It’s not without reason that Velo by Wix's tagline is ‘Creation Without Limits.’ That philosophy is clear in the recent release of two new Booking APIs, which enhance the booking experience for visitors to your clients’ websites and even more seamlessly integrate all scheduling information for your clients’ ease of use. In this article, we will explore what these APIs are and how they can transform any website that is already utilizing Wix Bookings.
These new features are particularly suited for any businesses that depend on clients being able to easily book classes or services. We know the goal: The web design and functionality must work in conjunction to facilitate web traffic following through on that ‘Book Now!’ or ‘Enroll Today!’ CTA. That means capabilities like quick-book forms, customized timetables that instantly display the next available time slot, and customized confirmation messages are all necessary site elements. And now, those functions (plus many more) are all possible with Velo and Bookings APIs, thus aligning the online bookings system with your clients’ business needs.
Why you need an online scheduling tool
Before we get into the exciting new advanced Wix Bookings features, let’s start by refreshing our memories about why an online booking feature is a total must-have for any service-based website you’re working on. The underlying objective is for incoming web traffic to book and pay for services. So you need to set up a system that worries about all of the details for your clients, to make it the most painless online booking experience possible.
Thankfully, Wix Bookings offers an online scheduling process that can be set-up in just minutes to offer an effortless, commission-free process, complete with professional tools to support business management. Here, you can showcase all of your client’s offerings in one place with vivid photos, categories, taglines, and descriptions. Then, personalize this further by allowing customers to book individual or group sessions. When it comes to receiving payment, this feature easily accepts full or partial payment through well known, secure methods.
All scheduled appointments can easily be synced with the business’ central calendar, and the calendars of anyone who books with them. In addition, customers are less likely to miss an appointment because they are automatically sent an alert via email. This is a great example of a maintenance-free website feature you can install to simplify your clients’ lives, as they will receive real-time booking updates whenever an appointment is confirmed on their site. In short, gone are the days of updating multiple calendars, taking appointments by hand, and missed leads.
The Wix Bookings scheduling tool offers the following functions:
Accept online bookings 24/7 from any device.
Manage staff calendars.
Sync your Wix and Google calendars.
Offer group classes and membership plans.
Store and edit customer information.
Accept secure payments and deposits - all commission free - and send customer invoices.
All sounds great, right? But imagine being able to do even more, like allowing web visitors to easily filter through instructors or personalizing the post-booking ‘thank you’ page to extend the marketing funnel for engaged customers. That’s where these new APIs for Bookings come into the picture.
Meet the two new Velo Bookings APIs
The first is called getServiceAvailability API. Its purpose is to enhance what you can offer through Wix Bookings in terms of display and organization. It achieves this by instantly fetching open time slots and staff member availability from the booking calendar to suggest to browsing potential clients. This can come into play in several locations, from the timetable to services lists and pages.
The second is called checkOut API. Whereas you can think of getServiceAvailability as a design-related tool, this second API steps in as the functionality backbone. It’s the device that makes the actual booking and payment processing possible. It’s ready to step in at moments where you want to offer a quick-book form, for example, or let site visitors filter through booking options to make their selection.
Now, we’ll delve a bit more into what these APIs let you do:
01. Create your own timetable.
Your clients live by their calendars. Why not help them use it meet their business goals? That’s why Velo APIs gives you control over the presentation of their online timetables. For example, imagine your client is a personal fitness trainer whose time is in high demand. When a curious customer-to-be arrives on the site, don’t waste their time making them sift through the calendar until they find an open slot. Instead, this API forefronts these prime times for easy access. The faster this person can complete their booking, the lower the chance they’ll become discouraged and try their luck with your client’s competitor.
02. Fully customize service pages.
A big bonus of Velo is the way it lets you create dynamic pages to display the business’ service list. This kind of efficient design is perfect for a gym that wants to create service pages for each of its fifty class offerings, or a pottery studio with ten different workshops, or any other similar situation. The idea of making an individual, identical page for each one of those classes or workshops seems almost prehistoric at this point. Instead, simply set up a database collection with all the informational fields you want displayed on any given service page (e.g. class name, description,