Booking and Appointment Commerce: What Actually Works
Selling time rather than products, with calendars, availability, deposits and reminders.
Marcus Adeyemi
The key figures
- Availability
- depends on staff, resources and opening hours
- Time zones
- bookings across regions need careful handling
- Deposits
- reduce no-shows but need clear terms
- Reminders
- cut no-show rates
Why this is worth getting right
Booking systems have to model staff, resources and time zones correctly, or double bookings and no-shows follow.
Do this, not that
Do
- Model staff and resource availability separately
- Display times in the customer's time zone
- Send confirmations and reminders
- State cancellation and deposit terms clearly
- Make rescheduling easy
Don’t
- Double bookings from unsynced calendars
- Time zone confusion
- Deposit terms hidden at checkout
- Cancellation only by phone
When to bring in help
Our advice Bring in help when services are booked online at volume.
Where this comes from
- Stripe Documentation — Payment methods
- Federal Trade Commission — Advertising FAQs: A guide for small business
The figures and practices above come from the sources listed.
Working on something like this?
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Where to go next
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