How SEO can boost online booking sales

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Vinnie Morgan

Now you have your online booking system, you now want exposure and for customers to find your website in order to make a booking.

Everyone talks about it, everyone has an opinion about it, so what is Search Engine Optimisation and how can it help you? The following section gives you an overview of what SEO is and how it works.

The internet is a massive expanding open market with over 21 billion web pages indexed within search engines. These search engines are the easiest way to communicate with your business’ target audience, allowing you to sell your products or services directly to potential customers through engines such as Google and Yahoo. Search engines offer free exposure, promoting your company brand, products and services to a regional, national and international audience.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a technique aimed at improving the ranking of your website in the results of search engines. SEO can make a world of difference to the presence and success of an online business and with increased online exposure come increased website enquiries and greater business success. By optimising the site’s code and its content to maximise the levels of site visitors and enquiries, SEO can build awareness of a business and the activity surrounding it. Being seen by the right people and within the right marketplace is the key to success.

Every search engine has its own algorithm, or process, for determining where your pages rank for a particular search term. There are common elements to many of them, but they all apply their rules a little differently.

Firstly, “On Page” factors vary from engine to engine but the position of keywords (where they appear) is the most important. If the phrase appears in headings, page titles and other key areas on the page, a search engine will see this more relevant.

Secondly, “Off Page” factors and link popularity contribute significantly to your page’s ranking. This is because good web sites usually have other sites linking to them. You will discover the importance of both factors throughout this document.

Mango Studio don’t specialise in marketing – we specialise in Online marketing. And one of the best ways to gain online exposure is through Online Advertising or organic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO will help improve your website’s ranking within search engine’s listings. If you get Search Engine Optimisation right you can improve the amount of people seeing your website, the number of people who enquire about your activities and inevitably the number of sales will increase whilst the whole time promoting your company brand.

For paid listings such as Pay Per Click advertising, your listings are displayed through search results such as Google Adwords which will put you high up on the listings. Unfortunately when you stop paying for this service your website can disappear completely. If you use Organic Search Engine Optimisation you improve your website’s listings in the main search results area. Longer-term, it is more cost effective than using Pay Per Click advertising.

When looking at your SEO strategies you have to look at what your long term and short term aims are and try and combine the two. If your strategy is well planned and cleverly executed then your website traffic and online booking sales will improve. Now is the best time to invest in your business online marketing and at BookingLive, we have the experience and expertise to create and develop best practice SEO strategies that truly work for your business, naturally increasing your online performance and booking sales.

For further information, take a look at: www.bookinglive.co.uk

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Why use an Online Booking System?

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Vinnie Morgan

Manage Bookings and Reservations with Ease Using an Online Booking System

Are you running a business where bookings and reservations are necessary, and that you need to manage hundreds or even thousands of consumers who want to avail of your products and consumers all at once? You may currently employ a small staff of employees tasked to handle and sort out bookings, but as your customer base grows, it also becomes increasingly difficult for your staff to manage all the reservations. It will also take a lot longer to sort these bookings out, and at the same time, doing the sorting and recording manually can also be prone to errors. This may require you to hire additional staff to speed up the process, which can be expensive in the long run. However, you can increase efficiency and make the process of setting up a booking or reservation very fluid with an online booking system, even if you only have a small staff employed.

Applications of the Online Booking System

There are many practical applications for this system, especially if your business requires that a customer make a reservation sometime prior. If you run a small hotel, going online will not only make your hotel more visible, you can take advantage of this online system’s features to further improve your business. Potential customers need not call you to make reservations; they simply need to go to your website, click on the reservation tool embedded into your hotel’s webpage and make a reservation from there.

This is also very helpful for restaurants and travel and tours businesses. Not only can consumers easily make seat reservations through the web but through the online booking system, they also get real time information on which seats are currently available. This minimizes reservation errors which can be committed by human staff, wherein a reservation was approved even if the seats are already full or taken. This minimizes headaches both for you and your clients as well.

