Squareup.com: Appointment Feature

Dan Tran

Dan Tran

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Hey all!

So here’s what’s on my mind today.

Since the beginning of time, I have always accepted major credit cards using my Square reader.

I spent some time this afternoon going through my entire dashboard with them and have have been going back and forth about implementing their Appointment Feature.

While in the midst of all this, I was browsing some of my competitors website and notice that some of them have online bookings available.

So my question is specifically (but not limited to) Squares online booking program.

Does anyone here use ‘online booking’ and swears by it?

What are your thoughts both positive and negative?

A very successful detailer in New Hampshire has online booking and I was wondering if I should be doing the same.

ALSO,

As mentioned in a different thread, I am in the middle of my first AdWords campaign—I was thinking about linking my Ad directly to online booking (which will also feature my services listed there) and eliminate my Ad directing people to my website to possibly fill out a contact form anyway.

Thoughts?


Dan Tran
Car Care Specialist
The Buffing Moose Detailing: Auto Detailing | ME and NH
 
We use online booking that is provided through our Wordpress theme. It's not perfect and took a lot of tweaking to make it usable but I'll be damned if people don't book appointments online. Of course, everybody always books it for 30 minutes from whenever they click submit, because there's no way for me to block out times that were scheduled away from the software, but I can convert them to a free slot 99% of the time. I think in the months of using it, we've only had 2-3 people that booked and we were unable to complete the job because they couldn't/wouldn't move to another time.

When business slows down a little, we're going to find a WP developer and have a customer booking system built for us that will integrate with Google Calendar. That's the plan anyway.

ANYTHING that gets a customer to give you their information is a good tool for a salesman.
 
I think I am going to take the plunge and integrate this into my website this weekend or soon.

What do I have to lose?

I believe it’s free for a sole user. If so, why not.

The nice thing is that a person can go online and book the appointment have it sync to my google calendar and I can pend all appointments for approval.

If I am understanding everything correctly, I can also set up appointments to require a prepayment of whatever and I can also implement a cancellation fee.

I tested it out with my own information and it’s actually neat.

It can save all customers on file and information, card info if they want and I can opt to collect emails for newsletter and stuff.




Dan Tran
Car Care Specialist
The Buffing Moose Detailing: Auto Detailing | ME and NH
 
ditch the square , if you end up in any card issues, they will not fight for you ....you are on your own... or worse , all with proof in your hands you will loose.

i like to see or know about the cars before any quote or schedule, that way you don.t end up into any ambush with a junk car that will take 5hours interior only when is booked for 2 hours top.....or was booked online for xx$ when the job turn to be an XXX$ and you have to deal with price change.
yes.. online booking may work for some and not for others....
i prefer to txt or email and accommodate the clients or schedule multiple jobs in a specific area, we also don`t take any call that come in , we schedule in advance.
some people think we wait at the pool to get calls , when we are already booked for the week.
 
Booking an appointment online doesn't lock you in to doing the job or doing at the price listed on your site. Add a couple disclaimers to your pricing. If the vehicle is a train wreck, you readjust the price or you don't do the work. It's just another tool, like any other tool. And no credit card company is going to "fight for you" as a merchant, that's not their job. If you think that's their job, you don't understand how merchant services work. As a business, you're right, you are on your own.
 
I see you are using Squarespace for your website, I don't know if you are looking on updating it or changing platforms altogether but if you do end up switching to Wordpress checkout this plugin for bookings
Booking Calendar | WordPress.org

As for your advertising, I haven't seen your other thread yet but I would suggest you create a specific landing page for your ads to go to. This way you can cater it specific to the advertisement special you are running. It is a great idea to have a booking form on this page as well.

Keep us posted on how it goes!
 
I just set this up for my squarespace. I made it so I have to approve the bookings though. Once I talk to the potential customer and inquire about their car I will either approve or deny the booking based on that. I added all the services I offer so that the potential customer can get an idea of the cost of the services they choose. All of my prices are listed as "starting at" so there's adjustability built into the process should their vehicle be severely soiled.
 
Yeah...I love Squarespace and Square.

I took square off a while back, but I think when detailing season winds down, I think I’m going to embed it into my website again.


Sent from my iPhone using AGOnline
 
Stevedotmil said:
I just set this up for my squarespace. I made it so I have to approve the bookings though. Once I talk to the potential customer and inquire about their car I will either approve or deny the booking based on that. I added all the services I offer so that the potential customer can get an idea of the cost of the services they choose. All of my prices are listed as "starting at" so there's adjustability built into the process should their vehicle be severely soiled.
Click to expand...

What’s your website URL?


Sent from my iPhone using AGOnline
 
Well it seems it's rather easy to edit your appointments to move them to the right on the calendar. Customer had to move the appointment. She's an RN and my next door neighbor. She's almost never home. I have some other stuff in the works though.
 
I just used the appointment feature for a customer that scheduled for a couple days ago. It was very useful to them to receive a reminder according to their feedback when I asked them. It gave them an overview of the services that they were scheduled for and the procedures that would be performed. When I asked if they had any more questions about the work they told me that the appointment reminder basically covered all their questions before I had even gotten there.
 
I have a bad feeling that it didn’t go well. I later read up that I should have avoided Adword Express.

I only did it for a month, and I was told it takes a good budget plus at least three months of which I didn’t have.

I plan on it for the future to do it better hopefully. Sorry that this didn’t help much.


Sent from my iPhone using AGOnline
 
I think I put in about $1.05 a click targeting “car detailing” in my area.

I think I ended up spending about $150 for the entire thing.


Sent from my iPhone using AGOnline
 
Learned something from crash and burning.


Sent from my iPhone using AGOnline
 
I don't use square appointments at all it doesn't have the abilities that allow the customers to choose add-ons and it's not visually appealing to me so on so on....now if you are a newcomer then it's a good start up system.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Autogeekonline mobile app
 
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