As a web designer, you may be starting with little to no data of your own. It’s not until a website has launched (or relaunched) that you can start gathering real analytics on its performance. Even then, it can take awhile to draw any meaningful insights from it.
So, in many cases, what web designers are working with before and while they design a new website is industry data: audience insights; competitive research; keyword analysis; Google announcements; marketing surveys and reports.
For someone who builds websites day in and day out, it makes sense to watch industry insights closely. For your clients, though, it might not
For someone who builds websites day in and day out, it makes sense to watch industry insights closely. For your clients, though, it might not.
That’s because they come from a place where they make business decisions based on internal data — data about their audience, their location, their product, etc. They might use industry analytics as benchmarks, but not to drive something as important as their company’s direction.
Let’s take a look at why this issue might arise and how you can overcome it by showing how analytics from a website paired with industry data is the best solution for designing a website.
What if Your Client’s Analytics Conflict with Industry Data?
In 2015, Google announced that mobile searches had surpassed those on desktop. The news had everyone talking and eventually gave rise to trends like mobile-first, micro-moments, and voice UIs.
In the web design space, there was no direction to go in but mobile-first. That didn’t mean that desktop users were completely forgotten; it just meant that mobile needed to take a front seat when designing the user experience.
But let’s say you’re approached by a client who needs a redesign. They keep hammering home that they don’t want you to put too much effort into mobile since their analytics show that less than 9% of their traffic comes from mobile devices. The previous designer didn’t bother with mobile, so you shouldn’t either.
While it would be nice to give a definitive response to this, there are two possible reasons why their mobile traffic is so low:
They’re targeting an audience that isn’t heavy on mobile users to begin with;
The website was designed for desktop and so it doesn’t rank well for searches performed on mobile.
Now, you don’t want to brush your client off. Analytics are clearly important to your client, right? So what you need to do instead is broach the matter with facts.
Presenting Your Client with the Facts
There are a number of ways you can use hard facts to convince your clients that the direction you want to take their website is the right one.
1. Use Proof from Google
Mobile-first indexing officially became the way Google indexes and ranks all new websites in 2019. Even if your client believes that their audience primarily comes from desktop, it’s still important to play by Google’s rules in search if they want traffic from it.
If you really want to drive this point home, you could run their website through Google’s Mobile-friendly Test:
Seeing a result like the one the Yale School of Art gets would certainly help you strengthen your argument:
2. Use Proof from Their Own Google Analytics
While your client’s traffic mostly comes from desktop, it might be the previous designer’s choice to favor desktop that could be the reason for the low mobile numbers. If the website isn’t mobile responsive, let alone mobile-first, it’s not going to rank well.
That said, there might be more to the story than just, “We only get 8% of our traffic from mobile, so ignore it.”
Take your client to their Google Analytics and dig deeper into the Mobile tab.
You need to get them to focus on more telling analytics, like the bounce rate and average time on site.
Even if mobile traffic is lower (which you’ve already explained might be because the UI was designed for desktop) those users might be the ones that more favorably respond to the content on the site. And that’s ultimately what’s important here. They need visitors to look through the site and convert, not bounce away from it.
If you can use their own data to make the point that mobile visitors are a more worthwhile bunch to go after, it would make the decision-making process much easier.
3. Use Real Proof from Other Websites
Don’t forget to show them proof outside of Google.
Do you have case studies from clients you can share with them? If not, try to find examples from other designers or agencies to make your point. Make sure the websites are similar to theirs in terms of audience or goals, so they can see the correlation between the changes they made and what you’re proposing.
You can show them how:
A redesign from desktop to mobile didn’t just affect traffic, but conversions, too;
You want to paint this as a decision that’s in their best interest, not as something that’s going to cost them more money or that might compromise the amount of visitors they currently get.
A move to mobile (or any other data-backed change you’re proposing) will only help your client in the long run. Just make sure you show them that it’s the potent combination of on-site analytics and industry data that should drive their (and your) design decisions.
Today, to remain competitive, companies have to reshape their business models by identifying new values they bring to customers.
Technology firms have already embraced the changes that cloud computing presented recently. A lot of them migrated to the cloud using the most popular IT models like SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS. However, a new trend appeared recently.
Everything as a Service (XaaS) is a new IT model for enterprise companies. The main advantage of this approach is that business pays only for the technology it uses whereas the traditional models required companies to pay for licenses or up-front costs. Due to its nature, the model is often called flexible consumption. Using technologies on a pay-for-usage basis allows companies to become more agile and embrace digital innovation faster.
With adopting XaaS, firms have no need to buy complex technology solutions and acquire specific expertise. Let’s see how the XaaS evolution impacted enterprise IT. Here are the other reasons for moving to XaaS:
Increased productivity
Lower operational costs
Ease of implementation
End-to-end support
Streamlined innovation
Access to innovative technologies
Improved time-to-market
By improving their IT infrastructure, companies enhance their processes as well. With better and flexible IT solutions, they are able to grow as soon as they need it.
Types of Cloud Computing Services: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS
Infrastructure as a Service
Infrastructure is comprised of server and network software and hardware, a data center or server room, and specialists to configure and maintain it. It’s time and effort-consuming to create your own proper infrastructure. Thus, many companies started to use IaaS solutions to reduce costs. Simply put, they rent a place in a data center or even rent computing power. The main difference between IaaS and traditional hosting is the ability to quickly scale and charge only for consumed resources.
Platform as a Service
PaaS is used for software engineering, for example, for a banking app development. These solutions are placed on the application hosting with support for all the necessary services. Among the most frequently used cloud development environment, we can name Hosting Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure, or AWS applications. The main advantage of PaaS is the ability to quickly launch apps. In addition, using cloud services, developers can collect statistics on the work of their software, analyze and make the best business decisions.
Software as a Service
Earlier, companies had to buy and install software products to manage their operational processes. Such systems as CRM or ERP were installed for every employee who was responsible for managing these processes. Today, there’s no need to purchase complex and expensive programs. Now, people can open these apps directly in a browser. Unlike the on-premise applications, you don’t need to install SaaS solutions on your computer; you can access them from different devices.
Flexible consumption models also include data and analytics-related services, AI-as-a-services, IoT-as-a-service, hardware paid based on consumption, etc. The usage of innovative XaaS solutions facilitates digital transformation. In the next section, let’s see what changes you will meet if you are going to use XaaS.
Shifting from a Traditional Business Model to XaaS: Be Ready for Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is an inevitable way if you want to move with the times. This complex process starts with creating a strategy, developing a new business model, and defining your capabilities. Next, you should choose the right operating model, select the right people, processes, and technology. The usage of XaaS is only a small element in this chain. Before shifting from a traditional business model to a new one, you should answer the following questions:
What are your pursuits?
Where do you want to operate and how do you plan to compete?
What capabilities will you need to gain a competitive edge?
How will you use these capabilities?
What skills, processes, and technology will you need to reach your goals?
Tips for Implementing Everything-as-a-Service Solutions
Here are some recommendations on how to successfully execute digital transformation:
Make your teams or departments cross-functional to eliminate organizational isolation.
Prepare a strong foundation for transformation by simplifying and standardizing processes inside an organization.
Define roles and responsibilities. Determine who is responsible for decision-making.
Improve communication inside a company.
Define the capabilities and skills you need to digitally transform your company.
Take into account the opinions of all the stakeholders: your customers, suppliers, and partners.
Becoming a XaaS enterprise is an effective way towards digital transformation. It requires setting the right objectives, acquiring the right skills, and implementing the right technology. However, it is worth your efforts since it can cut operational costs, improve productivity, and bring high scalability and performance for your company to grow.
After 10 months of being released as WordPress’s new default editor, Gutenberg is still shrugged off by a sizable amount of people from the web development community, who frequently cite as reasons to disregard it its lack of accessibility support (even though major accessibility improvements have taken place), how slow it is (even though it is running much faster now), and several other grievances. This pessimistic reaction to Gutenberg is most evident in online articles demonstrating Gutenberg’s capabilities which, instead of eliciting a positive reaction from the readers, they mostly attract contempt (as reflected in a stream of negative comments).
Many people seem to be angry “at Gutenberg” (we will see in a while what Gutenberg actually is), expressing that Gutenberg should never have happened or, at least, never have been integrated to WordPress core as its default experience, or at least not so soon. Different people have different reasons to be opposed to Gutenberg, with some of their reasons being more personally significant than others. For instance, some people have seen their livelihoods jeopardized, having worked hard to specialize on a certain solution which, due to Gutenberg’s arrival, is in peril of disappearing (such as anyone working with this brand or that brand of page builders). I can truly understand why these people are angry at Gutenberg, and I sympathize with them.
However, I do also believe that being endlessly angered by Gutenberg and dismissing the whole of it — without even considering if it may be worth using after all — is not a sensible approach. When it was initially launched, I was quite opposed to Gutenberg, thinking that it was not ready, and this stance lasted for several months. However, I have lately found myself using Gutenberg more and more, and I can even claim that, nowadays, I’m actually enjoying it. While at the beginning I was a bit angered “at Gutenberg” myself too, I let my anger go away, and now I can actually benefit from it.
Through this article, I will attempt to change the narrative under which Gutenberg is most commonly depicted. I will enumerate what went wrong in the past, and describe what Gutenberg has been and what it is, from which I can give a leap of faith to present Gutenberg in a favorable light. I will also argue that Gutenberg already is a positive force, and as such, it deserves being given another chance (if you haven’t done so yet).
What Gutenberg Actually Is
From my point of view, the most important reason why Gutenberg is not more widely accepted is that, when people talk about Gutenberg, they equal it to not one but actually two entities (which are confused with each other), namely:
Gutenberg, the launch;
Gutenberg, the product.
Gutenberg as “the product” is the plugin/functionality itself. Gutenberg as “the launch” was the process that involved the initial development and release of Gutenberg, possibly starting when WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg introduced Gutenberg to the wider audience in June 2017 during WordCamp Europe 2017, and ending in early December 2018 when WordPress 5.0 was released with Gutenberg merged into it.