Giving Your Business the Tools Needed for E-Commerce

The system also goes beyond just making it easier for clients to make reservations, as this system also has modules that can help you and your clients do business online. Using the additional services of the online booking system allows your client to pay for any reservations made online, setup an online shop where clients can buy merchandize and at the same time can help manage your staff’s schedule and streamline their responsibilities.

This booking system is also flexible, as you can avail of plans which can integrate not only easy booking and reservation making on the website, but at the same time can be done even if a client is a way from the computer thru the use of smartphones and other mobile devices.

Contact BookingLive today to find out how our online booking system can help your business.

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We’re Hiring

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Lucy Hinchliffe

BookingLive have 2 new full time positions available for people seeking a career in a fast moving business:

1) PHP Developer (£18,000 – £26,000)

Mango Studio are seeking PHP Developers for an expanding product based company. The successful PHP developers will join an expanding company supporting, developing and designing new areas of their successful booking system. This role is looking for either a graduate to grow along or someone with expiernce who can hit the ground running to help with our rapid growth in number and size of clients.

Key duties and responsibilities
- Development of enhancements, bug fixing, repair and maintenance of systems.
- Develop and run unit tests.
- Supporting clients using the system
- Documentation

Required:
- PHP
- MySQL
- OO knowledge
- Basic HTML, CSS, Javascript

Advantage:
- Silverstripe
- eCommerce
- Advanced HTML, CSS, Javascript
- Version Control System (SVN / Github / etc)
- PHPunit

2) Project Manager (£22,000-£30,000)

A project manager position has just become available…

Required skills / knowledge include scoping, job planning, working with clients and creative / technical team, dealing with support issues.

Non mandatory skills are working with technical developer on wireframing, agile development, understanding of software development life cycle.

BookingLive is a product of digital agency Mango Studio. BookingLive is a modular booking system sold across the UK into outdoor activity centres and various other industries. BookingLive has a core team of 4 people and a number of developers and designers outside of the core team.

We’re now in an exciting new phase of growth and we’re looking for a dynamic and highly motivated project manager who can grow with us. Strong client-facing skills and a well-rounded technical understanding of post production are essential.

You will be responsible for working with the client and the software developers to ensure projects are delivered on time, on budget and to the specification agreed. You will also lead the day to day client relationships and to knit together the strategy with creative delivery. Other activity will include delivering a strategic marketing plan to support the sales activity of the company.

Activity
- Estimating, job costing, scoping and planning projects
- Liaising between the client and developers.
- Motivate and keep team members up to date with deadlines and milestones
- Communicate problems through the development team and look for solutions
- Delivering marketing activity to support sales strategy
- Account management

If you’re an project manager and you’re looking to join an agency with great clients, a really brilliant team and big opportunities, we want to hear from you. To express interest, please send a CV and covering letter to Steph at talk@bookinglive.co.uk

Person specification

A love of process and detail must be balanced with a love for pleasing people. It is a demanding role and an ability to prioritise is critical. Budget management, loyalty, openness and a credible persona are key. You are expected to live our philosophy of always being committed to going the extra mile for clients and colleagues alike

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Social Media: the latest in marketing

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Vinnie Morgan
Social Media is an excellent way to gain new clients through your online booking reservation system which is why lots of companies are joining Twitter, Facebook, Tripadvisor and LinkedIn. These platforms have grown massively and anyone can join them, so it is a really good way to reach lots of people.
People use social media to keep in touch with friends, yes, but they also use it as an easy way to get in touch with a company.  This means they can ask questions easily and get up to date information, it is one way to stand out from competitors.
Social media can improve your services by giving you the opportunity to get closer to your clients and start knowing them as people. It is extremely important to listen and try to react to any suggestions given by customers through social media as well as the more traditional methods.
Social media can help you to:
  • Find your clients
  • Supply information about your products
  • Collect better feedback after you have made your sales
  • Gain data on your clients
  • Get a community around your business
  • Record opinions after sales
  • Increase the loyalty of your clients
The reasons above means that social media is now an important part of company’s marketing strategy.
Mango Studio can help you create an appropriate strategy based around your policies for engaging with and measuring your social media activity within your target landscape.
With the expert guidance from BookingLive, we can start making social media work for you and your online business. If you want to find out how your e-commerce transactions can increase through your booking system, please, visit us on: www.bookinglive.co.uk or call 0117 933 8632
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What makes an Online Booking System easy to use

