If you are looking for a way to show your availability on your website, as well as to setup appointments for your products or services, a booking calendar may be a great way to serve your website visitors. Many people think that adding a booking calendar to a website requires complicated programming, but this is actually not true at all, assuming that you are using a CMS platform such as WordPress.
Basics of WordPress
If you are not familiar with WordPress, you may have been living under a rock for the past few years. WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) used online. A CMS allows website owners to quickly and easily build websites that are interactive, attractive and feature-rich, all from an extremely easy to use interface. WordPress has allowed non-technical individuals to create websites that wow customers and offer a variety of interactive features such as booking calendars.
WordPress Plugin Integration
One of the reasons why WordPress has become so popular over the past decade is the fact that developers are able to create a wide variety of plugins that can be easily integrated into any WordPress website. These plugins allow anyone to quickly add interactive elements to their websites such as contact forms, image galleries and even booking calendars.
Strong WordPress Community
According to recent statistics, roughly 23% of all websites are utilizing the WordPress content management system. With this popularity comes a sense of community that is simply not available from any other CMS platform. WordPress offers a community forum that allows users to ask questions that are usually quickly answered by WordPress veterans. This community is what makes WordPress such a great platform for beginners.
How to Create a Booking Calendar on Your WordPress Website
If you have a WordPress website and are ready to create a booking calendar, follow the following steps to easily add a booking calendar to your site.
1. Login to your WordPress admin panel – The first step to installing a booking calendar is to login to your WordPress control panel. This is the same platform that you use to make changes to your WordPress website.
2. Navigate to the plugins section of your WordPress site – The plugins section should be on the left menu bar inside your WordPress dashboard.
3. Install a booking calendar to WordPress – Click “Add New” and then search for a booking calendar for your website. We recommend Appointments+ as it is one of the more feature-rich booking calendars available for WordPress.
4. Configure your booking calendar – Once you have installed your booking calendar you can accept, create and manage all of your bookings on your WordPress site.
Benefits of an Online Booking Calendar
There are a number of reasons why adding a booking calendar to your website may make sense including:
• Accept payments online – One of the top benefits of using an online calendar is having the ability to accept payment for online bookings. Maybe you are a band that is looking to sell virtual tickets to your next big show. With an online booking calendar you can easily accept payment for your concerts through an online calendar.
• Show availability – With an interactive online calendar, you can let your fans or customers always know your availability. Keeping your calendar in one place will reduce miscommunication and help you to be transparent with your fans or customers about your availability.
• Email notifications – Another benefit of a booking calendar is that you can setup to receive email notifications when someone books a certain event which can help to always keep you in the loop as to how many people will be attending your events.
• Manage appointments with Google calendar – Do you manage your appointments or events through Google calendar? With WordPress plugins like Appointments+ that is no problem. Appointments+ allows you to manage all of your appointments through Google calendar and have them update on the fly on your website.
• Create black out dates – Have you had customers complain that they did not realize you were not offering services during a certain period of time? With a booking calendar you can create blackout periods which will be visible on your website and will not allow customers to book your services during these times.
• Client reminders – Another benefit of Appointments+ is that it allows you to send automated emails to remind your clients or fans about an upcoming event that they have signed up for.
• Paypal integration – Appointments+ offers full PayPal integration, which allows your clients to easily be able to pay for your events ahead of time.
• Advanced booking – Do you have a set schedule for an extended period of time? With Appointments+ you can setup your booking calendar with events up to 1 year in advance.
• Location integration – With an online booking calendar you can indicate the location of each of your events, which can then be integrated with Google Maps to give your users a true sense of where all of your events will be taking place.
Appointments+ and TikiLIVE
At TikiLIVE our customers have long been looking for an easy way to manage online bookings from their WordPress websites. Just as is the case with other WordPress requests from our customer base, we now offer complete integration with the Appointments+ WordPress plugin. In fact, this plugin is already installed and can be accessed from your WordPress dashboard. While we’ve included the steps on how to install this versatile plugin in this article, if you are utilizing TikiLIVE’s WordPress module you already have this functionality.
It has always been our goal to create ways in which our customers can more easily provide top-notch content to their fans and users. Adding a robust WordPress plugin like Appointments+ allows our customers to manage their booking calendars with ease.
For more information on how to enable your booking calendar on your WordPress website through TikiLIVE, check out our video tutorial online.
If you want to learn more TikiLIVE’s wide variety of services contact our talented customer service team today at 305-289-4557.