(Once the launch was over, a new stage started which continues until today: The “Gutenberg continuous delivery cycle”. However, this stage is very different from “Gutenberg the launch”, as there have been no serious issues with it, and as such it doesn’t produce any misconception towards “Gutenberg the product”. For this reason, there is no need to talk about it in this article.)
We must distinguish between the two entities, “the launch” and “the product”. As such, from now on, I hope that when we refer to “Gutenberg” it invariably means “Gutenberg the product”, and if we want to reference “Gutenberg the launch” then we must explicitly name it (possibly using any of its variations, such as “Gutenberg’s initial development/release” or similar phrases). Most importantly, we must refrain from mixing the launch and the product in the same bag: Mentioning any factor that contributed to Gutenberg’s disappointing launch as a reason to not use Gutenberg in our projects should be phased out, and Gutenberg as a product should be judged only against its own qualities. This is being fair to Gutenberg the product.
I believe that, while “Gutenberg the launch” has been justly criticized, the constant scorn aimed at Gutenberg the product has been unfair (even if it were justified), and that Gutenberg the product is, itself, a victim from the stained reputation conferred to the name “Gutenberg” during its frustrating launch. For instance, when searching for “Gutenberg” in the WordPress plugin directory, because the algorithm deciding the plugin ranking factors in the plugins’ rating, Gutenberg appears only around the 10th position. However, many of the 1-star ratings would not have taken place if Gutenberg had not been merged into core; had it been initially released as a plugin only, and waited until the most important bugs and issues (such as the lack of accessibility) had been resolved before merging to core, then its rating would today be higher.
If we are able to split apart the two entities (the launch and the product) and deal with them separately, then, on one side, we can do a postmortem of what went wrong during Gutenberg’s launch and feed this knowledge into the current continuous delivery cycle, so that the same mistakes will not be repeated (indeed, this seems to be happening already, as I will describe below); on the other side, we can allow ourselves to appreciate Gutenberg as a product, add it to our stacks, and hopefully benefit from it.
I will do exactly this, from my own point of view.
What Went Wrong During The Launch Of Gutenberg
In a single sentence, the team leading the process messed it up (that’s the polite way to say it).
WordPress 5.0 with Gutenberg merged into it was launched in early December 2018, just before WordCamp US. Launching it then was the wrong decision, for a very simple reason: Gutenberg was not yet ready. In particular, the accessibility situation was very dire, with Gutenberg being almost useless through accessibility devices such as screen readers, effectively making anyone depending on such devices unable to use the WordPress editor. And because the WordPress community is very vocal in protecting the rights of everyone (literally everyone) to be able to access the Internet, this rushed launch was not well received.
Matt Mullenweg (who was leading the release process) may have had good reasons to be adamant about launching on that date, which could have, for instance, made sense from a business perspective. However, it certainly did not make sense from a community perspective. Indeed, many community members felt betrayed, complaining that they had to hurry to test their clients’ sites even though they were on holiday. We can safely say that, for many people, such a premature launch was perceived as a wreck (even if the software was working properly, so no Y2K actually happened), which created unnecessary discontent, and which could have perfectly been avoided by either postponing the launch, or by first releasing Gutenberg as a plugin to be merged into core at a later, more stable stage.
Was the pain, frustration and disappointment inflicted in the community really worth the cost? I believe most people will say it was not. I absolutely think it was not. In my opinion, these kind of situations in which an action is taken against the will of the majority of the community members must be avoided in the future (unless there are really good reasons for it, even if not everyone agrees on them; if that was the case concerning Gutenber’s launch I do not know, since I’m unaware of any really good reason to justify it).
In his presentation during that same WordCamp US, Matt Mullenweg did acknowledge that mistakes were made during the launch of Gutenberg, and that he had learned the lesson so that these mistakes will hopefully not be repeated. I reckon we can accept his apology and trust that his decisions will be the right ones next time (even though new quarrels on equally-important topics have taken place since then). However, the damage is already done: A wound has opened up which may take time to heal, so the community will be less trustful until confidence in the WordPress leadership is fully restored.
Why Things Seem To Be Much Better Now
Now comes the good news: The state of affairs appears to have mostly taken a positive direction, with the improvements listed below already happening.
Improved Communication
One of the loudest complaints about the Gutenberg launch was the lack of communication by the leadership. Because no proper channels to manage the project and communicate its decisions were put in place (at least not in a comprehensive manner), it was difficult to have an accurate picture of the overall situation. (For instance, information by different authors or teams was published through different avenues, including unofficial ones such as personal blogs.)
This concern has been greatly improved. In particular, the amount of information in the make blogs (where the different communities interact to take decisions concerning WordPress for different areas, such as core, accessibility, design, internationalization, and others) and the frequency with which the information is updated have been increased, and every team holds a regular Slack-based meeting (mostly taking place on a weekly or biweekly basis) in which anyone with a WordPress.org user account can participate. As experienced by some community members, it is now possible to reliably follow the developments on some topic, and have enough information to be able to become involved.
The fallout from Gutenberg’s launch also prompted Matt Mullenweg to expand WordPress’s leadership with two new roles: an Executive Director, to oversee and direct all contributor teams in their work to build and maintain WordPress, and a Marketing & Communications Lead, to lead the marketing team and oversee improving WordPress.org, related websites, and all its outlets (unfortunately, the person assigned to this role quit not long after, so somebody else must be found to take over this position).
Triage Team Formed To Tackle Open Issues
During the initial development phase of Gutenberg, several people complained that existing bugs, which had accumulated into the thousands, should be fixed before venturing out into adding new functionality to WordPress.
In March this year, a triage team was formed to clean up the open issues in the WordPress Trac bug tracker. This is hard work that has been needed for many years. If ever finished, WordPress would then have the chance to switch from Trac to a more modern bug tracker, such as GitHub.
Accessibility Is Steadily Becoming A Non-Issue
Accessibility issues are being tackled in every new Gutenberg release, with version 6.3 providing the lionshare of improvements. At the current pace of improvement, the most outstanding accessibility issues (as reported in the Gutenberg Accessibility Audit) should soon be a part of the past.
Judging Gutenberg On Its Own Merits
Now that we have split Gutenberg the launch from Gutenberg the product, we can proceed to analyze Gutenberg as a product and decide if it is worth adding to our application stack, based solely on its own merits and shortcomings. Many people do rightfully point out Gutenberg’s problems as the reason to not trust it (instead of focusing on the failed launch). However, Gutenberg has been improving by leaps and bounds, and many of the criticized issues may have been solved or may be on the brink of being solved. As such, the negative assessments should have a date of expiry and be re-evaluated. If we can give Gutenberg a new try and see where it stands nowadays, we may appreciate that, after all, it is not so bad. In my opinion, Gutenberg deserves a warmer welcome than it currently gets.
I am amazed that Gutenberg is still being compared to the previous way of editing content in WordPress (mainly through the tinymce, but also shortcodes, widgets, and others), arguing that it is more difficult to code through Gutenberg. This may be true, but it is also missing the point: Gutenberg is not here to provide a new way to code our application, producing the same features as in the past; instead, it is here to greatly enhance what can be done, offering to add features to our applications that could only be dreamt of in the past. Also, Gutenberg is not another page builder. Indeed, comparing Gutenberg to Divi or Beaver Builder is similarly missing the point, because it is like comparing a Victorinox to a regular knife: Yes, you can do site/page building with Gutenberg (actually not yet, but it is already a work in progress), but that is just one of its many uses; there are several other uses which are initially hidden, but once you pull them up from their compartment and understand how they work, a new world of possibilities will be revealed. Below, I will describe some of these new possibilities that Gutenberg brings to the table.
First, let’s discuss what’s not so great about Gutenberg. The one thing where I believe Gutenberg can be truly considered detrimental is in the steep curve of learning of React (which is the JavaScript library Gutenberg is coded with). WordPress has always been very inclusive, enabling people from any background (not only coders, but also non-techies such as bloggers, marketing people, salesmen, and the like) to create a theme or plugin or launch a site. This is beyond doubt not the case anymore, and it is unfair to expect everyone to have to learn React to create a Gutenberg block (this is not necessarily the case, since we can also create blocks using other JavaScript libraries, and even without using JavaScript, such as through ACF blocks, however using React is the most logical option if only because Gutenberg is coded with it). The only argument that could justify this disadvantage is if it makes the experience better for the user. Let’s see if this can be considered the case.
As I argued in a previous article of mine, the block-based architecture from Gutenberg radically changes the way in which applications are built: Instead of thinking in HTML code, we can now think in terms of components as the unit for building the website. This architecture is more maintainable and resilient, since each component (or block) can be independently developed and tested, and because it is easily reusable it can lower down the cost of developing several applications. Indeed, the recent popularity of JavaScript libraries such as Vue and React can be greatly attributed to their support for components. It is a great feature that developers love and which, I believe, once you start coding with, there is no turning back.
In this same article, I also describe how Gutenberg could support the “Create Once, Publish Everywhere” strategy (also known as “COPE”), enabling to produce a single source of truth of content to feed to all of our applications, for whichever medium or platform they run on: web, email/newsletters, iOS/Android apps, VR/AR, home-assistants (like Amazon Alexa), and others. Because it makes the overall content management much simpler, COPE also enables to lower the costs of producing content for different platforms. When I first wrote my article, I was theorizing that it could be done. However, I have recently implemented COPE for WordPress, and it works like a charm! (Stay tuned for another article in which I explain how it works in detail.)
The combination of COPE and the WordPress APIs (WP REST API, WPGraphQL, and my own PoP API) will provide one compelling reason for managing all of our content, for all of our applications, through WordPress. The other compelling reason will be Gutenberg’s ease of use (which is not fully here yet, but at the current pace of development, will arrive sooner than later), enabling the end-user to create elaborate content in a very simple way.
We already have access to great new features, such a real-time preview of how the content looks like, copy/pasting from Google Docs with perfect formatting, creation of intricate grid layers with nested elements inside, and many others. We can also expect new blocks to deliver utterly-unexpected features we have never imagined. My bet is that, through Gutenberg, WordPress is poised to become the digital assets manager of the web. (I’ve already written an article which will soon be published here on Smashing Magazine concerning this topic and my justification for this bold statement.)
