Online booking module is one of the cool plugins in WordPress.
What is Online Booking Module?
‘Online Booking module’/’online appointment setter’ is used basically to book appointments with professionals or consultants for a said duration of time.
Example: Appointment with Doctors, Beauticians, Counsellors etc.
How to create an online booking system/appointment in WordPress Websites?
A calendar will be available in the website for the visitor. This calendar will list information on booked and available time slots for present and future days.
Visitor can choose from the available slots, mention the purpose of visit and make the booking.
Once the booking is made, the client and the professional will be intimated by mail.
Reminder Alerts: Single or multiple reminders can also be set for both Client/Professional.
Features of online booking system:
- Paid booking
- Unpaid booking
This is a beautiful module, convenient, easy to implement and easy to use. We have implemented this module for at least 6 clients and unfortunately, none of them are very enthusiastic about using this module as their main source/tool to schedule appointments.
Online booking system is better because its quicker, to some extent it is impulsive and definitely hassle-free to use. But it also comes with some disadvantages for the business owners/professionals.
Two major reasons why this module is not being used by our customers:
- Unpaid booking: The client/visitor is generally not very serious about the unpaid booking unless it is an emergency / super critical to them. The probability of them turning up for the appointment is bleak, and this is a big loss to the professional.
- Paid booking: Paid booking becomes very expensive for the professionals, because payment gateway providers demands monthly rentals and transaction fee, so this booking protocol may not work for individuals and small business.
Plus the probability of professionals receiving offline (follow-up bookings, booking over the phone ) bookings are high.
Both type of booking has its own pros and cons, and cons seem to be costing them a lot.
This way, the enthusiasm to dedicate all the bookings to happen through ‘Appointment Management System’/’Online booking module’ becomes slim and ended up not being used by our customers.