Services to for clients to book with you online
We’ve been using online scheduling for the past five years now and it has worked well for us. We are currently using Acuity Scheduling. It is easy to set-up and has payment processing options, so clients pay when they book.
The schedule is embedded in a page on our blog. We also have a link to this page on Facebook, and on our website. And since our site is formatted for mobile use, clients can book a session from their iphone or blackberry as well.
I have tried a few other online scheduling services, Acuity I like the best.
What I like about Acuity is:
- It’s easy to use for clients and convenient – book clients when your closed
- the authorize.net Payment Gateway. I’m not wild about Paypal.
- My sessions are at 10, 1 and 3:30 and I wanted to be able to set the schedule for specific times.
- You can do a unique form for each session, which is nice since different sessions have different requirements. The forms are all custom and you can add as many fields as you want.I add information fields like what most important to them, how they hears, and a checkbox agreeing to the terms.
- Works on iphone for both clients and me
- It’s reasonably priced, $10 for one schedule and $19 for multiple schedules.
They have a free trial. I know some use Brownbook to. It’s a good service too, the only thing I could not do was set specific times or accept credit cards instead of Paypal.
I used Appointments Plus in the past, and it was a nice service, but a little pricier at $50+ a month.
Booking calendar looks promising, however there is still some things it lacks. It’s a plugin for WordPress, so you’ll need WP to use it. They have both free and paid versions. If collection payments isn’t important, then this might work for you.
I have also tried Appointy and Web Appointments, Schedulicity, but they lacked the features that I was looking for which was collecting payments and not scheduling someone unless payment was made. Millers lab also has free online scheduling software if you are a client. Most services come with a 30 day free trial.
By the way, most of our clients that use the online schedule, are either returning clients, or they have already talked to us by phone. It is rare that someone books just from doing an internet search.
Category: Social Media
