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Archive for the ‘Business Products & Services’ Category

The Internet is here to stay,and many businesses have made their first leap to the Internet with a web site,and many are now moving forwards using the Internet, not only as an advertisingand promotion platform, but as an active business platform.

 You may have askedyourself why so many small businesses are so interested in getting an onlinereservation system on their web site. Hereare 9 good reasons why!

 

1.     Open 24/7 to receive reservations

Many customers surf theInternet outside of business hours and they are more likely to makereservations on the spot that trying to remember to call back the next day.

Statistics show that more andmore bookings today are made during the evening at home online. accident attorney Westminster . Denver Roofing . If your normalbusiness hours are 9 to 5, then you have no one to take bookings after 17:00,and this is when we now know most online bookings occur.

An Online booking systemallows you to receive booking 24 hours a day; therefore, your ‘booking service’is always open.

 

2.     Commission Free

Whether you are paying fordirect advertising, or paying a commission for bookings through bookingportals, in either case, you are paying a portion of your income to thesesources. If you have an online booking system on your own website, you havethen cut out the middleman. Another important point when using commissionedportals is that your business is promoting them as much as they are promotingyou, and with the Internet, you might as well just focus on promoting your ownbusiness. 

 

3.     It’s simply good customer service

When we speak about onlinebookings here, we are not talking about a contact form. A contact form does notprovide your customers with a clear view of your availability. A contact formdoes not allow your customers to book directly and pay and get confirmedautomatically.

A proper online booking systemmust, at the least be able to perform these two tasks as they are core toproviding good customer service.

 

4.     Minimize your workload

If you are not using an onlinebooking system today, then you may still be processing all your bookingsmanually. A good online booking system will handle all the aspects of thebooking. It must, at a minimum, do the following:

-        Automatically ensure that bookings can only be received when you haveavailability

-        Get ALL the information required during the booking process so you don’t haveto waste time asking for more information

-        Send out an automated email to the booking party as a confirmation of the booking

-        Automatically update your availability when the booking has been processed

A good booking system will doall this.

Also make sure your bookingsystem doesn’t just handle the online bookings, but handles email, phone andwalk-in bookings as well.

 

5.     All your customer data in a structured system

If you use a good onlinebooking system which also handles the walk-in, email and phone bookings, thenyou will have all your previous customers data in a structured system. This isimportant today as it allows you to market yourself to your previous customers.This customer list is often one of your best-valued resources in a business,and you want this data both accessible and structured.

 

6.     Up selling

This is not just the domain oflarge companies.

When a customer is booking acar or an apartment for their holidays, it is very common to have ‘extras’ thatthe customer can choose. For apartment rentals it might be a welcome basket,for a car rental company, it may be a GPS system.

Your booking system shouldallow for the easy addition of ‘extras’ so that you offer your customers allyour great features and options.

 

7.     Discount Codes

Discount codes are a great wayto market your business in either off-season, or when you have some last spotsavailable. Make sure your online booking system can support discount codes.

WebReserv makes it easy todownload email addresses from previous customers so you can send them a ‘comeback’ discount code. The post-visit email is great for this.

 

8.     Clear and Simple Overview

Your online booking systemshould have at least one screen where you can see your availability veryquickly and clearly. This removes the need for the old paper book, and allowsyour reception staff to easily see whether you have availability or not.

 

9.     Online payments

For the fully comprehensivebusiness, you may want to integrate an automatic payment system. With this inplace, you reduce manual workload even more, and you provide your customerswith a complete easy and safe way to both book and pay for your offerings

There are of course even moreadvantages, but the above list should at least get you thinking about whetheryou should have an online booking engine or not.

 

WebReserv was founded in 2004and provides all the above features and more.

The WebReserv booking widgetis then placed on your web site, and handles your online booking 24/7.

You can create a free accountwith WebReserv at: http://www.webreserv.eu