In addition, Gutenberg allows to reuse code with other CMSs or frameworks (such as for Drupal and for Laravel), so that coding for WordPress needs not to be restricted to WordPress anymore, once again allowing us to lower the cost to develop a library that needs to run in as many systems as possible (for instance, a company providing an integration of its API for many different platforms and languages, such as Stripe, could benefit from it). Currently, only the client-side code (JavaScript and CSS) seems to be re-used, however, the server-side PHP code can also be re-used. (I will, once again, soon publish an article on Smashing explaining how to do just this.)
These features are already a reality, and we can expect Gutenberg to provide many more compelling reasons for its existence in the years to come (according to Matt Mullenweg, Gutenberg has currently implemented only some 10% of its potential).
We can finally attempt to reach a verdict on Gutenberg the product: My stance is that it establishes a higher barrier of entry to WordPress, which is regrettable, however, it also is a beautifully engineered piece of software which grants real new powers to WordPress and, due to WordPress’s prominence, to the web development world in general. And between this trade-off between costs and benefits, I believe that having Gutenberg as part of WordPress is more worth it than not. I hope you can agree with my opinion or, if not, at least the reasons against it can be based solely on the characteristics of Gutenberg as a product.
Conclusion
Gutenberg is currently at its best — having started to provide delightful user experiences that were not possible with WordPress before. However, not everyone is aware of this fact because not everyone can get down to embracing Gutenberg. This is an unfortunate circumstance because Gutenberg (as the product) should not be faulted for the mistakes that took place during the launch of Gutenberg. If we are able to split these two entities apart and treat each of them independently, we can then convincingly ask people to give Gutenberg another chance, suggesting that Gutenberg as a product is worth having, even if Gutenberg the launch was a failed process.
In this article, I did a postmortem of the failed Gutenberg launch, based on my own understanding of the events. Carrying out such a postmortem can help the community and the leadership make sure that those unfortunate mistakes do not happen again. After the postmortem, I proceeded to evaluate Gutenberg based on its own merits and declared my stance: I believe that Gutenberg is a great tool to have, and the WordPress community can certainly benefit from it. And because it will only be getting better and better, Gutenberg could even inaugurate a new golden era for WordPress.
the hidden rule is a User Agent style, which means it’s less specific than a moderate sneeze. This means that your favourite display style will override it:
<style>
div { display: block; }
</style>
<div hidden>
lol guess who's not hidden anymore
hint: it's this thing
</div>
So two related problems…
It’s extremely weak. Literally any change to the display property other than the none value on the element with any strength selector will override it. Much like any other display property, like width or whatever, except the it feels somehow worse to have a hidden attribute actively on an element and have it not actually be hidden.
The display property is sadly overloaded with responsibility. It would be way cool if hidden was a CSS property that could be in charge of the visibility/access of elements rather than the same property that controls the type of block it is. But alas, backward compatibility 4-lyfe of the web stops that (which is a good thing for the health of the web overall).
If you really love the semantics of the attribute, Monica suggests:
[hidden] { display: none !important; }
Seems like a nice addition to any “reset” or base stylesheet.
Otherwise, the classic technique of hiding things with a class is absolutely fine. I typically have a utility class:
.hide, .hidden {
display: none;
}
But remember there are always a million ways to do things. I find myself regularly doing one-off hide/show mechanisms. For example, a menu that you need to toggle the visibility of with flair, but remain accessible at all times…
There are all these sites out there that want to help you with your images. They do things like optimize your images and help you serve them performantly.
That’s a very good thing. By any metric, images are a major slice of the resources on websites, and we’re notoriously bad at optimizing them and doing all the things we could to lower the performance hit from them. I’m sitting at a conference right now and Dave just bet everyone in the audience $100 that he could find an unoptimized image on their site. I wasn’t about to take him up on it.
So you use some service to help you deliver images better. Smart. Many of them will make managing and optimizing images a lot easier. But I don’t consider them a no-brainer. There is a lot to think about, like making choices that don’t paint you into a corner.
I should be able to upload images from my own CMS.
I don’t want to go to your site to upload my assets. I want to use the media management in my own CMS. So, the service should have an API at a minimum, and possible even officially maintained CMS plugins.
This site uses WordPress. I can drag and drop images into the media library and posts very easily. I can search my media library for images I’ve uploaded before. I like that, and I want to take advantage of it today, and as it evolves.
The images should be uploaded to my own server.
If it also has to be uploaded to the image service, that’s fine. But it should go to my server first, then to the service. That way, I still maintain ownership of the source file.
Images within content should use functional, semantic markup in my CMS.
I’d prefer that the images within content are stored as totally functional HTML in my database:
<img src="/images/flower.jpg" alt="a blue flower">
It could be fancier than that, like using srcset (but probably not sizes as that will change as the design changes), or be contained within or
elements… whatever you like that makes sense as semantic HTML. The most important thing being that the content in my database has fully functional HTML with a src on the image that points to a real image on my real server.
The implementation of the image service will involve filtering that HTML to do whatever it needs to do, like replace the URLs to generate fancier responsive image markup and whatnot.
Between having functional HTML and images on my server, that enables me to turn off the image service if I need to. Services have a habit of coming and going, or changing in ways that make them more or less palatable. I don’t want to be locked-in; I want freedom. I want to be able turn off the service and have a perfectly functional site with perfectly functional images, and not be obstructed from moving to a different service — or no service at all.
Even if I didn’t use the service in the past, I want all my images to benefit from it.
I just mentioned filtering the HTML for images in my database. That should happen for all the images on my site, even if they were uploaded and used before I started using the image service.
This probably means the services offers a URL-based “get” API to optimize images on-the-fly pulled from their canonical locations.
I shouldn’t have to think about format or size.
I want to upload whatever I have. Probably some huge un-optimized screenshot I just took. If I think about it at all, I want to upload something much too big and much too high-quality so that I know I have a great original version available. The service will create optimized, sized, and formatted images as needed.
I also want to upload SVG and have it stay SVG (that’s also optimized).
The images will ultimately be served on a CDN.
CDNs are vital for speed. Australians get images from servers hosted in Australia. Canadians get images from servers hosted in Canada. The servers are configured to be fast and cookie-less and all the fancy over-my-head things that make an asset CDN scream.
The images should serve in the right format.
If you serve images in WebP format to browsers that support it, you’ll probably get as much or more performance out of that optimization than serving re-sized images with responsive images syntax. It’s a big deal.
I want the service to know what the best possible format for any particular image for any particular browser and serve the image in that format. This is going to change over time, so I want the service to stay on top of this so I don’t have to.
I know that involved formats like JPEG-XR and JPEG-2000 three years ago. Is that still the case? I have no idea. This is a core value proposition for the service.
It should optimize the images and handle quality.
This is perhaps the most obvious feature and the reason you reach for an image service in the first place. Images need optimization. There are perhaps dozens of image optimization tools/algorithms that aim to squeeze every last byte out of images. The image service probably uses those or even has its own fancy tech for it. Ideally, the default is to optimize an image the most it possibly can be without noticeably hurting the quality, but still allowing me to ratchet it down even more if I want to.
Don’t shame me for using high-pixel density images.
A lot of image services have some sort of tester tool where you drop in a URL and it tells you how bad you’re doing with images. Many of them test the size of the image on the rendered page and compare the dimensions of the original image. If the original image is larger, they tell you could have had savings by sizing it down. That’s obnoxious to me. High-pixel density displays have been around for a long time and it’s no crime to serve them.
It should help me serve the right size for the device it’s on and the perfect responsive syntax if needed.
Not all images benefit from the same responsive breakpoints. Check out the site Responsive Image Breakpoints. It generates versions of the image that are best depending on the image itself. That’s the kind of help I like to see from an image service. Take something hard and automate it for me.
I know I’ll probably need to bring my own sizes attribute because that is very dependant on my own CSS and how the design of the site plays out. It’s still important, and makes me wonder if an image service could step up and help me figure out what my optimal sizes attribute should be for certain images. Like loading my site at different sizes and seeing how large the image renders with my CSS and calculating it from there to use later.
Just me.
This is just my own list of requirements. I feel like it’s fairly reflective of “normal” sites that have a bunch of images and want to do the right thing to serve them.
I didn’t go into all the fancy features image services offer, like being able to tell you that an image contains a giraffe facing west and hasn’t eaten since Thursday while offering to recolor its retinas. I know those things are vital to some companies. This is more about what seems to me the widest and most common use case of just hosting and delivering images in the best way current technology allows.
This article is mostly directed at you, dear Frontend Developer, who enjoys implementing user interfaces but struggles in aligning expectations with designers you work with. Perhaps you are referred to as the “UI Developer” or “UX Engineer.” Regardless of the title that you carry around, your job (and as well as mine) consists of more than breathing life into design files. We are also responsible for filling the gap between the design and development workflows. However, when crossing that bridge, we are faced with multiple challenges.
Today, I’d like to share with you practical tips that have helped me to collaborate more efficiently with designers in the past years.
I believe it’s our job, as UI Developers, to not only help designers in their journey to learn how the web works, but also to get to know their reality and learn their language.
Understanding UX Designers’ Background
Most of the UX designers (also referred to as Web Designers or Product Designers) out there took their first steps in the design world through tools like Photoshop and Illustrator. Perhaps they were Graphic Designers: their main goal was to create logos and brand identities and to design layouts for magazines. They could also have been Marketing Designers: printing billboards, designing banners and creating infographics.
This means that most UX designers spent their early days designing for print, which is a totally different paradigm from their current medium, the screen. That was their first big challenge. When dealing with print, designers cared about pixel alignment, but on a fixed area (paper). They didn’t have to contend with a dynamic layout (screens). Thinking about text breaking or states of interactions was simply not part of their job either. Designers also had complete freedom over colors, images, and typography without performance constraints.
Fortunately, there have been many efforts from the self-taught UX designers community, to teach development fundamentals, discuss whether designers should learn to code and understand how to best perform hand-off to developers. The same held true for the development side as well (more about that in a minute.) However, there is still friction happening between the two fields.