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Vinnie Morgan

BookingLive: The user-friendly online booking system – simples!

It’s easy to get bogged down with complicated and difficult to use online booking systems, but BookingLive is simple and easy to use. Once you are set up with your content management system (CMS) BookingLive gives you all the tools you need to input the relevant data to make your online booking system live.

Online Booking System

We give you clear and simple instructions on how to set up your activities, courses, tours, events etc, how to input the website content, set the booking prices, add booking extras and much more. Our team give you access to our comprehensive user-manual which gives you a step-by-step guide on how to perform each task. And if you still can’t work it out, your account manager is always on the end of the phone to help you get started.

BookingLive’s user-help booking system features guide you through the system so you can make full use of its capabilities and at any time, without the constraints of office hours.

Our ergonomic CMS allows you to make any changes you like to the online booking system and to your website, which means you can make changes any time which are catered to your business – keeping your customers up to date all the time. Our CMS is so easy to use, you can change anything from an old photo that needs updating to a pricing structure for your activities – all with the click of a button and a step-by-step guide.

BookingLive is an extremely secure online reservations software, which means you don’t have to worry about security – we have it covered! Ensuring that your customer data and personal information is secure is top of our agenda.

Our existing clients find that making an online booking a breeze!

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Get Wet, Activity Centre, North Wales

If you would like to find out more contact us via BookingLive to arrange a call or

Call us direct on : 0117 933 8632

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Beginners Guide to Online Booking Systems

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Lucy Hinchliffe

Don’t know anything about Online Booking Systems but want to find out more? Here you can find out all you need to know.

What is an Online Booking System?

An online booking system is software that gives the customer a way to pay for an activity through a website. So there is no more booking over the phone, sending an enquiry form and waiting to see if you can book that time or having to print out a booking form and then posting it.

How does an Online Booking System work?

An online booking system is all within your website so a customer will look through your website and choose an activity. There will then be a button next to that activity which says book, after clicking on this the customer will give their information, including names of all the participants and medical information. The customer will then give their card details to pay through a secure payment gateway. All this information will then be displayed in a secure Content Management System which needs a login and password to access.

How is an Online Booking System useful to Businesses?

  1. It means that a customer doesn’t have to call you up to book an activity so it frees up the phones and employees times.
  2. All the information about a customer is put into the computer by the customer. So all you will have to do is look up a particular activity and all the data is there.
  3. Bookings can happen at any time of the day or night by anyone around the world.
  4. The payments are taken straight away so there is no need for deposits or cheques to be sent through the post.
  5. The customer can see all the times that are free and book the one which suits them best.
  6. If you decide to use Groupon, Living Social, kgb deals or any other social selling network, customers can redeem their vouchers easily through your website.

Are the payments secure?

The payments are very safe. There are a number of payment gateways that are used and they all work very hard to keep the money secure and to prevent fraud. We use very well known and trusted payment gateways including PayPal and and Google Checkout.

Have more questions? Look at BookingLive’s frequently asked questions or contact us.

Tel: 0117 933 8632

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Online booking using Groupon and LivingSocial

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Vinnie Morgan

Outdoor Activity Centres and other businesses such as hotels, restaurants and spa salons are increasingly using the likes of Groupon, LivingSocial and KGB deal sites. They are a quick-fire way to sell a large volume of activities in a short space of time – but at a low price. Daily deal sites can be a brilliant way to increase your sales and business awareness, but they can also cause your business issues if you are not prepared for the influx of visitors and bookings.

