-commerce platforms, which cater to all levels of e-commerce know-how.
If you’re building an e-commerce site yourself, these template-style platforms make it simple to create a beautiful site, no matter your technical skills:
- Wix: Provides unique website templates with polished designs and flexibility to control your site’s aesthetic.
- Weebly: A full-featured, drag-and-drop website builder that enables sellers of all sizes and types to easily build a professional online store.
- Ecwid: Allows you to create a complete online store or start selling on your existing website. Ecwid works with any web platform, including social media sites, as an embedded shopping cart.
- BigCommerce: A solution for sellers who need a more sophisticated operation, particularly those in retail. Inventory automatically updates when you make a sale online or offline, helping you avoid overselling and manual reconciliation.
- 3dcart: Gives you control over the look and feel of your website, and high-touch service and support to help you get up and running.
If you already know how to code or work with a developer, these platforms are more customizable (which could be important for your business) but require some technical know-how:
- Drupal Commerce: Open-source e-commerce software that augments a Drupal website. Highly flexible and customized, with access to extensions built by community members, for a site built precisely to your needs.
- WooCommerce: An e-commerce plugin that turns your WordPress site into an online store. Sync your online and offline items and inventory to make selling across channels painless.
- Magento: An advanced commerce platform for larger businesses, with complex settings and options to help you scale.
- Or build a custom site and connect Square payments (check out our Payments API).
If you integrate one of these e-commerce platforms with your Square account, you get everything you love about Square, including simple and transparent pricing, transfers in one to two business days, and the option for instant deposits. And because security is very important when you’re selling online (and off), Square helps protect you with fraud detection, dispute assistance, and chargeback protection up to $250 a month.
If you’re ready to connect Square to your existing site to get your business online, visit the E-commerce section in the Apps section of your Dashboard.