On the one hand, designers complaining each time an implementation doesn’t match their designs or feeling misunderstood when those are rejected by the developers without a clear explanation. On the other hand, developers might take for granted that designers know something technical when that might not be true. I believe we can all do better than that.
Embracing A New Way Of Thinking
The websites and apps that we are building will be displayed on a wide range of screen sizes. Each person will use them on multiple devices. Our common goal is to create a familiar experience across their journeys.
When we, as developers, think that designers are being picky about pixel alignments, we need to understand why that is. We need to recognize that it’s beyond fidelity and consistency. It’s about the sum of all the parts working together. It’s cohesion. We have to embrace it and do our best to accomplish it. Learning the fundamentals of design principles is a good starting point. Understand the importance of selecting the right colors, how the hierarchy works, and why white space matters.
Note: There’s an online course known as “Design for Developers” and a book called “Refactoring UI” — both are great to get you started. With these, you’ll be able to implement user interfaces with a sharp eye for detail and gain significant leverage when communicating with designers.
Magnifying Your Designers’ Awareness
You might take for granted that designers know the web as much as you do. Well, they might not. Actually, they don’t have to! It’s our responsibility, as developers, to keep them updated with the current state of the web.
I’ve worked with the two sides of this spectrum: Designers who think that anything can be built (such as complex filters, new scroll behaviors or custom form inputs) without giving browser compatibility a thought. Then, there are designers with assumptions about the “low limitations of the web” and just assume by themselves that something is impossible to implement. We need to show them the true possibilities of web design and not let the limitations hold back their skills.
Teach Them Code, Not How To Code
This seems contradictory but bear with me: knowing how to code is at the core of a developer’s job. We work in a fast-paced industry with new stuff popping up every day. It would be a hypocritical request from us to demand designers to learn how to code. However, we can help them to understand code.
Sit next to the designer you work with for 15 minutes and teach them how they can see for themselves whether the specs of an element are correct and how to change them. I find Firefox Page Inspector remarkably user-friendly for this.
Nowadays, it’s a joy to visualize layouts, debug CSS animations and tweak typography. Show them a ready-to-use code playground like Codepen for them to explore. They don’t need to know all CSS specs to understand how the layout paradigm works. However, they need to know how elements are created and behave in order to empower their daily work.
Include Designers In The Development Process
Invite designers to join you in the stand-up meeting, to be part of the QA process and to sit down with you while you refine visual details in your implementations. This will make them understand the constraints of the web and, soon enough, they’ll recognize why a feature takes time to implement.
Ask Designers To Include You In Their Design Process
You’ll realize that they do much more than “make things pretty”. You’ll learn more about the research process and how user testing is done. You’ll discover that for each design proposal they show to you, several other studies were previously dropped. When designers request a change, ask the reason behind it, so you can learn more about the decisions being made. Ultimately, you’ll start to understand why they are picky about white space and alignments, and hopefully, soon you’ll be too!
I find it crucial to treat frontend development as a core part of the design process, and design as a core part of the development process. Advocating a mindset where everyone gets the chance to be involved in the design and development cycle will help us all to better understand each other’s challenges and to create great experiences as well.
We May Use Different Tools, But We Must Speak The Same Language
Now that we are starting to understand each other’s workflow a little better, it’s time for the next step: to speak the same language.
Looking Beyond The Code Editor
Once you start to pay attention to your surroundings, you’ll be better equipped to tackle problems. Get to know the business better and be willing to listen to what designers have to say. That will make you a team member with richer contributions to the project. Collaborating in areas beyond our expertise is the key to creating meaningful conversations and mutual trust.
Using UI Systems As A Contract
Ask designers to share their design system with you (and if they don’t use one, it’s never too late to start). That will save you the bother of handpicking the colors used, figuring out margins or guessing a text style. Make sure you are familiar with the UI System as much as they are.
You might already be familiar with the component-based concept. However, some designers might not perceive it in the same way as you do. Show them how components can help you to build user interfaces more efficiently. Spread that mindset and also say bye-bye to similar-but-not-equal-names: header vs hero, pricing info vs price selector. When a piece of the user interface (a.k.a ‘a component’) is built, stride to use the same names so they can be reflected in both design and code files. Then, when someone says, “We need to tweak the proposal invitation widget,” everyone knows exactly what is being talked about.
Acknowledging The Real Source Of Truth
Despite the fact that the user interface is first created in the design files, the real source of truth is on the development side. At the end of the day, it is what people actually see, right? When a design is updated, it’s a good idea to leave a side note about its development status, especially in projects where a large number of people are involved. This trick helps to keep the communication smooth, so nobody (including you) wonders: “This is different from the live version. Is it a bug or hasn’t so-and-so been implemented just yet?”
Keeping The Debt Under Control
So, you know all about technical debt?—?it happens when the cost to implement something new is high because of a shortcut we took in the past to meet a deadline. The same can happen on the design side too and we call it design debt.
You can think about it like this: The higher the UX & UI inconsistency, the higher the debt (technical and design). One of the most common inconsistencies is in having different elements to represent the same action. This is why bad design is usually reflected in bad code. It’s up to all of us, both as designers and developers, to treat our design debt seriously.
Being Accessible Doesn’t Mean It Has To Be Ugly
I’m really pleased to see that both we, as developers and designers, are finally starting to bring accessibility into our work. However, a lot of us still think that designing accessible products is hard or limits our skills and creativity.
Let me remind you that we are not creating a product just for ourselves. We are creating a product to be used by all the people, including those who use the product in different ways from you. Take into account how individual elements can be more accessible while keeping the current userflows clear and coherent.
For example, if a designer really believes that creating an enhanced select input is necessary, stand by their side and work together to design and implement it in an accessible way to be used by a wide range of people with diverse abilities.
Giving Valuable Feedback To Designers
It’s unavoidable that questions will pop up when going through the designs. However, that’s not a reason for you to start complaining about the designers’ mistakes or about their ambitious ideas. The designers are not there to drive you mental, they just don’t always intuitively know what you need to do your job. The truth is that, in the past, you didn’t know about this stuff either, so be patient and embrace collaboration as a way of learning.
The Earlier The Feedback, The Better
The timing for feedback is crucial. The feedback workflow depends a lot on the project structure, so there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for it. However, when possible, I believe we should aim for a workflow of periodic feedback — starting in the early stages. Having this mindset of open collaboration is the way to reduce the possibility of unexpected big re-iterations later in the road. Keep in mind that the later you give the designer your first feedback, the higher will be the cost for them to explore a new approach if needed.
Explain Abstract Ideas In Simple Terms
Remember when I said that performance was not a concern of the designers’ previous jobs? Don’t freak out when they are not aware of how to create optimized SVGs for the web. When faced with a design that requires a lot of different fonts to be loaded, explain to them why we should minimize the number of requests, perhaps even take advantage of Variable Fonts. Asides from loading faster, it also provides a more consistent user experience. Unless designers are keen to learn, avoid using too many technical terms when explaining something. You can see this as an opportunity of improving your communication skills and clarifying your thoughts.
Don’t Let Assumptions Turn Into Decisions
Some questions about a design spec only show up when we get our hands dirty in the code. To speed things up, we might feel tempted to make decisions based on our assumptions. Please, don’t. Each time you turn an assumption into a decision, you are risking the trust that the design team puts on you to implement the UI. Whenever in doubt, reach out and clarify your doubts. This will show them that you care about the final result as much as they do.
Don’t Do Workarounds By Yourself
When you are asked to implement a design that is too hard, don’t say “It’s impossible” or start to implement a cheap alternative version of it by yourself. This immediately causes friction with the design team when they see their designs were not implemented as expected. They might react angrily, or not say anything but feel defeated or frustrated. That can all be avoided if we explain to them why something it’s not possible, in simple terms and suggest alternative approaches. Avoid dogmatic behaviors and be open to collaborating on a new solution.
When it comes to animations, let’s be real: deep down you are as thrilled to implement the next wow animation as much as the designers are to create it. The difference between us and them is that we are more aware of the web’s constraints. However, don’t let that limit your own skills! The web evolves fast, so we must use that in our favor.
The next time you are asked to bring a prototype to life, try not to reject it upfront or do it all by yourself. See it as an opportunity to push yourself. Animations are one of the pickiest parts of web development, so make sure to refine each keyframe with your designer — in person or by sharing a private synced link.
Think Beyond The Ideal State — Together
Here’s the thing: it’s not all about you. One of the designers’ challenges is to really understand their users and present the designs in the most attractive way to sell to the Product Manager. Sometimes they forget about what’s beyond the ideal state and developers forget it too.
In order to help avoid these gaps from happening, align with designers the scenario requirements:
The worst-case scenario A scenario where the worst possibilities are happening. This helps designers to say no to fixed content and let it be fluid. What happens if the title has more than 60 characters or if the list is too long? The same applies to the opposite, the empty scenario. What should the user do when the list is empty?
Interaction states The browser is more than hovering and clicking around. There are a bunch of states: default, hover, focus, active, disable, error… and some of them can happen at the same time. Let’s give them the proper attention.
The loading state When building stuff locally, we might use mocks and forget that things actually take time to load. Let designers know about that possibility too and show them that are ways to make people perceive that things don’t take that long to load.
Taking into consideration all these scenarios will save you a lot of time going back and forth during the development phase.
Note: There’s a great article by Scott Hurff about how to fix bad user interfaces that will take us a step closer to an accessible product.
Embrace Change Requests
Developers are known for not being too happy about someone finding a bug in their code — especially when it’s a design bug reported by a designer. There are a lot of memes around it, but have you ever reflected how those bugs can compoundingly rot both the quality of the experience as well as your relationship when these design bugs are casually dismissed? It happens slowly, almost like falling asleep. Bit by bit, then all at once. Designers might start out saying, “It’s just a tiny little detail,” until the indifference and resentment builds up and nothing is said. The damage has then already been done.