Many new clients have opened a new online booking system account with Booking Live because of the large volume of voucher redemptions – as many as 3000! You can’t scale your business to cope with the demand, which is why our online voucher redemption module allows your customers to redeem vouchers and book online with ease!

If you are considering using deal sites to increase onling booking volume, firstly, we would advise that you certainly have an online booking system, and secondly, ensure that your booking system can manage and cope with voucher redemptions and large volumes of bookings. Increasing your bookings and traffic to your site is a fantastic opportunity for your business to shine – so make sure you are prepared.

1. Be sure you have calculated and decided what activities you can offer at a reasonable discounted price, without causing your business any headaches, and most importantly – make sure you are not losing money on the activity.

2. Ensure your website is ready for the influx of traffic. Make sure it’s user-friendly and it’s clear for the user how they can redeem their social deal voucher. This will minimise the number of calls you will receive asking how they can book an activity on your site.

3. In our experience, having online reservations software is the best solution to deal with social deal sites. It means you can capture all of your bookings in real time, which eliminates booking errors, double bookings, incorrect bookings and many more issues that occur with manual and paper booking systems. BookingLive provide the very best accommodations centre software for online bookings, and one of our areas of expertise is dealing with social deal sites such as Groupon. Please see our blog on our booking system integration with deal sites.

One of our social deal success stories is UK Zorbing company SphereMania, they process between 80-90% of online bookings through third party voucher agents.

SphereMania use deal sites regularly which brings in a vast amount of business. Having our reservations system means they can cope with the high volume of bookings they receive every day!

Zorbing at SphereMania

If you would like advice on online booking systems or you’re considering implementing one, please contact BookingLive and we will be happy to help!

Tel: 0117 933 8632

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Winter is a good time for activity centres to get a online booking system

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Lucy Hinchliffe

If you are an outdoor activity centre – the best time to get an online booking system is right now!

BookingLive is the number 1 provider of an online booking system with full website integration in the world! Our specialist market is working with activity centres with over 4 years experience. Get in touch to view a full range of clients we work with and to book your setup and installation in asap.

As we go into winter the days get shorter and the number of people brave enough to venture out to enjoy the activity centres reduces. So why not make sure your online booking system is the best it can be for the next year.

The benefits of an online booking system are:

  • you don’t have to have someone waiting by the phone to take bookings so you can spend more time with the clients
  • the bookings can happen 24/7 from anywhere in the world
  • if you use Groupon, Living Social or another gift agent an online booking system can cope with the sudden increase of sales. (You can read about all the benefits here)
  • being able to easily control which instructors are doing what activities when
  • you can easily find a customer and see what activities and any extras they have bought.

If you get an online booking system over the winter it can be ready and taking bookings in time for the spring.

If you would like to find out more contact us on 0117 933 8632 or at www.bookinglive.co.uk

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Top 10 reasons why outdoor activity centres need an online booking system.

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Lucy Hinchliffe

“An online booking system you say? Why would our outdoor activity centre need one of those?…”

Is this a question you are asking yourself? Well… BookingLive can answer all your questions with the top 10 reasons why every outdoor activity centre needs an online booking system.

1. More time to spend with your most important asset – your customers!

Now your customers can book activities and courses online, that leaves you more quality time to spend with them when they are actually with you on the day. Our system provides you and your customers the ability for online bookings, booking confirmations, booking cancellations, booking amendments and much more – saving your business time and money.

2. Reduced No-shows and booking cancellations

Bookinglive’s online reservations software provides automated SMS and email reminders prior to the activity date, which gives your customers plenty of warning. Giving them a gentle reminder reduces no-shows or in the case they might not be able to come, they can also reschedule. It provides the opportunity for customers to make cancellations earlier in the process, which means someone else could book in their place. Allowing you to fully utilise your capacity.

