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Everything about: Online Booking

Tips for More Online Bookings

In an increasingly digitalized world, it is essential for local businesses to adapt to changing customer behaviors and expectations. This article provides practical strategies and measures to increase the number of online bookings in your business.

Reviewing the existing booking process

To achieve more online bookings, you should first evaluate your existing booking process:

  • Test your own booking process yourself!
  • Make sure the process is clear and simple from the customer's perspective. Ask yourself: Are too many services listed? Would a subdivision make sense? Our special booking process can help you here
  • Use meaningful and professional images, both of the services offered and of your team, to build trust and relationships with customers. You can learn how to upload photos of your team members here.
  • Implement the rating function so that customers can share their experiences. Positive feedback can encourage future customers to make an online booking.

Tips for more online bookings from your regular customers

Regular customers are the backbone of your business. Here are some strategies to encourage them to use online booking:

  • Use your customer database to send personalized invitations for online booking.
  • Create marketing emails that highlight current offers, seasonal services or special promotions. You can also set up a round email here to invite customers to use online booking.
  • Reactivation emails and birthday emails can encourage customers who haven't visited you in a while to book an appointment again.
  • Communicate a referral bonus to encourage your customers to recommend your services.
  • Train your staff to actively promote online booking.

Making online booking visible

To acquire new customers, you should make the booking process as easy and quick as possible:

  • Check that the link to online booking on your website is clearly visible.
  • Add a link to online booking in your Google, Facebook and Instagram profile.
  • A QR code in your shop window that leads directly to online booking can attract potential customers. You can have this created online using free QR code generators.
  • Add a note about the possibility of online booking to your answering machine.

Suggestions for concrete marketing campaigns

After you have carefully gone through the points described above, you can now start targeted marketing campaigns:

  • Link your social media posts to online booking. You can highlight special offers here or give a behind-the-scenes look at your salon.
  • Use discount codes for online bookings or create special new customer offers, for example using landing pages.
  • Offer reduced prices for a specific time period to provide an additional incentive.
  • Voucher campaigns with discount codes or at reduced prices can encourage customers to try out your services.

Arbitrary Employee Prioritization

If you use the "Any Employee" feature, customers do not need to choose an employee during online booking. This simplifies booking for new customers. To define how your available employees should be prioritized for this type of booking, you can use the "Any Employee Prioritization" feature.


You can access this area via Settings > Any Employee Prioritization
If this feature is not activated, it can be enabled via "Settings > Add Feature".



Requirements

To use this feature, booking via "Any Employee" must be activated in the online booking settings. For more information, see the article "Any Employee".

Prioritizing employees

You can either set a general prioritization, or define it individually for specific services.

  1. First, select which service(s) the prioritization should apply to. You can choose between individual services, service groups, or all services.

  2. Then click on the created prioritization rule to set, in the following step, the order in which the system selects employees for online booking. Here too, you can select either individual team members or roles:

Application examples

Prioritizing individual team members


In the example above, team members are selected for all services in the order shown. If all listed employees are available at the customer's desired time, Sina will be selected for the appointment. If Sina is booked, Marie will be selected. Only if no one else is available will Max take the appointment. This is useful, for example, for prioritizing new employees who are still building up a customer base.

Prioritizing by role


In the example above, roles are selected for all services in the "Women's Haircut" category in the order shown. If all listed employees are available at the customer's desired time, a team member with the role "Junior Stylist" will be selected for the appointment. If all Junior Stylists are booked, a team member with the role "Top Stylist" will be selected. Only if no one else is available will the owner take the appointment. This is useful, for example, for relieving popular employees.

Prioritizing by workload

If it is not individual people but workload that should determine the selection, the feature can also prioritize the person with the least bookings on the customer's desired day.

To do this, simply set this option:


In each employee profile, you can determine whether a team member should be bookable at all via the "Any Employee" feature. If a team member is not enabled for this type of booking, you will receive a warning notice:

In this case, edit the bookability in the team member's profile.


Automatic Posting for Online Payment

In the online payment settings, you can specify that online payments should be automatically posted in the cash register. We explain here what the advantages and disadvantages of this posting are and what the alternative is.


You can access this area via Settings > Online Payment > Posting
If this function is not enabled, it can be activated via "Settings > Add Function".



All vouchers and appointments that are paid at the cash register on site are recorded by the Belbo cash system. For online-paid appointments and vouchers, there is the option of manual or automatic posting.

Recommended: Automatic posting remains disabled

Online-paid appointments

The appointments paid online (partially or in full) are cashed as usual after the appointment takes place. Here, the payment methods used online (for example, PayPal) are used and supplemented with additional payment methods if further services or products are added on site, which are then paid in cash or by card (see also Split payment for online payment).

Online-paid vouchers

Even if you disable this option, vouchers purchased online are already fully recorded in the cash register and do not need to be manually cashed. They appear in the daily closings. For voucher purchases after business hours, the daily closing may need to be recreated.

Automatic posting is activated

It is possible to automatically record online payments in the cash register. This setting always affects every type of online payment, both online purchased vouchers and the full payment of appointments. Partial payments of appointments are not automatically posted.

Consequences for online-paid appointments

  1. Cashed appointments can no longer be rescheduled or would need to be cancelled and recashed if changes are made to the time.

  2. If the customer uses additional services on site or purchases additional products, the appointment must be cancelled and recashed.

Consequences for online-paid vouchers

  1. Voucher sales from 00:00 to the time of the daily closing are automatically recorded in your daily closings.

  2. All voucher sales between closing time and 00:00 result in the completed closing needing to be recreated the next day.

Correctly activate automatic posting

To set up the posting correctly, you need the accounting accounts for the displayed payment accounts in your chart of accounts. You can find out how to create these accounts if necessary in the article Add payment method.

