Square has taken a giant step forward to enhance its online store product available to its retail clients. As the following Motley Fool article reports, Square is leveraging its 2018 acquisition of website developer Weebly to enable brick-and-mortar merchants to sell online.
Expanding online services
Square acquired website builder and hosting service Weebly nearly a year ago. The company hasn’t done much to integrate its core payments products with Weebly since the acquisition. “We’ve been working hard to make sure that we’re introducing Square sellers to the concept of Weebly and vice versa,” CEO Jack Dorsey said during last month’s fourth-quarter earnings call. He added he wants to “make sure that people see these as one thing, and that’s going to be our focus for the next few months.”
Square recently revamped its Online Store product, and it integrates closely with Weebly. The new platform enables Square’s brick-and-mortar merchants to easily expand to e-commerce by integrating its Retail and Restaurant point-of-sale systems with Online Store. Omnichannel remains a top priority for Square in 2019, and the Weebly integration ought to push it deeper into existing merchants’ businesses and attract larger merchants to its ecosystem.
Winning every sale
Square’s goal as a company is to help its merchants never miss a sale. No matter how a customer wants to pay (credit, debit, cash) or where they want to pay from (in store, online, phone, invoiced) Square wants to be part of every transaction. As more and more sales move online, Square needs to develop more tools to help merchants complete sales over the internet.
Most observers believed that Square would put website developer Weebly to good use before too long. Square’s target markets of micro and small business retailers either have, or will need, e-commerce capabilities. So now setting up an online store with Square will become fast and easy for merchants, as well as giving Square more transaction volume. Another vertical to benefit will be restaurants who have come to depend on online ordering with mobile pay capabilities. Not to be overlooked is that Square also owns Caviar, a restaurant order and delivery service. Lots of boxes are being checked off in this expanded product offering from Square. Keep in mind that there is competition aplenty in these service markets, so it will take near perfect execution from Square to profitably expand the circle of their merchant base.
Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Service at Mercator Advisory Group