3. Convenience for your customers

Your customers can make bookings wherever they are, whatever they are doing and whenever is convenient for them. Our reservations system is available 24/7. BookingLive also shows all available booking slots so your customers can see when activities are free which will encourage them to wait even if activities aren’t available for a while.

4. Instant Online Payments

BookingLive combines online booking software with payment gateways for multiple payment providers. This fantastic integration allows your customers to pay in advance or even purchase activities as gifts for friends and family. This saves time allowing your customers to make the most of the time they have with you to enjoy their activity, ensuring their experience is focused on fun and enjoyment rather than payments and admin.

Rafting at Get-Wet, Bala

5. Efficient Reception

BookingLive provides your business with an efficient internet booking system that provides an all-encompassing customer experience from start to finish. Reducing admin and reception time with less phone calls allows you to provide the very best service to your customers through use of welcome touch screens, booking and enquiry forms, automated feedback and communications via email and SMS.

6. Comprehensive marketing solution

BookingLive is not only an activity centre software as a service solution to online bookings, but it utilises your existing customer details by allowing you to send direct mail and e-marketing promotions, enabling you to stay in touch with your customers, offer them special deals and reward them for their loyalty.

7. Expert service

Most of BookingLive customers are small businesses and we recognise that small businesses have minimal time to invest, so we take the pressure of with our powerful website booking system, allowing you to focus on running the business, growing and developing it. We support your business through a dedicated account manager, online ticket helpdesk and we like to visit you at least once a year!

8. Increased Website Traffic

Using BookingLive can increase traffic to your website, as our system improves website rankings – SEO (search engine optimisation). Increasing traffic to your website, is a great way to raise awareness of your business and ultimately increase bookings.

9. Remote Access

Your business may currently have a paper-based booking system in which case, to check what activities are booked in and when requires a phone call or a physical check. BookingLive allows you to check your bookings from anywhere in the world, saving you time and resources. You can check the status of your bookings at any time – through the web or any mobile device.

10. Customer Service

Having access to all of your existing and past customer details allows you to provide the very best customer service. You can keep track of their order history, booking experience and customer feedback they have left you. All this information is securely stored in our online booking system.

Zorbing at Chepstow, SphereMania

Zorbing at Chepstow, SphereMania

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WordPress, Content Management & Booking System in One!

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Vinnie Morgan

BookingLive provides a comprehensive business solution for outdoor activity centres, leisure centres, accommodation businesses, restaurants, travel operators, event and conference organisers and spa & beauty businesses.

Not only does BookingLive enable your business to fully manage and control your online booking system, but with full integration of your website with the booking system, you can use our incredibly powerful and user-friendly content management system (CMS) provided by one of the world’s best open source providers – Silverstripe, the only Microsoft Certified Open Source CMS.

Enabling you to make changes to all aspects of your website. Having full control of your web content, with the Silverstripe booking software platform, allows you to fully utilise our system and keep your website up to date, taking advantage of promoting events, competitions, special offers, new activites and much more. Providing your customers with up to date information and interaction will increase their engagement levels with your website which will ultimately increase your web traffic, SEO, brand awareness and new bookings and sales.

BookingLive also enables full integration with WordPress – the most popular blogging tool online. This means you and your team can easily create regular blogs for your customers to enjoy – just another way to keep your website and business up to date. Our full integration, means that your blog looks exactly like your website, providing a professional and consistent experience for your customers. Blogging is a great way to: indirectly bring new and relevant customers to your website, increase your search engine optimisation, educate customers about the nature of your products or services and also interact and engage with your public community.

BookingLive is a powerful online reservations software, with multiple booking system features allowing you to provide your customers with the ultimate booking experience.

If you would like to find out more about BookingLive, get in touch now!

Tel: 0117 933 8632

 

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