  1. Assign the correct accounting accounts to the payment methods you offer.

  2. Enable the function by checking the checkbox at the top of the page.

  3. If the function is enabled but no accounts or incorrect accounts are assigned, it can lead to errors in accounting and online payment!

Move Appointments by Customers

In Belbo, you can give your customers the option to reschedule their booked appointments themselves.

Allow customers to reschedule appointments

Booking settings

If you want to allow your customers to reschedule appointments, you can set this up under Settings > Online Booking > Basic Settings > Appointments.

Set cancellation limit

The cancellation limit under Settings > Online Booking > Time Settings also applies to rescheduling appointments. Customers who try to reschedule their appointment within a shorter timeframe will be informed that they need to contact you directly.

Edit confirmation email

In your confirmation emails, you can place a link that allows the customer to reschedule the appointment themselves.

Appointment rescheduling from customer perspective

When the customer clicks on the link, they are taken to the overview page where they can reschedule the appointment. After clicking "Reschedule Appointment", they are taken directly to the time selection, where they can choose an alternative appointment.

If you offer online booking without login, your customers can only reschedule an appointment via the link in the confirmation or reminder email. Customers who logged in when booking can also reschedule appointments when they log in.

Paid Layouts

With Belbo you can send emails to your customers for free. The use of certain, special or new layouts may incur charges.

For the creation of new email layouts we invest time and effort, which we pass on to you in very small doses. These costs are displayed transparently before sending. If you are not willing to pay for the email layouts, switch to the normal and free layouts ("Standard" & "Simple").

The fee per email is usually €0.001, which is less than one cent per email.

Online booking with or without registration

You can set whether your customers need to register when booking online or whether they can also book with you without a previous login. Here we explain both variants with their advantages and disadvantages.

You can access this area via Settings > Online Booking
If this function is not enabled, it can be activated via "Settings > Add Function".

Booking without registration

You can set in the online booking that you allow booking without login:

This means that customers do not need to log in or register when booking and must enter all their data again with each booking. Customers may create a new customer record with the status "New customer" with each booking if they provide different spellings or email addresses in subsequent bookings. Duplicates can be merged.

Booking without login is only recommended if you have few repeat regular customers. This includes, for example, hotel spas or escape games.

Booking with registration (recommended)

We always recommend booking with login. Belbo offers several advantages that are only possible if customers register when booking and thereby identify themselves clearly.

  • Setting your own booking processes and bookable services for certain customer groups (example: "New customers may only book consultation services" etc.)
  • Blocking individual employees from booking by new customers (learn more)
  • Setting different prices for customers with a specific status (learn more)
  • The ability to set time exceptions for your customers (learn more)
  • The ability to allow certain customer groups to book only by advance (payment) deposit

If you deactivate the "Allow booking of appointments without login" option in the online booking settings, customers must register or log in before they can complete their booking and then do not need to enter all their data again with each booking (first name, last name, email address, phone number and other required fields).

Customers who register after deactivating the option will create a duplicate, which can be merged with the original record. After that, the customer will always be recognized when booking since they have to log in.

Existing customers who have an email address in their records can also be invited to register via the link in the record:

This prevents future duplicates when the customer only needs to set a password after clicking the email and the login is linked to the existing customer record.

You can set whether customers must log in before booking, or only after they have already selected their desired services. Learn more about this in the article Insert online booking on your website

Split Payment with Online Payment

If you offer online payment, it can happen that customers have already paid part of the invoice amount online and want to settle the rest on-site with a different payment method.

Prepaid appointments in the calendar

If a customer has already paid for the appointment, you can see this from the icon on the appointment. This displays the payment method that the customer selected online.

Process split payment

  1. After you have added all invoice items, click on "Payment" in the checkout process
  2. First click on the payment method that the customer has already settled online, for example "Card" or "PayPal".
  3. Then select the amount paid on the number pad.
  4. Click on the payment method that the customer chooses on-site, for example "Cash".
  5. Select the green button to complete.
Example:
A customer books an appointment worth 90 € and has already paid 45 € online by credit card and the rest on-site in cash. This appointment is recorded as follows:

Please click on the video to start it:

Customer Service Inquiries Topic Area Online Booking

Here we show you what helpful information we need for specific requests and how you can possibly solve the problem yourself.


My customer says that online booking is not working.
If a customer reports that they cannot book, it is usually not the online booking itself that is affected, but rather something is misconfigured on a specific service or a required room is not available.

Helpful Information

  • Which service did the customer want to book exactly?
  • Name of the customer.
  • Description of the phenomenon (what exactly is not behaving as expected?)
Example of a helpful request:
My customer Max Muster wanted to book the service XY. However, no appointments are shown to him in the date selection of the booking.


No appointments are shown on a specific day.
If there is still free time on a specific day, but it is not offered online, this can have various causes.

Helpful Information

  • Which service did the customer want to book exactly?
  • On which exact day (if applicable, time) could the customer not find the desired appointment?
  • With which employee should the booking be made?
  • Name of the customer.
Example of a helpful request:
My customer Max Muster wanted to book the service XY. However, no / few / not the expected appointment is shown to him in the date selection of the booking, although employee XY still has time available from 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM.


I have a service, but it doesn't appear in the booking.

You are probably using the "Special Booking Process" function. This stipulates that new categories must be actively added to the booking process after they are created.

Helpful Information

  • What exact service or category is it?
Example of a helpful request:
I created the new category XY. However, it does not appear in my online booking.

Helpful Additional Information

In general, we ask you to describe your concern as specifically as possible. The following are always helpful:

  • Detailed description of the phenomenon with exact names of customers, services, etc.
  • Take screenshots and attach them to your request
    (Instructions for taking screenshots: Mac · Windows)
  • Record a mobile video of the desired section.