Adding a booking widget to your website and other platforms is a powerful way to effortlessly take bookings and grow your business. In this article, you will find everything you need to know about customising it on Salonized, so you can control how and when customers book and save time on your daily operations.
Where can I find the settings for the booking widget?
You can find the booking widget settings on Salonized at Settings > Calendar > Online bookings.
On the right side, you can see all of the different setting categories that you can adjust for your booking widget.
On the left, you can see how it will appear once you implement the settings.
After making any changes, don't forget to click the 'Save' button.
Take a look at the sections below to deep dive into the different categories.
How do I manage the main settings of the booking widget?
Here’s a complete breakdown of what you can find in this section and how to adjust the various settings:
Booking widget & email language: Choose the language your clients see when booking online and receiving emails.
Note: all clients will receive it in the same language; you cannot provide different options to different groups.
Booking option: Choose whether customers can book online directly or if they have to send a booking request first and wait for your confirmation.
Applies to: You can choose to apply ‘Online bookings’ or ‘Booking requests’ to either all customers or existing ones only.
If you apply ‘Online bookings’ only to existing customers, you can also prevent new customers from booking with specific employees.
For ‘Booking requests’, you can also choose to which appointments it applies to (all appointments, appointments over a certain price, or duration).
This is what a booking request will look like in your calendar (see screenshot):
Employee selection for online bookings: This indicates whether customers can choose a specific employee or not.
You can also opt to show the employee selection as the first step in the booking widget, or
Assign appointments in order of employees if customers don’t select a specific team member.
Services: Customise what your client can see in the booking widget, such as price or duration of the service you offer.
If you want to highlight certain services, click 'Highlight top services' and select your top 3 so that they see those first in the booking widget.
Notifications: Tick this option if you want to receive an SMS notification on your phone.
This is an extra reminder, as you will always see it in your online calendar and receive an email notification.
Note: You need SMS credits to receive them.
How do I manage my schedule in the booking widget?
In the ‘Schedule management’ section, you will find options to further control customers' online bookings.
Online booking interval: Set the frequency of your available time slots.
Example: If you set this to 30 minutes, you will see options to book online every 30 minutes (check the screenshot below).
Minimum gap between time of booking & start of appointment: This setting controls how far in advance, before walking in, customers can schedule an online appointment. The range goes from 'none' (you're okay with last-minute bookings and walk-ins) to 72 hours (you like to know in advance who is coming).
How far into the future can customers book online: This can vary from 1 week (your schedule is always changing or you want to have more control over your calendar) to 12 months (you know your schedule well in advance and have already blocked out your own free time and holidays).
Prevent gaps in your calendar by only showing specific availability in the booking widget: Enable this option if you don't want to offer time slots all throughout the day.
Choose whether to offer availability after your calendar events or both before and after.
Allow customers to join a waiting list: By enabling this, customers are automatically registered on the waiting list. So that as soon as there is an empty spot in the calendar, you can fill it up easily.
Note: This setting is only available in Basic and Pro subscriptions.
How do I manage the customer information in the booking widget?
With the ‘customer information’ settings, you can ask clients to specify useful details before completing an online booking.
Extra information:
Address details: Specify whether customers should enter their address details when making the online appointment, or not. You can make the setting optional or required.
Date of birth: Decide if customers must enter their date of birth to complete an appointment. This information might be important for age-restricted services (e.g., permanent make-up or tattoos). You can make the setting optional or required.
Newsletter & Terms:
Let customers subscribe to your newsletter: By enabling this option, customers can choose to receive your newsletter.
Show a link to my terms and conditions: Customers must agree to your terms and conditions when booking online. You can add a specific link to your own terms and conditions page on your website.
Show a link to my privacy statement: Provide a URL to your website's privacy page to inform customers how your business collects, handles, and protects personal information.
How do I manage online payments in the booking widget?
In the ‘Online payments’ section, you can indicate whether customers have to make a payment in advance when they make an online booking via your booking widget.
You can choose full online payments or deposits.
For both options, you can make it mandatory or optional.
You can choose to enable it for new customers or all customers. A new customer is recognised by a new e-mail address that is not yet in your customer database.
If you require deposits (partial payments), you can also choose the percentage that customers need to pay for a booked appointment.
To do this, you need to enable the integration with Mollie first via Settings > Integrations > Mollie. Read more about that in the Mollie help article.
Note: this option is available only for 'Basic' and 'Pro' subscriptions.
How do I manage the style and sharing options of the booking widget?
In the ‘Style and sharing’ section, you can customise the way your booking widget looks on your website.
Colour: Choose the colour of your booking widget. The default one is Salonized 'Paradise Pink', but you can adjust this to your own branding colour.
Schedule view: Display your availability per week or month and week in the booking widget.
Show an option for customers to check their appointments: By enabling this setting, customers receive an email summarising their previous appointment overview.
For clients who often book the same treatment, this prevents them from booking the wrong one and having to call to clarify.
Show a custom alert in your widget: You can also add a customised alert to your widget. Add a short message if desired, like 'New prices coming in July'.
Tracking: Add your Google Analytics ID for tracking purposes.
Share your booking widget:
Link to share with my customers: Find the link to your booking widget for social media.
Code to add the button on my website: Use this code to add the pop-up version of your booking widget on your website.
Code to add an open booking widget on my website: Use the code to add the full-view widget to your website.
Button position: Align it to the left or to the right on your page.
Create a custom booking widget: If you want to make an additional booking widget for a specific category or set of services, click on 'Create your custom booking widget' and create your own personalised version.
Once you have applied all your desired changes, click Save, and you are all set up with your customised booking widget.
To know how to add the booking widget to your website, click here.