This situation is two-fold: both to your peers and to your work. Don’t let that happen. Work on what’s coloring your reaction. A designer being ‘picky’ can be inconvenient, but it can also be an engineer’s shallow interpretation of attentiveness and enthusiasm. When someone tells you that your implementation is not perfect (yet), put your ego aside and show them how you recognize their hard work in refining the final result.
Go Off The Record Once In A While
We all have tasks to deliver and roadmaps to finish. However, some of the best work happens off the record. It won’t be logged into the TO DO board and that’s okay. If you find a designer you have a rapport with, go sneak into their workspace and explore together new experiments. You never know what can come from there!
Conclusion
When you are willing to learn from the design team, you are also learning different ways of thinking. You’ll evolve your mindset of collaboration with other areas out of your experience while refining your eye for creating new experiences. Be there to help and be open to learning, because sharing is what makes us better.
This article wouldn’t be possible without the feedback of many great people. I want to gratefully thank to the designers Jasmine Meijer and Margarida Botelho for helping me to share a balanced perspective about the misunderstandings between designers and developers.
At a recent conference talk (sorry, I forget which one), there was a quick example of poor web performance in the form of a third-party widget. The example showed a site that installed the widget in order add a “email us” button fixed to the bottom right of the viewport. Not even a live-chat widget — just an email thing. It weighed in at something like 470KB, which is straight bananas.
Just in case you are someone who feels trapped into using a ten-ton widget because you aren’t yet sure how to replicate the same functionality, I’ve prepared a small chunk of HTML for you.
It’s 602 Bytes, or about 1/10th of 1% of the size of that other widget — with nothing to download, parse or render block.
That’s a 773 Byte JavaScript file that does a 3.5KB Ajax request for data, and you’d place it at the end of the document to avoid any render-blocking. It would be nice to see more of this kind of thing.
It’s pretty common to see a loading state on sites these days, particularly as progressive web apps and reactive sites are on the rise. It’s one way to improve “perceived” performance — that is, making it feel as though the site is loading faster than it actually is.
There’s no shortage of ways to make a loader — all it takes is a quick search on CodePen to see oodles of examples, from animated GIFs to complex animations. While it’s tempting to build the fanciest of the fancy loaders, we can actually do a pretty darn good job with only a minimal amount of CSS and JavaScript.
I’m going to assume that you’ve already created a project, so we’ll jump right in and start with the spinner — or “pre-loader” as it is also called.
SVG is a great option for a spinner. It’s scalable and implementing it is as easy as an image tag. We could make one from scratch, say in an image editor like Illustrator, Sketch or Figma. For this example, I’m just going to grab this one from loading.io, which is a nice resource to make and customize different loaders.
Now that we have an SVG for the visual, we can drop it into HTML:
We’re using .preloader as a wrapper, mostly because it helps us position the image on the page, but also because it will help us hide and reveal the page content while the loader works.
This is doing a few things that are more than cosmetic:
We’re displaying the loader directly in the center of the screen, using flexbox properties and values.
We’ve made the element take up the entire width and height of the screen and given it a black (well, actually a really, really dark gray) background. That means anything behind it (like the page content) is completely hidden. If our page was a different background color (e.g. white), then we would adjust the loader’s background color accordingly.
The position is fixed so scrolling won’t affect it’s location on the page. Plus, the z-index is high enough that not other element should stack on top of it and block it from view.
This is what we should see so far when opening it up in the browser:
Some light JavaScript handles the hiding
We’ve got a fancy spinner that covers the entire page, whether we’re viewing this on small or large screens. No we can write some logic to make it fade out after a certain amount of time. That’ll take a small dose of JavaScript.
First, let’s select the .preloader element we just styled up:
It would actually be a lot easier to add a class to the loader that sets its opacity to zero. However, it wouldn’t be as smooth as what we’re doing here, which is using a tiny helping of JavaScript to create a fadeOut function.
const fadeEffect = setInterval(() => {
// if we don't set opacity 1 in CSS, then
// it will be equaled to "" -- that's why
// we check it, and if so, set opacity to 1
if (!preloader.style.opacity) {
preloader.style.opacity = 1;
}
if (preloader.style.opacity > 0) {
preloader.style.opacity -= 0.1;
} else {
clearInterval(fadeEffect);
}
}, 100);
? jQuery has a function that does this right out of the box. Leverage that if you’re already using jQuery in your project. Otherwise, rolling it with vanilla JavaScript is the way to go.
Let me explain the JavaScript a little bit. As the comment says, if our .preloader element doesn’t have the opacity property set, then it will be equal to empty ("") and we can set it to a value of 1 manually to make sure it displays when the document loads.
Once we know the opacity is set, then we set manipulate it. The whole function is wrapped in setInterval and we check if the opacity property every 100 milliseconds to see if it is greater than zero. As long as it is above zero, we decrease its value in 0.1 increment, which creates a smooth effect that fades the element out over time.
Once we hit zero opacity, we clearInterval to stop the script from running infinitely. Feel free to play around with timing and decreasing points to fit your needs.
The last thing that left to do is to call the function. We’ll call it when the window loads:
window.addEventListener('load', fadeEffect);
We are intentionally using the load event instead of DOMContentLoaded because the DOMContentLoaded event is fired when the document has been completely loaded and parsed. That means it doesn’t *wait for stylesheets, images, and subframes to finish loading* *before it executes*. The load event can be used to detect a fully-loaded page, and that is exactly what we are looking for. Otherwise, the function would start before our CSS and SVG are ready.
Drop some content into the HTML and try things out. Here’s the demo again:
The WordPress ecosystem has a plentiful supply of plugins that offer everything from AMP to Zapier integration and so, so, so many other things in between. It’s a significant contributor to what makes WordPress great because plugins can account for the needs of nearly any website.
How many plugins are installed on your WordPress site? Five? Fifteen? Fifty? We’ve been up to 31 plugins here at CSS-Tricks and we rely on them for everything from content delivery to performance. Why rebuild the wheel if you don’t have to right? It’s simply too easy and convenient to reach for something someone else has already created (and for free).
Whether you have a handful or a truckload of plugins, you know that each one adds a little bit of complexity to your site, especially when it comes to maintenance and updates. It’s not uncommon to see that little badge at the top of the WordPress admin bar displaying a number of available plugin updates that are ready to install. The problem is that it can happen a lot and staying on top of updates turns almost into a game of Whack-a-Mole that not only eats up time, but risks conflicts on your site that could break things. Plugins are great! But mashing up code from third-party authors is always a (often slight) possibility.
One way to cut down on the number of plugins: Jetpack. It’s a single plugin that provides the features and functionality of dozens. the number of plugins on CSS-Tricks would likely be much higher if we weren’t relying on it for blocking spam comments, security scans, search, social sharing, post subscriptions, and displaying related posts… just to name a few. Jetpack is literally capable of so much that’s hard to contain in a single post. We’ve outlined our favorites, though. And we can’t recommend it enough.
Square is everywhere. Millions of merchants, vendors, and companies large and small use Square for business transactions. Nearly everyone can recognize the small, white, square gadgets that plug into smartphones at farmers markets and sit on countertops in coffee shops.
But just a short decade ago, accepting credit card payments was a drag for small businesses — and a near impossibility for microbusinesses. Getting set up to swipe required a special account, special equipment, and a lot of very special fees.
One purchase gone awry changed all that. In 2009, an artisan glassblower named Jim McKelvey lost a big sale because his buyer could only pay with a credit card. Fortunately, he was a friend of Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, who knew a few things about thinking big.
Together, they came up with Square, a mobile credit card payment method that allows vendors to accept payments anywhere with a smartphone, skipped the merchant account process, and offered lower processing fees. This removed the barrier to entry for accepting credit card payments so dramatically that it essentially democratized card payments and turned the whole industry on its head.
In short, using Square for business transformed everything, allowing anyone with a mobile device to become a roving checkout register.
This means that as a business owner, you’ll never miss a sale from a card-only buyer, no matter where or what you’re selling. Even better, Square helps businesses digitize all of their financial operations, eliminating the need to fuss with paper invoices or process checks and cash. Those efficiencies can help companies grow fast — and so can easy access to business loans through Square Capital. Plus, Square is famous for their affordable transaction fees, meaning you end up with more money.
Needless to say, those familiar point-of-sale gadgets and easy, low-cost transactions are only part of the story. From customer engagement to inventory management, merchants are using Square for business services that go beyond processing payments.
Here, we’ll dive into exactly how Square works, their full suite of service offerings, how to get started, and how the popular payment processor can help your business grow.
Square as a leading payment method
What is Square?
In the simplest form, Square is a credit card and point-of-sale payment processor. They use mobile technology to allow businesses, artists, vendors, and organizations of all kinds to accept card payments using a smartphone or tablet. Increasingly, businesses are using Square to take both mobile and in-store payments.
Square’s hardware gadgets include
Square Reader for magstripe (magnetic stripe)
Square Reader for contactless and chip
Square Terminal
Square Stand
Square Register
The answer to “What is Square?” goes beyond the fact that Square is a payment processor, though. Square is also an “operating system for small business” that offers a suite of software solutions to help businesses make the most of their time and money — and grow and thrive.
As one entrepreneur told Venturebeat, Square not only made it possible for him to process credit cards, they also gave him the power to seamlessly run his entire bakery business with their back-office software.
The Square Point of Sale app, including the simple but robust Square Dashboard, helps you manage your business on any device (in or away from the office), and includes features like real-time analytics and sales reporting, an administrative dashboard, inventory management, marketing, customer relationship tracking, payroll and employee management, marketing, and — of course — the ability to take orders.
Another way you can use Square for business is as a funding source. Square Capital offers sellers business loans in amounts ranging from $500 to $250,000 with simplified fees and easy loan management tools.
How does Square work?
Before you ask, “How does Square work?” you need to ask yourself, “How do I work?” The way you use both the payment processing company’s software and hardware largely depends on your business model and setup.
Here’s a quick, high-level rundown of what you can expect to do when you use Square:
Create a free account and order the Square hardware of your choice depending on the nature of your business.
Download the Square Point of Sale app.
