Online Booking and Payment Processing Solutions

odeamarcas

Hi all,

I'm hoping somebody with some experience of online bookings and payment gateways might be able to impart some advice. I'm about to go to a web designer with a brief for a second iteration of what is currently a basic website - but that needs to evolve. The most important business issue we have at the moment is managing bookings. Our small business grew 100% in the last 4 months. It revolves around course bookings in the swimming industry. Every 8 weeks we have to process circa 300 bookings (including the over and back queries) and at the moment it's all manual over the phone or by internet banking. Pre-historic stuff that has me working 70 hours per week.

We are using Paymentsense for telephone debit and credit card bookings. I believe they have an online gateway. From my limited understanding, I believe the designer will have to utilise a Wordpress Plug-in.

Has anyone here had any good or bad experiences of such plug ins and has anyone any pointers on how we might brief our designer on same?

Thanks in advance.

Mark.

Axwell

Mod: Moved from E&BM - this is a web design/dev question, not a business one.

odeamarcas

Hi Axwell,
I was looking for feedback from a business perspective, not a web design perspective, as in from the end user. The technical element was to be addressed by a web designer, (as stated in my post) it wasn't a techie question or a web design question, it was a business question, relating to payment gateways and bookings - from the perspective of business management, not web design, 2 different things. But anyhoo,

Axwell

What details do you need from people and what information do they need from you for the course - dates, times? Are they booking a slot or an 8 week course.

Are they just signing up to a course based on an 8 week schedule - so you have the availabile start dates and I pick the one that suits, put in my details and pay?

Those are the sort of things you need to outline for the developer and then have him setup an appropriate plugin linked to a payment processor to collect payments - current favourite is Stripe but if your own can be integrated then go with that.

odeamarcas

I'm looking for pointers from Business People that have utlised booking systems on their websites. Mostly from the perspective of financial management, ease of use, etc etc, not the mechanics of how the booking system will work on the website, they pretty much all claim to do the same thing, Woocommerce and so on, what I'm looking for is "real world" practical experience of how people got on with various systems and companies they dealt with, good or bad.

Axwell

odeamarcas wrote: »

Hi Axwell,
I was looking for feedback from a business perspective, not a web design perspective, as in from the end user. The technical element was to be addressed by a web designer, (as stated in my post) it wasn't a techie question or a web design question, it was a business question, relating to payment gateways and bookings - from the perspective of business management, not web design, 2 different things. But anyhoo,

Has anyone here had any good or bad experiences of such plug ins and has anyone any pointers on how we might brief our designer on same?

That was your question..experience in using these plugins..and to brief your designer.If you want information on the plugins and payment gateways you are best asking the people that install and set them up. Perhaps word it differently if you are looking for advice from a business management perspective on E&BM as business owners are not bothered with what plugin it is and in most cases wont know as it is installed in the backend as long as it does what its supposed to do.

odeamarcas

Ok Dad. Thanks.

Axwell

Great attitude you have there. Someone tries to help you and you make smart arse remarks..

odeamarcas

Perhaps the tone of your email was misunderstood. I used to come here a fair bit a couple of years ago, but stopped, there was this pablo this and this pablo or other, all a crowd of shisters, so perhaps I came here on the defensive, expecting loads of guys on their high horse that will tell you exactly where your post should be or how it should be worded, perhaps I was wrong.

devildriver

odeamarcas wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm hoping somebody with some experience of online bookings and payment gateways might be able to impart some advice. I'm about to go to a web designer with a brief for a second iteration of what is currently a basic website - but that needs to evolve. The most important business issue we have at the moment is managing bookings. Our small business grew 100% in the last 4 months. It revolves around course bookings in the swimming industry. Every 8 weeks we have to process circa 300 bookings (including the over and back queries) and at the moment it's all manual over the phone or by internet banking. Pre-historic stuff that has me working 70 hours per week.

We are using Paymentsense for telephone debit and credit card bookings. I believe they have an online gateway. From my limited understanding, I believe the designer will have to utilise a Wordpress Plug-in.

Has anyone here had any good or bad experiences of such plug ins and has anyone any pointers on how we might brief our designer on same?

Thanks in advance.

Mark.

I've used this system recently so it may be an option you can consider.

https://www.rezgo.com/

It's specifically designed for leisure/travel industry bookings. It does run independently of any CMS that runs your website but you can tailor the urls to match your domain.

It also has the option of passing the booking fee to the customer so there's no upfront charge to use the system, other than your own payment processing fees.

It does require some setup but the backend is very comprehensive and you can customise for lots of different scenarios.

Trojan

A client of mine is transitioning a similar type business to Arlo, it might be worth a look. You might even be able to use something like EventBrite.

I'm sure there are WooCommerce plugins, but I haven't used any of them.