We've worked tirelessly to reduce any barriers as much as possible but in the very nature of taking thousands of bookings a day we will see people who have difficulties.
Let's explore what these might be caused by, and how we can help.
Grab all the information you can!
We love to explore the users why a user has issues booking but there is limited we can do to help when we don't have the full picture. If the only information we know is a user 'can't book' then alas there is nothing we do to help.
Whenever you speak to people who have reported a booking issue try to collect as much information as possible from them; often you'll find you'll be able to explain where they might have made a mistake or if there is an issue they are facing you'll be able to let us know details we can use to improve the user journey.
#1 - The customer isn't very good with technology
Ultimately with tens of thousands of booking, you are going to experience the odd customer every now and then who finds interacting with technology difficult!
We're constantly refining our booking path to maximize booking success rates, and have some of the highest in the industry, however sometimes people just struggle with things online.
Solution:
Firstly if you know about it you've likely already spoken to the customer and in turn most of the time it's easiest to simply book them in manually.
If possible try to get an understanding of where they hit a road block and then feed that back to us so we can see if there is anything we could have done to improved their experience. We take this sort of feedback very seriously.
#2 - The customer is trying to avoid paying a deposit
Yeah, it sucks, but this is hospitality, and we all know these people. We've found a direct link between people who have to put in a no-show deposit and people suddenly having "problems" with the form so they can make a booking without having to worry about putting their card details in.
Solution:
Although there is no full fix for this, we're working on a new feature that lets you send out a payment link even for bookings taken in person or over the phone. We'd also suggest keeping no-show charges reasonable and in-line with our businesses in your area.
#3 - Slots Temporary Booked Out.
If a customer has a this problem and you go and check and see the slot is bookable, it's very likely the slot had a temporary block on it.
BookingNinja - and any booking platform - have to deal with parallel bookings. What happens if you have multiple people hitting your website at the same time, and then both try to book the last remaining slot? You'd have to throw one of them an error, a pretty terrible experience.
The alternative here would be if both are submitted at the same time then you'd be overbooked... even worse!
When a customer gets as far as entering booking details, we inform the customer they 15 minutes to complete their booking and then in the system place a 'temporary' booking in the slot they are trying to book for.
If the user completes the booking that temporary booking becomes their actual booking - but if they don't complete within 15 minutes we throw them an error saying sorry and then release that slot back into the pool of spaces.
This can all mean that when the customer went to book a slot that you think should be free, in that moment of time it wasn't.
Solution:
This is a limitation of any booking platform. BookingNinja intelligently polls the customers browser to see if the session is closed to try to release the slot sooner, but we have to account for mobile devices which can often lose connection.
You're more likely to see this happening if people aren't aware of the booking conditions or costs upfront; so provide as much information as possible on your booking page.
#4 - Embed Issues On Your Site.
BookingNinja allows you to embed our widget on your website. This uses a widely supported technology called iFrames. You can add our embed to any site that supports JS tags, and that includes Wix, Squarespace and pretty much any other hosting provider or page editor on the web..
However there is a big BUT here - We have no control over how your site renders the content provided, and this includes the BookingNinja widget. You need to ensure your site is mobile responsive and working well!
How you do this varies a great deal and if you have a webmaster that manages your site simply let them know:
The container that holds the BookingNinja embed widget needs to be able to dynamically resize, so that if the site is viewed on a mobile the embed gets as much width as possible; so remove any padding on the left and right when on small screens. The iFrame dynamically adjusts height, so please make sure any fixed content doesn't overlap it.
If the above is gobbledygook to you then don't worry and read on!
Depending on your plan we might be able to jump in and do the edits for you, however in some cases we'll only be able to provide some guidelines.
Solution
Ensure your site is mobile responsive, or copy the above message to your web developer. Speak to us if you have any questions.
Or actually our recommendation most of the time - don't use the embed. The embed adds a layer of abstraction on top of the booking process.
In most cases it's a much better user experience to direct users to your LetsBookFor page. We'll never promote other venues on this page, and you can brand it to suit your brand.
When you link to the LetsBookFor URL our system automatically generates a mobile responsive version; we get complete logging so can inform you why a booking failed, and ultimately it's faster and cleaner for you.