6 Problems That an Online Booking System Can Solve
July 27, 2021 | Read: 10 minutes
In this article, we’ll explore how using an online booking system will solve some of the main problems that could be affecting your website and your success at winning more work.
Whether you’re updating an old site or creating something new, you need to think about how you want your website to function.
Is yours helping you achieve success?
A great website can help you to attract customers and win more work, so it’s well worth investing your time to it right.
Let’s explore what problems an online booking system can help solve. They include:
1. Your website lacks focus
Creating a good website can be challenging, but that’s where setting goals will help. That means focusing on one important thing:
Intent.
What is your intention for your website?
What do you want your website to achieve?
If you have these in mind, you can take a look at your website and figure out what it’s currently helping you achieve (or not). They aren’t trick questions. The answers are straightforward:
- You want people to view your website so they can learn about your business.
- You want prospects to be able to inquire, eventually becoming customers.
Adding your company’s contact information is not enough to provide good customer service and increase sales. You’ll need to do more in order to generate and qualify sales leads and get customers to choose your services.
Your website is your chance to educate your customers, give them useful information, and provide an easy means for them to book a job with you. If done well, customers will feel confident that you’re a good fit and reach out.
You’ll probably already have a website of some kind. However, if you’re looking to jazz things up and brush off the digital cobwebs, it’s not a bad idea to approach a professional web designer to improve your employer branding.
The way your website looks, just as much as the information that sits on it is important.
On top of that, you might even consider an SEO specialist to optimise website content so that customers can find you online more easily.
It’s useful to work with people who know their stuff and who can guide your designs and content to make your website more impactful. Adding an online booking system takes this even further:
What is an online booking system?
An online booking system is a digital method of scheduling jobs. It provides a direct way for customers to engage with your business.
Managed by software, customers can fill in a form that allows them to book a job, or make an inquiry. Usually, they’ll provide information that’s completed by selecting from a dropdown menu.
If you’re using job management software, booking queries can synchronise with your diary management, letting your team review and schedule jobs, and much more.
Long gone are the days when a phone number and an email address would be enough to get people to hire you. That information is still valuable, but with an online booking system, your site can evolve to have an even greater impact.
You can see an example of Commusoft’s online booking system, here:
Remember, when using an online booking system, the first point still stands: you need to understand exactly what you want it to help you achieve.
Next, give customers the freedom to get a result in as few clicks as possible. The fewer the better!
Let’s consider how you can meet and exceed customer expectations:
2. Your website doesn’t meet a user’s expectations
With so many choices online, visitors are often very fussy about their user experience. Because so many websites now have a good experience, it’s more noticeable when one fails to meet expectations.
Don’t let that site be yours!
If your page isn’t up to scratch, you’ll be losing customers to competitors, and fast!
Let’s use the travel industry as an example. A customer who’s looking to book a hotel will expect to be able to tailor their search. They can filter hotels not just by location, but lots of specific factors. That could be whether breakfast is included, if there’s a balcony, or even a hot tub. If they can’t filter for all these things on one website, they visit a website that does let them do this.
Customers will flock to businesses that help them fulfil their desires.
If your site doesn’t meet the needs of your customers, or give them a smooth journey, you’ll find less success.
How does an online booking system work?
If a customer accesses your website with the specific goal of hiring you to clean their windows and they don’t see any way to make an inquiry easily, they’ll click off. A quick Google search will help them find a “window cleaning businesses near me” that can probably help.
So, what can you do to meet these expectations?
It can help to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Ask yourself “What would I want to see if I were looking to hire a business? Or what if I wanted to find out more about them?”
Typically, it helps to have a clear section of your website to tell them the “who, what, and how” of your business. That means having an About Us, Our Services, Prices, and Contact Us page that they can access.
If these points of interest are clear, prospects are far more likely to engage with your business.
There are a wide variety of tools out there to help you create your website. While that’s a whole other topic, a quick Google search for “build a website” can help you find some great choices.
