How To Make A Bookings Website: A Step By Step Guide

Need a website to take bookings on? This step by step guide will direct you on how to create your very own bookings website in less than an hour.

Ben Carter

min read

Are you struggling to find an efficient, cost-effective way to take bookings for your business online? Baluu may just be the answer you’re looking for! Below, we go over several key points and guide you, step-by-step, to using Baluu to make your very own bookings website.

Today, more and more businesses are seeking an easy and efficient way to take bookings online. The issue many small businesses face is that creating an integrated bookings website usually requires different types of software.

To be able to take bookings you usually need to use a website builder, booking software, and a payment provider. This often ends up becoming time-consuming and expensive. Fortunately, Baluu can make your life a whole lot easier. It includes all of these tools in one, simple platform.

Specifically designed with small businesses in mind, Baluu enables you to build a great-looking website easily and efficiently with zero finicky coding; one that comes with a fully integrated booking system.

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Why Squarespace and Wix aren't good options for creating a bookings website

‍Squarespace is one of the most user-friendly website builders on the market, allowing customers to utilize pre-built templates along with drag-and-drop elements for modification.

However, businesses requiring a bookings system will have to pay extra for their scheduling software: plans starting from $14 a month. What’s more, once you’ve agreed to ship out for a plan, you’ll then have to build the scheduling software into your existing site.

Wix is another website builder that’s become extremely popular in recent years. As opposed to Squarespace’s structured approach, Wix is an unstructured editor.

This means users are given more freedom, moving elements by a degree of one pixel if they need to. However, despite this and their impressive number of templates, if you want to integrate bookings on your Wix website you have to purchase “Wix Bookings”. While it may have an impressive number of features and be fully integrated, this will set you back a minimum monthly fee of $34.

What is an online booking website and how does it work?

There are many great booking systems on the market, like, Apointedd, Acuity Scheduling, and Setmore. But these systems have to be integrated into your existing website and don’t offer an out-of-the-box, all-in-one solution like Baluu.

So what is an online booking website? An online booking website is an integrated software solution that combines a website-builder, bookings platform, and payment provider all in one package. It enables customers to self-book and pay while providing effective tools to run and scale your business.

Some common reasons to use a booking system:

Get the ability to create bookings for your events and experiences
Automate customer communications
Calendar synchronisation to keep track of scheduling
Marketing features enabling you to sell coupons and vouchers
The ability to collect marketing preferences
Integration with analytics tools
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‍What kind of business would benefit from a bookings website?

The modern marketplace is full of businesses for whom bookings is an integral part of their operation. What’s more, a lot of these businesses don’t require intricate, complex websites that require constant digital upkeep from an army of developers. Business in the following industries can benefit greatly from using a booking system:

Coaches
Yoga instructors
Counsellors/therapists
Dance schools
Cooking schools
Escape rooms
Artists
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What you can expect from using Baluu

With Baluu, you can set up a fully operational booking website in less than an hour - ready to take bookings from your customers. To give you an insight into just how easy it is, we made our own in under an hour. You can check out the dummy site we created for a massage business by clicking here.

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As we’re about to show you, creating your booking website with Baluu is a piece of cake, and you don’t need to mess around with endless add-ons and plug-ins! Following the steps below will help you design your own slick, integrated booking website quickly and efficiently.

A step-by-step guide to creating your booking website with Baluu

1. Sign up to Baluu

First things first, you’ll need to sign up to Baluu. Baluu offers a 30-day free trial so you can get a feel for the platform and see if it suits you. You can also use the free plan to accept up to 50 bookings per month forever!

After adding your personal details, you’ll have the option to add more business-specific information: Company Logo, Existing Website, TimeZone, Company address, and VAT number.

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You’ll then be taken to the Baluu dashboard where the fun begins! But don’t think you’re on your own, as our automated tutorial will guide you through the core aspects of the platform.

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The first page you'll see is the management page. This is where you can fill in the key data for your bookings website.

On the left is the Booking Engine, where you can add your logos, metadata, and other SEO-related elements. The middle section is where you Publish your Events, and the section on the right is where you Set up your Payments. The first step we recommend you take is to build out your website.

On the left side you’ll see a menu. Click on Website Integration, then customization to start designing your website.

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2. Customize your website

Say goodbye to reams and reams of complex code! Baluu’s website building software is extremely user-friendly and perfect for small businesses who want to save time and get those events up and running.