Customize your Square Point of Sale app or online dashboard based on your inventory, your customers, the type of data you’d like to collect, etc.
Once your Square device arrives, start accepting card payments. Alternatively, invoice clients via the Square Dashboard or enter payment information manually.
The money you’ve made from your sales, minus Square’s transaction fees, will be deposited into your account in one to two business days.
Overview of Square products
If you know anything about using Square for business, it’s that the company makes mobile payments possible. But that’s just the beginning. Here’s an overview of Square’s product offerings, from card readers to business loans, all of which are available for purchase, download, or order from Square’s website.
Managed payments
Square may have made their credit card processing debut with the small, white dongle that attaches to a smartphone or tablet, but over the last 10 years their offering has evolved. Today, businesses can take advantage of everything from the original Square Reader to the sleek Square Terminal, which makes it possible to process payments, print receipts, and ring up sales from one modern device.
Here’s how managed payments work on Square for business:
Square Terminal
Square hardware options
Square Reader for magstripe. This is the classic white Square reader you use to swipe magnetic strips on payment cards. You can order it with a headphone jack or a Lightning connector. It plugs into a smartphone or tablet and translates card info into the Square Point of Sale app. It has always been and continues to be free.
Square Reader for contactless and chip. This is the next-generation card reader. It reads EMV chips (the microchips now on payment cards) and near-field communication from payment apps like Apple Pay and Google Pay. It’s still a white square, but it’s bigger than the original magstripe reader. And instead of plugging in, it connects to your smartphone or tablet using Bluetooth. You can mount the reader to a countertop stand or mount it to your iPhone 7 or 7 Plus with a special OtterBox case. This reader costs $49.
Square Terminal. No smartphone? No problem. The Square Terminal is the connected device, plus the reader. It works with magnetic stripes, EMV chips, and near-field communication payments — and it prints receipts. This is a great option for businesses that need employees to accept mobile payments. Square Terminal costs $399.
Square Stand. Any tablet can become a stationary point of sale with the Square Stand. It comes with a magnetic stripe reader built in and a remote reader for EMV chips and near-field communication payments. The stand swivels so customers can easily sign the screen. You can add a cash box, barcode scanner, and a receipt printer as accessories if needed. The Stand itself costs $199.
Square Register. This is Square’s most permanent, stationary, all-in-one option. It’s both the stand and the device. It comes with a customer-facing touchscreen that accepts magnetic stripes, EMV chips, or near-field communication payments, and the touchscreen can sit on the counter or be mounted to the Square Register. You can add a cash box, barcode scanner, and a receipt printer as accessories if needed. Before those accessories, Square Register costs $999, or 24 monthly payments of $49.
Square software
Square Point of Sale. This is the standard POS app for Square. Any business can use Square Point of Sale to accept and process payments. It also comes with real-time analytics and sales reporting, Square Dashboard, inventory management, customer relationship management, employee management, payroll, and invoicing.
Square for Retail. This is the POS option specifically geared toward retailers. It emphasizes inventory management, customer relationship management, and multiple purchase options, like in-store pickup or shipping.
Square for Restaurants. This is the POS option created for restaurants. It manages reservations and seating, orders by course, multiple menus, as well as all other Square Point of Sale features.
Square Appointments. This is Square’s POS app for service businesses built around appointments. It manages online booking, cloud-based calendars across team members, and customer relationships.
Employee management and payroll
Square for business operations makes managing employees easier. First, the Square Point of Sale app allows businesses to do the following starting at $5 per month:
Have employees clock in and out inside the app
Set different levels of employee access to different areas of the Point of Sale app
Track sales by employee and hours worked
You can also pay everyone quickly and easily using Square Payroll — a full-service payroll system that integrates seamlessly into the operations of any business already using Square Point of Sale. It starts at $34 a month and allows you to
Pay salaried and hourly employees and contractors
Provide health insurance and other benefits
Import time cards and tips
Run payroll multiple times monthly
Pay staff from anywhere
Inventory management
The Square Point of Sale app makes it possible to know exactly what you have in stock at all times, no matter where you are. You can import and export thousands of items easily from or into spreadsheets. You also get low-inventory alerts and can manage stock from your Point of Sale Dashboard.
Because retailers have even more advanced inventory needs, Square for Retail offers an entire POS app with additional inventory tools, including
Tools to create and print barcodes
Inventory management across multiple locations
The ability to create purchase orders when stock is low
Integration with Square Online Store
Synchronization across in-store and online orders, items, and inventory
Automated reporting on costs of goods sold, margins, projected profit estimates, and profit margins
Customer management
Nothing endears a customer to a business like a real relationship — and good customer relationship management data can help you build one. Square offers businesses a number of ways to do this.
Square Customer Directory
The Square Customer Directory tool helps you track and manage customers’ interactions and behaviors to customize their experience. It comes free on the Point of Sale app, and with it, you can
Add customers during checkout
Securely save credit cards for future purchases
Personalize the shopping experience using notes, purchase history, and contact info
Send custom digital receipts
Square Loyalty
Loyalty programs reward customers for repeat visits with special incentives and earned discounts. Square Loyalty pricing is based on the number of loyalty visits, starting at $45 per month. The tool
Doesn’t require any special equipment
Allows you to reward customers by visit, by spending, or by purchasing specific items
Allows customers to sign up at checkout on the Point of Sale app
Tracks loyalty points on the Point of Sale app, so customers don’t need cards or apps
Provides loyalty data analytics on the Square Dashboard
Square Marketing
With Square Marketing, you can connect with customers through email. Pricing is based on customer contacts and starts at $15 per month. Features include
Email design tools
Customer signup through the Point of Sale app
Automated campaigns
Group targeting
Discounts that can be shared on social media and redeemed with the Point of Sale app
Email marketing analytics on Square Dashboard
Analytics and reporting
So much of running a successful business relies on gathering and analyzing data. In addition to the data that fuels the inventory, employee management, and customer relationship management tools, Square Point of Sale includes a wide range of analytics and reporting options through Square Dashboard. Using it, you can
Track and analyze sales by item, sale, time of day, and more
Compare current sales to last week, last month, or last year
Check real-time analytics rather than waiting for end-of-day reports
Analyze customer behavior and returns
SMB loans
For most businesses, growth requires some extra cash flow. Square Capital takes the user-friendly, tech-forward sensibility of their payment processing tools and applies it to business loans. Anyone who uses Square for business could qualify. Here’s how it works:
Square Capital offers can be found on the Square Dashboard.
If you have an offer, you can accept it, and money will be deposited as soon as the next day.
Repayment is deducted from Square transactions or through a flat fee.
Loan amounts vary from $500 to $250,000.
More than 250,000 Square customers have received Square Capital loans totaling more than $4.5 billion.
Is Square safe for customers?
“Is it safe?” That’s the question on every business owner’s mind when they’re considering a payment processor.
According to Verizon’s 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report, 43 percent of cybercrime victims are small businesses. That means every credit card transaction, from the smallest business to the largest enterprise, must be secure in order to protect your customers and, by extension, your business. (Fraud and data theft can cost you money and damage your reputation.)
Square is safe for customers. It allows you to take convenient payments anywhere with confidence. Square encrypts all information about merchants and their customers to their servers. It works whether you’re accepting payments on a public or private Wi-Fi connection or through a cellular service.
Square makes securing customer data easy for you too. Because Square is PCI compliant — a security standard required by credit card companies — your business doesn’t have to be. Square securely stores, processes, and transmits payment card data from the moment a card is swiped, using industry-standard security best practices.
Square updates and installs patches on their servers and equipment regularly, and their in-house applications are quality tested and reviewed for security. You never have to worry about walking around with sensitive customer data yourself, because card numbers, magnetic stripe data, and security codes aren’t stored on your devices.
Privacy is another common concern for both customers and business owners. Square never sells information to third-party vendors. While they do ask for your name, location, and other identifying information about you and your business and bank accounts, that data is used only to verify your identity and to give you the best possible service.
How business owners can start accepting payments via Square
Getting set up to start accepting Square online payments is a pretty straightforward process. Here’s how to do it:
Decide what type of Square hardware you’d like (if any) and order from the Square website. Options include
Square Reader for Magstripe: free
Square Reader for Contactless and Chip: $49
Square Terminal: $399
Square Stand: $199
Square Register: $999 or 24 monthly payments of $49
3. Set up your account to accept payments
Complete your account information with Square so you’re ready to accept payments when your hardware arrives. This includes providing personal information to help verify your account, as well as connecting your bank account. You don’t need to have a business bank account to sign up with Square. The only requirements are that it’s a U.S. account and that it’s a transactional bank account, meaning it allows for deposits and withdrawals.
4. Download the Square Point of Sale app
Download the Square Point of Sale app on any devices you plan to use for business. If you’re going to use the Square Register or Square Terminal as your primary point of sale, you’ll still want to be able to manage your business operations from other devices.
5. Set up your hardware (if you need it)
Setting up your hardware could be as easy as plugging a Square Reader into your smartphone, or it may involve setting up a complete Square Register with accessories like a cash drawer, receipt printer, and barcode reader. Some businesses may not even need hardware at all — if you’re using Square to accept online payments only, for example, you can skip this step.
6. Set up your Point of Sale app with items for sale
You can start accepting Square payments at any time. Just type in the amount of the sale, and run a card (either via your hardware or manually with the Square Virtual Terminal).
But to get the most out of Square, start by inputting your sale items or services into the Square Point of Sale app. This streamlines the sales process at the register, makes it easier to track and manage inventory, and gives you key sales insights that you can use to forecast for the future.
7. Make a sale
When a customer is ready to buy an item, select it from the Point of Sale app. Have your customer swipe, dip, or tap their card as needed on your chosen Square hardware. They’ll OK the amount, sign with their finger, and decide if they’d like a receipt via email, text, or not at all (or printed, if you have that option).
If you’re not using Square hardware to process payments, you can use the payment processor’s Invoice tool on the Square Dashboard, which makes it quick and easy for customers to pay electronically, or you can simply key in their card details and the amount you’d like to charge them using the Square Virtual Terminal.
