How many hours do you spend in telephone or email tag trying to nail down a convenient appointment time for both you and your clients? Online booking can eliminate this time-waster and up your business.
It’s more convenient for clients, it can reduce your communication load and it challenges you to get organized: for online booking, you need to develop good work/life boundaries and keep your calendar up to date. If you’re considering taking this route for sales, I have a few recommendations:
•Bookeo, which works well for my massage business, has all the services I need and is one of the least expensive out there ($15/month for a solo plan).
•FullSlate.com is a little slicker but more expensive ($30/month).
•Schedulicity is also slick but requires your clients to make an account.
Most companies advertise a one-month free trial. Here’s a useful list of criteria for choosing an online booking service:
1. Website integration. If you want your clients to stay on your website rather than navigating away, make sure you can embed the online booking calendar into your site. It’s a more professional and streamlined experience for the client.
2. No account creation. Many clients will be turned off if they need a password account before making an appointment. I know I would be. Name and email for your records is enough.
3. Two-way calendar sync. This can be really important if you manage your life with an online calendar such as Google.
4. Interface. It has to look good for your clients, and ideally it looks good for you from the admin side. I will admit that Bookeo does not have the most user-friendly calendar on my side, but from the client’s point of view it looks clean and professional. That’s all that matters to me.
5. Point-of-sale (POS) system. Most online booking services offer a mini-POS system that keeps track of your customer information, booking history and invoices (all privately – the company never contacts the client). Now that’s value. Finding a way to back up this information is my next step.