In the branding section, you can add/change your logo, favicon (the slick little icon displayed next to the webpage address), metadata, menu categories, and social profiles.

Then, you can customize your web pages: the Homepage, Events, Products, Contact Page, About, Timetable, and Additional Landing Pages. Fortunately, doing so is simple and intuitive.

Add relevant information like titles and descriptions, and change the font and background colours to ones of your choice. To do so you have to input the HTML code for the colours you want. This may sound tricky, but sites like HTML Colour Codes allow you to easily the colour codes you want.

You can also opt for a Hero image which will either be shown as a small image or replace the background colour.

Additionally, on your homepage, you can add images to your gallery to showcase the events and services you offer.

In the left-side menu on the dashboard, you’ll see a section labelled Team. Here you can add your team members - name, bio, email address, and profile photo.

The Products section (our ecommerce offering) also allows you to add the physical products your business sells, filling in the relevant information like SEO Keywords, Images, Price & Stock, Delivery, Gifting, and more. These will appear on your products page should you choose to have one. Customers can then purchase these items directly from your Baluu website.

Once you’ve customized all your website’s pages, it’s time to move on to adding events.

3. Add your Events/Activities

This is where the magic happens! No more expensive additional plugins and apps. Baluu’s integrated booking system makes creating events for your business straightforward and hassle-free.

Baluu offers three different event types:

‍Singular: Sessions that customers can purchase independently of one another‍
Course or Series: A group of sessions that cannot be purchased independently of one another‍
Termly: A series of events that can all be booked at once, or optionally also booked as drop-ins. You can check customers in for each individual session throughout the term.

Then you can add a course title, description, image, cost, and public keywords. Click “Create Event” and hey presto, your first event has been added!

But before you publish you need to add a few more key details. In the Date & Times section, you can either add a one-off session or a recurring sessions

There is also a wide array of customizable features like adding more images, adjusting tickets and pricing, creating checkout prompts to gather information on customers, creating and editing FAQs, and more. Moreover, the Bulk Changes Page will allow you to notify customers if you need to cancel a specific event.

All events have their landing pages structured in the same way, including an image carousel, info excerpt and upcoming dates. You can bespoke what booking options are available for event types.

4. Connect Your Payment Details

Now, all that’s left to do now is to link your bank details or Stripe in the Finance section and you’re all set!

5. Baluu’s Management Features Explained

Baluu also gives you the ability to check relevant metrics of your business like Customers, Monthly Income, and VAT. You can also keep tabs on customer reviews, and offer discounts. This is an effective, no-nonsense way to manage your booking website, without unnecessary complications.

The Result - Your Very Own Bookings Website

And voila! You have just made your very own bookings website!

Baluu was designed specifically to put you in total control of your customer's experience, streamlining the flow between clients and businesses.

Essentially, when it comes to Baluu’s integrated booking system what you see in the design process is exactly what your customers will see when booking.

Once they’ve clicked on the event they want to book, all your customers have to do is click booking options. Then they can select the event (in this example the event is free).

Then they can choose a date.

Now, all that's left is to fill in their details and pay (though in this example the event is free).

As soon as a customer books an event with you, you’ll immediately be notified on your dashboard.

Above you can see the option to confirm. Once you do that you’ll be able to contact the customer to confirm the booking and agree on further details (like location).

‍Using Baluu couldn’t be simpler

For small business owners, building a fully integrated booking website can often be frustrating, time-consuming, and expensive. Baluu was built with the chief aim of giving small businesses an affordable and ergonomic solution to this problem.

As this step-by-step guide to building a booking website has shown, using Baluu couldn’t be more straightforward. As it stands, no platforms are offering what Baluu does; an affordable, integrated software that bridges the gap between businesses and customers.

We’re supremely confident that, by following the above steps, you’ll have your booking website up in no time, allowing you to allocate more time to helping your business flourish! Baluu offers a free 30-day trial, as well as a free demo, should you be interested in trying the platform for yourself.

Need more advice?

Have read of some related guides on the Baluu blog below, or book a demo with one of our friendly team today. We'll be happy to walk you through the Baluu system and how it can help you manage and grow your bookings business.

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Try Our World Class Bookings System. Free For 30 days.

Run a business that takes bookings? Need a single place to manage all your bookings, accept payments and track revenue? Baluu is for you!