That’s it. You’re all set up to start accepting card payments with Square.
Types of payments Square accepts
Square works with a wide variety of card-based payment methods, including credit cards, debit cards, prepaid cards, and more. These cards can have magnetic stripes or EMV chips. Using the Square Reader for contactless and chip, you can also accept payments from near-field communication payment methods, like ApplePay.
Card types
Square accepts a variety of card types at the same rates, including
Credit cards
Corporate cards
Debit cards (processed like credit)
Rewards cards
Prepaid cards (any remaining balance will show on the receipt)
Most international cards
HSA and FSA cards (for licensed healthcare providers and pharmacies)
Credit cards
Square accepts credit cards with these familiar logos on them:
Visa
MasterCard
American Express
Discover
JCB (not with chip or contactless, however)
UnionPay
Transaction fees for Square
Square gives small businesses a pretty sweet deal when it comes to signup and account activation: Both are completely free. What’s more, you don’t need to submit bank statements or credit reports to qualify — as is often the case with more formal merchant accounts.
Similarly, business owners get access to Square’s standard software and dashboard for absolutely no charge. You can use the app; the Square POS system; and even Square’s sales, customer, and analytics portal at zero cost. There are no monthly or annual fees, nor is there a cancellation fee.
On the other hand, Square — like many other payment processors — charges businesses a transaction fee on every electronic payment processed through their system. That means that whether you swipe a customer card via Square’s Reader, enter a client’s payment information manually via the Square Dashboard, or charge a subscriber a monthly fee, a small percentage of the total amount will be deducted by Square before the funds make their way to your bank account.
Unlike many of their competitors, Square doesn’t impose variable fees (or hidden costs) for businesses with annual sales lower than $250,000; all fees and equipment costs are transparent and easily accessible to potential customers via the Square website — so you’ll always know what you’re paying.
Square’s transaction fees vary somewhat according to the hardware and mode used to process a payment, as well as whether you’re using Square’s standard system or one of their specialized systems (e.g., Square for Restaurants).
That said, the fees won’t change depending on the type of credit card your customers use to make purchases.
Square transaction fees in the U.S.
Square boasts some of the most affordable transaction fees in the U.S. for businesses doing less than $10,000 per month, and even those bringing home significantly more bacon may find that Square’s an ideal choice thanks to the free technology on offer and the relatively low-cost hardware to boot.
Device
Transaction types
Transaction fees
Magstripe-reading dongle
Credit card swipe
2.75 percent
Square Reader
Chip card, gift card, NFC and wireless payment
2.75 percent
Terminal
Chip card, gift card, NFC and wireless payment
2.6 percent + 10 cents
Register
Chip card, gift card, NFC and wireless payment
2.5 percent + 10 cents
Square for Restaurants Stand or Reader
Chip card, gift card, NFC and wireless payment
2.6 percent + 10 cents
Square for Retail Stand or Reader
Chip card, gift card, NFC and wireless payment
2.5 percent + 10 cents
If you use Square’s free credit-card reading dongle with your smartphone or tablet, the only fee you’ll pay for sales via swiped cards will be 2.75 percent of the total transaction, including taxes and tips.
To accept chip cards, you’ll need to purchase a Square Reader for contactless and chip for $49. The same fees — 2.75 percent of the total transaction — apply for inserted chip cards, prepaid gift cards, wireless near field communication (NFC) payments, or the merchant POS mobile app.
Fees for swipe, chip, and NFC payments on the Square Terminal are 2.6 percent plus 10 cents, and they’re 2.5 percent plus 10 cents on the Square Register. Square for Restaurants using a Square Stand or Reader costs 2.6 percent plus 10 cents, while Square for Retail using a Stand or Reader costs 2.5 percent plus 10 cents.
For manually entered payments, the transaction fees are 3.5 percent plus 15 cents. Square charges a 2.9-percent transaction fee plus 30 cents on
Invoices
Online store payments
E-commerce card on file payments
Square e-commerce payments
If you invite friends and fellow merchants to use Square, both you and your invited friend can receive processing fee reimbursements on up to $1,000 in sales over the next 180 days.
Hardware costs
Apart from transaction fees, you have to pay some up-front costs, and in some cases ongoing costs, for most Square devices.
Device
Cost
Swipe-reading dongle
Free with your account; $10 for each additional swipe-reading device
A smartphone or tablet reader with swipe capability is free when you open and activate your Square account — they’ll even ship it to you at no charge.
Additional swipe-readers are $10 each.
The Square Reader with chip reader capability is $49.
The Square Terminal is $399 with a 12-month payment option.
The Square Stand for tablet is $199.
The Square Register is $999 with a two-year payment option.
In comparison, Merchant Service’s top-selling wireless handheld credit card reader, the Nurit 8020, can range from $600 to $650.
Software costs
Again, there is no fee for downloading the basic POS application or using the standard online dashboard or app.
However, if you want to take advantage of Square’s suite of add-on applications, ranging from payroll and employee management to invoicing to the wide-ranging Square for Retail, which includes inventory and billing, financial, and sales reporting capability, there are some additional costs.
Likewise, beginning in 2016, Square partnered with restaurant and food services software management provider TouchBistro to launch Square for Restaurants and pair that program’s features with Square’s payment and hardware capabilities. This specialized service also comes with a separate fee determined by the number of locations and the number of devices at each location using Square’s POS app.
Fees include a $29/month subscription fee plus $5/month per employee for payroll, $5/month per employee for employee management, $60/month per device per location for Square for Retail or Square for Restaurants, and $69/month to pair Square for Restaurants with TouchBistro.
Square transaction fees worldwide
Currently, Square can be used to pay for goods and services in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Japan, and Australia, but not in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Northern Mariana Islands.
Square fees for swipe/chip credit card payments in the U.K., Canada, Japan, and Australia are as follows.
Country
Fees
U.K.
1.75 percent
Canada
2.65 percent
Australia
1.9 percent
Japan
3.25 percent (3.95 percent for JCB credit cards)
How Square costs compare to the competition
Trade industry publications and merchant services associations continue to rank Square as a top provider of credit card transaction hardware and software for small businesses.
Part of Square’s appeal is the transparent fee structure. For businesses with sales of less than $250,000 annually, there are no customized fees, and you don’t have to call the Square sales team to see a full listing of all transaction and equipment fee options.
Many transaction-processing providers do not provide a full listing of fees on their websites. Instead, many of Square’s competitors offer customized cost quotes for each new business that signs on. What’s more, there are often hidden costs not reported on their customer-facing materials, like setup fees, application fees, and compliance costs.
Keeping in mind that data on some payment options, such as wireless NFC payment, were not available for all competitors, the chart below focuses on basic swipe and chip transactions.
Here’s how Square stacks up against the competition:
Payment processing provider
Fees
Square
2.75 percent per swipe/chip transaction 3.5 percent plus 15 cents per keyed transactions
Clover
$29 per month plus 2.3 percent plus 10 cents per transaction
PayPal
2.7 percent per swipe transaction in store2.9 percent per transaction plus 30 cents per online transaction3.5 percent plus 15 cents per keyed transaction
Stripe
2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction up to $1 million in sales per year
Merchant Services
10–15 cents per transaction, plus $10 per month statement fee
First Data
0.39 to 1.89 percent plus 15 cents per transaction
Helcim
0.25 percent plus 8 cents per transaction
How Square can kick-start your business
If you’re just starting a new business, you have enough to worry about and plenty to learn without becoming a finance expert. And you likely don’t have loads of ready capital to invest in a POS system. Some small-scale entrepreneurs may not even have a permanent location to house a bulky register capable of processing credit, debit, and gift cards.
Square empowers small business owners by supplying them with an intuitive, affordable, and portable way to accept a wide variety of payment methods, as well as scalable options that are ready to adapt and grow as quickly as their customers’ needs.
Since their launch in 2009, Square has streamlined credit card payment processing for small vendors, allowing artists, artisans, nonprofits, seasonal vendors, and more to accept credit card payments in just minutes without having to invest in expensive or bulky equipment. As of 2019, more than 2 million businesses were using Square to process transactions.
Even as Square has grown and expanded their offerings for small businesses and startups, simplicity — from the clean design of their signature square dongle to the sleek new Square Terminal introduced in October 2018 — has remained a focal point.
Square benefits for small businesses
Quick startup. Since there are no long-term contracts or lengthy application processes involved with using Square, you can sign up, order your device, download the app, and start accepting payments from your customers as soon as your card reader arrives in the mail.
No hidden fees. Transaction and equipment fees (on all devices but the swipe dongle) are all you pay. There are no setup, cancellation, or statement fees, and because you only pay transaction fees on a per-sale basis, you don’t have to worry about paying a monthly fee when your seasonal business is on hiatus.
Money from transactions is available quickly. Square promises their customers that payments from credit card purchases will appear in their accounts within one to two business days. You can even access payments instantly for a 1-percent fee.
Sales and inventory tracking. Square Analytics automatically breaks down sales trends and inventory on a per-sales basis, so you can access detailed reports via your dashboard throughout the day, allowing you to make better purchasing decisions and grow your business more easily.
Software solutions that are accessible anywhere. Because you can access inventory and sales data from any device that has the Square POS app, you can view your dashboard from anywhere. You don’t have to spend time away from customers in the “back office” to keep up with inventory and other accounting activities. You can even monitor sales via your smartphone or tablet when you aren’t onsite.
Square offers scalable solutions. Startups can grow in fits and starts or take off unexpectedly. This means that the needs of owners, workers, and customers are in a constant state of flux. With Square, business owners can start small, with no equipment investment, and then scale up when and if needed.
Square for the mobile entrepreneur
Thanks to Square, artists, consultants, and small-scale entrepreneurs who could previously only accept checks or cash can now accept credit cards easily from anywhere. Since you only pay transaction fees when you have sales, Square is a great option for artists or mobile goods dealers whose businesses are targeted to seasonal festivals or for nonprofits that depend on event-driven fundraising transactions.
