Lookelo point-of-sale question count Searched: November 1, 2026 Article: /blog/how-to-choose-a-pos-for-your-store-and-website Purpose Find the question independent store owners asked most often about running their store's systems and selling online in the past month, and record what those questions had in common, to inform a guide for independent hardware, paint, lumber and building-supply store owners. This is original desk research: Lookelo selected, paraphrased and coded public questions. We did not contact posters, test any POS system or check any vendor's pricing. Sources and queries Reddit search through the Reddit API, restricted to posts from the past month, run November 1, 2026. Queries: inventory sync POS website sync inventory shopify square online store inventory out of sync add thousands of products to website upload products bulk SKUs website small store buy online pick up in store small business click and collect small shop should my retail store sell online hardware store website hardware store ecommerce lumber yard website paint store website retail store website worth it product photos for thousands of products website shows wrong hours google google business profile hours wrong google merchant center local inventory see what's in store google business profile pointy google local inventory ads small store square online vs shopify retail store show prices on website or not retail should I show stock levels on website online orders local delivery small store brick and mortar store website no sales subreddit:smallbusiness website online store subreddit:retail website inventory subreddit:shopify POS inventory sync subreddit:ecommerce brick and mortar subreddit:GoogleMyBusiness products google business profile products not showing The queries returned 1,136 unique posts. 382 from business, retail, ecommerce, POS, inventory and Google Business Profile communities dated in the window were screened for posts written by the owner or staff of a business with a physical shop or counter; 30 qualified. Choosing or setting up a point-of-sale system was the largest group among them, so it became the topic. The first-pass screen was model-assisted. To build the final sample, all 1,136 posts were then searched for "POS", "point of sale" or "point-of-sale" in the title or body (46 matches in the window, from any community), and each match, plus the posts the first-pass screen put in the point-of-sale group, was read and coded by one person. Eligibility Window: original posts dated October 1 through November 1, 2026 (UTC). Include: an original post written from the business side (owner, staff, or someone acting for the business) of a business that sells in person from a shop, counter or stand, asking which point-of-sale system, payment setup or connected inventory tool to use, or how its POS should work with its website or online orders. Exclude: online-only businesses; restaurants; developers or vendors promoting their own POS; complaints with no setup question; posts where POS is one item in a general list of opening tasks; posts outside the window. Deduplication: one post ID is one observation. Crossposts with identical text were merged. 11 screened candidates were excluded; observations.json lists each with the reason. Retrieval The Reddit API returned the full original-post body for every post through search on November 1, 2026. Each of the 13 included posts was also opened directly by post ID the same day; all were live and not removed. Usernames and comment threads are not republished; questions are paraphrased. Codebook (original post only, one researcher) inventory: the system must track stock, import items or scan barcodes, or the post says it already does. special_need: a requirement a basic register setup may not cover, such as fractional units, consignment or commission tracking, offline use, unattended self-checkout, scanning on the sales floor, items without standard SKUs, book-trade ordering, or a restricted product category. online_link: the post mentions a website, online orders, or click and collect as part of the setup, now or planned. payments: the post asks about card processing, terminals or which payment provider to use. switching: the business is replacing a current system, including a calculator or a POS it wants to leave. new_store: the business is opening a new store. cost: the post asks what the setup really costs each month or names price as a problem. 0 means not stated in the original post under these rules. Codes overlap. No independent second coder. Results Questions: 13 (12 owners or staff, 1 bookkeeper acting for a store). inventory 9; special_need 9; online_link 7; payments 5; switching 4; new_store 4; cost 3. Reproduce with docs/research/2026-11-01-pos-questions/calculate.py. Search Console check Lookelo's own Search Console queries for July 29 to October 29, 2026 (top 300 by clicks) contained no point-of-sale queries. This topic was chosen from the Reddit sample, not from Lookelo's search data. Limits Reddit-only, international, search-selected and small. One of the 13 posts came from a hardware store. The counts describe this sample only. They do not estimate how many stores use any POS, what systems cost, or how often syncing fails. Claims inside the posts are the posters' own and were not verified.