We have some more specifics at the end of the post, but a good rule of thumb is to keep your website design simple and tidy. Less is more, as they say, and a simple approach can be more eye-catching than you’d think.
3. Your website is not visible in search results
The success of your website relies on its ability to appear high in search engine rankings. Basically, you need to aim to be as high up on the first page of Google as possible.
While it’s great to have a website and a booking system, it won’t mean anything if customers can’t find you online.
The skill of managing SEO (search engine optimisation) is multifaceted and bringing in someone to help you manage SEO can be a big help, too.
Initially, a website needs to be built with SEO in mind. The right type of regular content needs to be included. This could be through blogs and articles i.e. by talking about everyday life at the company. You could also post reviews about the work you’ve done, to entice new prospects.
We’d also recommend the use of analytical software (like Google Analytics) that will help you to monitor your website performance. Even a little information can be a useful guide to optimise and improve online engagement and help you convert customers.
4. Your landing page is not focused
A landing page is a webpage that your visitors arrive at when they’ve clicked on a search result. As many visitors don’t look beyond this first page, it is important that your landing page meets certain criteria.
You only have, on average, eight seconds to win over a visitor from the moment they land on your page. Your landing pages, then, need to have the following at the top of the screen:
- A headline that states your unique selling point (USP)
- A focus on one really attractive offer
- A clear indication of how they can get this offer (this is known as a Call To Action or CTA).
A great image or even a short video can make a huge difference to the success of your landing page. They help to draw attention and quickly engage audiences.
Videos, in particular, are a great way to extend the length of time readers will stay engaged on your page.
If you’ve outlined your intent, as we mentioned above, you’ll already be in a great place to help drive visitors and even potential leads down that can improve sales performance.
On the other hand, the way you optimise your page might mean that you’re trying to engage a viewer’s curiosity so that they follow your blog or download a resource or brochure.
These can be a great way to attract customers who are simply browsing, rather than looking to buy immediately. It’s what’s known as a conversion funnel.
5. Your content is underperforming
Web content is the writing that makes up your website. They could be articles, blog posts, page text, or product descriptions.
Having a clear content marketing strategy is particularly important for two reasons.
- Building your brand:
Great content that is specifically targeted toward your customers is the key to sharing your brand’s personality. You can get all you need across without being pushy about your products and services. This builds customer trust. - Maximise your search potential
A clear content management strategy is to maximise your search engine potential. Search engines like Google and Bing respond well to websites that have regularly updated content.
Without content that’s well-written, your other efforts at SEO will be wasted. The odds of converting customers, let alone converting jobs through your online booking system, will diminish.
The best website you can have will have a balance of detailed descriptions of the most common jobs you do, alongside testimonials and reviews. This way, prospective customers will get a clear idea of what they’re hiring you for and how good you are, too.
6. You’re not capitalising on leads
A website is an excellent source for prospective leads, but it requires expert software to maximise this potential. An online booking system that’s directly linked to your job management software is a fantastic way to capture leads, 24/7.
If you create a website where customers can make an inquiry at any time of day, it’s going to elevate you well above the competition. It’s the kind of system that can also help you compete with bigger businesses by helping your business to be more dynamic.
Other solutions exist to help you, too, such as Thrive Leads.
They offer a full package of design and can assist with relevant targeting (where client requirements are measured). They also enable A/B testing (where two options are tested against each other) and actionable reporting. Altogether, you can take action based on results.
Solve your problems with an online booking portal
There’s so much more to having a website than just existing on the web.
The internet is a vibrant place, it’s where people spend significant portions of their time looking for answers, solutions, and services. Consumers have gotten savvier at knowing what they do and don’t like whilst browsing, too.
So, if you’re looking to win more work and generate new business, then optimising your operations with field service management software is a great place to start. It can seem like a lot to learn, but a simple-to-implement tool like an online booking portal will be transformative.
It’s a process though. So create, test, and see how people respond to your pages! You can make tweaks and adjustments until you’ve got the website that’s perfect for your needs.