DIY crafters, artists and artisans, art and antiques dealers, local farmers, and all manner of small-scale entrepreneurs can begin accepting credit and debit cards without paying any startup costs. All they have to do is attach Square’s swipe dongle to the headphone jack or Lightning jack on their iPhone, Android, or tablet, or connect the chip reader to their device via Bluetooth. The attachment is small enough to fit on the corner of a small table without taking up valuable display space.
Each new account comes with a free magstripe dongle, or you can upgrade to a chip reader for $49. If, in the future, you take on employees or multiple locations, each additional magstripe reader is $10. Square sells a version of the dongle that attaches to your smartphone through a headset jack and another version that attaches to newer Apple products through a Lightning connector.
Square also extends your reach, allowing you to accept credit card payments from customers across the country and around the world. You can instantly sell your services and products without having to wait for payments to arrive by mail, and it spares your customers and clients the hassle of writing a check or obtaining a money order.
As your business expands, you can add or change devices at the point of sale. For example, if you find your festival or flea market-focused business beginning to grow and decide to invest in a storefront, you can upgrade to a Square Reader for $49, and so on.
With incremental levels of investment, you can easily turn a side hustle or passion project into a lucrative business without having to learn a whole new POS system.
Square for the seasonal business
Because the only fees you pay aside from equipment costs are per transaction, Square is a less stressful option for seasonal businesses than merchant services providers with annual or monthly fees.
Christy Houser, co-owner of Wilderness Cove Campground in Saluda, North Carolina, says implementing Square helped grow her business.
“The Square Register was very intriguing to me, and it did not disappoint! We run that as our main station, but we also use tablets with the stands and the app on our phones. It makes taking payments from anywhere on the campground possible,” she says.
“The Register and Stands are so fast, they really sped up our process. I also love the real-time reports. I can be at my home office and know exactly what is happening in our offices. It has really done almost everything I have needed it to do.”
Square for retail
If your business has graduated from the back of your car or truck to a brick-and-mortar location, or if you’re starting out in a storefront, then the higher volume of sales may mean it’s time to graduate to Square’s Register or Terminal.
According to FastCompany, Square’s sleek-looking Terminal, their most recent hardware offering, is a “gateway to an entire ecosystem of small-business solutions.” Integrated add-ons to Square’s POS app include appointment and booking software, payroll, and e-commerce and marketing tools such as loyalty program setup.
Square can help you set up discounts, send digital invoices, use analytics, and generate reports to monitor and guide the growth of your business. The Square Online app can sync online and offline inventory, calculate shipping costs, and manage delivery. It can also synchronize onsite pickup for online orders and track inventory and purchasing.
Kallie Wesley, who co-owns the lifestyle retail space Juxtapose in Hyde Park, Florida, along with her sister Lindsay, says that Square’s inventory and purchasing capabilities help them track profits.
“We use Square to manage the cost of goods and ensure our margins are intact, and understand where our sales are vs historical sales,” she says. “Keeping on top of our inventory is really important, since many of our items are one of a kind. It also helps us break down brands and categories, so we can better track sales trends.”
Square Payroll users have the option of integrating health insurance and retirement benefits for their employees paid for by automated deductions and business contributions.
When Square user Mary started hiring help to run her Kona Ice truck in Sainte Genevieve, Missouri, she began using Square Payroll.
“Getting started was so easy. I figured it out mostly by myself with a little help from Square. I even remember running payroll not knowing if I had done it right because it was so simple,” she says. “Running payroll only takes about five minutes. When it’s time to run it, I get a reminder by phone and email. I log in, look at timecards, import timecards, hit Pay my employees, and I’m done! I’m totally done! It’s that easy.”
Square can help you set up a digital storefront featuring sophisticated, easy-to-implement design options that won’t require you to hire a web designer. They can also help you create customized gift cards.
Square allows service providers that rely on appointments — from nail salons to repair shops — to book clients directly through Google and Instagram. Clients can also book online through your digital storefront.
According to Square’s website, at businesses that have implemented their customer loyalty program, like Asha Tea, patrons who enroll in Square Loyalty are twice as likely to be return customers. “It’s great having a loyalty program integrated with our register,” says Asha Tea’s creative director, Diana Lui. “It’s easy for customers to sign up and understand, and easy for our employees too.”
Because Square allows owners to access so much information — inventory, scheduling, accounting, and more — from their devices, you can spend less time in the back office and more time interacting with customers.
Business owners who use Square card readers can use a debit card custom designed with their business logo to access cash from an aligned account. Because Square debit accounts allow users to easily differentiate business expenses from personal purchases, tallying year-end tax deductions are that much easier. In addition, Square offers accounting software integration.
Square even offers small business loans that can be paid back automatically via future credit card transactions. Their Square Wallet program has distributed more than $1 billion in loans to upwards of 100,000 small businesses.
Square for Restaurants
Square has earned high ratings from restaurateurs and their patrons for ease of use. Their Square for Restaurants system contains many convenient extras, such as automated ways to maintain an open tab or split a bill. It can also prompt customers to pay tips onscreen.
Square for Restaurants can help your wait staff work more efficiently by managing employee schedules, tables, and seating as well as updating menus. Square’s website provides a video and step-by-step instructions for how to implement the many features of Square for Restaurants.
Square for Restaurants users can use the Caviar mobile payment tool integration to accept payment on-delivery services. Transactions automatically integrate with pickup and eat-in orders.
Through their partnership with TouchBistro, Square has been able to integrate food preparation and delivery efficiency with streamlined payment sales assessment tools, expanding their range of services to restaurants, bars, caterers, and food trucks. In fact, a business with multiple locations and food services can be integrated into a single Square account for maximum efficiency.
Square uses their social media presence to solicit requests for new features and feedback from customers. One example of how they revamp their offerings to meet customer needs is the recent implementation of time-based discounts (think happy hour) in the Square for Restaurants system.
Michael Solomonov and Steve Cook, cofounders of CookNSolo Restaurant Partners, in Philadelphia, were early adopters of Square for Restaurants, which launched in 2018.
“There’s always going to be curveballs that the restaurant life throws at you — Square for Restaurants is not one of them. It’s robust while retaining that trademark Square elegance and hassle-free service,” they said.
Square for Nonprofits
With Square you only pay fees on the transactions that you make, and there are no annual or monthly fees. As a result, Square may be a good option for nonprofits with seasonal fundraising POS needs. At the same time, Square’s ability to compile donor information quickly at the point of transaction can be extremely helpful for future fundraising.
Because Square customers who shop with one another enjoy a 2.75-percent discount anyway, it makes sense to partner with fellow local users for nonprofit activities and outreach.
If your total sales (or donations from sales) exceed $250,000 annually, Square offers customized solutions for your business or organization.
Square’s Business Resource Center
Square’s online blog, the Business Resource Center, offers a range of articles to help customers leverage Square’s many services to grow their businesses. In addition to management and marketing tips and overviews of new features, the center spotlights Square customers who offer advice and insights on how they use Square in their own small businesses.
Recent topics include how to take over the family business, steps to consider before opening a new location, and how to leverage Instagram to grow your business.
How to use JotForm with Square
Once you’re all set up with Square, you may think you’re ready to rock ‘n roll and watch the money multiply in your bank balance. Truth be told, that may very well be the case if you’re a brick-and-mortar storefront, a bustling restaurant, or even a market monger selling your wares at fairs and festivals.
In these cases, Square’s selection of terminals, stands, and on-the-go readers paired with their POS software, app, and dashboard may be the all-in-one payment processing solution you need to quickly and seamlessly capture your customers’ card and contact information.
On the other hand, if you’re a do-it-your-selfer, a professional services provider, a nonprofit accepting donations, an event organizer, or even an order-based business, you may find that using Square — and only Square — still comes with quite a few time-consuming, tedious processes that compromise the time you need for more business-critical activities.
For example, if someone wants to attend your big fundraising gala, which requires a ticket, you need to find a way for them to sign up, and you need to collect their contact information, manually input it into Square, and manually create an invoice to send them. Now, imagine the gala is for 1,000 people. Ugh!
The time wasted on these kinds of administrative tasks adds up, and what business owners in these kinds of situations really need is an all-in-one solution that both captures customer information and seamlessly integrates with Square as a payment processor.
Enter JotForm, the world’s easiest online form builder! With JotForm, small businesses across the spectrum can quickly and easily create online forms, like registration forms, subscription forms, order forms, signup forms, and more, to collect key details.
They can then share these forms on their website or social media, where they’re easily accessible to clients, customers, and registrants. This passes on the burden of filling in relevant contact information to the participant, saving you — the business owner — critical time and energy.
And best of all, JotForm is one of the only free form builders on the web that also integrates with a huge host of payment processors, such as Square.
That means your customers can place their order, complete their signup, or select their services, and make a payment. More important, it means you can spend more time on the tasks that really matter.
Why JotForm?
It won’t break the bank. JotForm has four different pricing tiers depending on your needs. Their starter offering is completely free. That means you get 100 monthly form submissions, the opportunity to process 10 payments, the use of five different forms, and an unlimited number of form fields per month. If you need a more robust solution, you can choose from one of the three other product offerings.
It only takes 10 seconds. With JotForm, you can create an online form faster than you can brush your teeth. That’s how simple it is to use the software.
No tech knowledge required. JotForm doesn’t expect dentists to also be developers. So no matter what your line of business is, you’ll be able to quickly and easily use the intuitive drag-and-drop Form Builder to create an online form and integrate with a payment processor. You don’t have to know a stitch of code.
Over 10,000 form templates. JotForm has more free online form templates than any other online resource, including templates made particularly for Square.
Total customization. Make every form look exactly the way you want it to thanks to JotForm’s Form Designer. You can make simple changes, like tweaking a background color and uploading your logo and branding, or injecting your own CSS for more technical customization.
Maximum data security. JotForm is serious about protecting users’ privacy, especially when it comes to payments. That’s why JotForm is the only form builder that’s PCI DSS Service Provider Level I certified, the highest security attainment you can have as a business that collects payments from, and integrates with, credit cards.
No additional transaction fees. You don’t have to pay any fees apart from Square’s standard processing fees. JotForm comes with no hidden charges.
