

Please review: DoReserve.com, an appointment booking system - killerstorm

We have just created/launched this site.<p>The idea is that small/medium businesses can outsource online booking system to this service. We have noticed that a lot of small companies such as beauty salons and restaurants have very rudimentary web sites which do not have booking facilities at all, but they could benefit from booking via web a lot.<p>So the site was recently launched, but there is a problem -- users show surprisingly low interest in this service. So we wonder -- is it a problem with site? with the idea itself? or maybe it just needs to be advertised/promoted in other way?<p>Here's a demo:<p>http://doreserve.com/about/demo<p>Any feedback/discussion is welcome.<p>Please note that English version of the site lags a bit to versions in other languages, so please don't be too mean about bad language or a lack of some content.
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megamark16
This looks awesome! I thought about doing something like this and approaching
individual salons in the area to start getting some traction but I never
actually started building anything. If I had, I imagined it being pretty much
exactly what you've got there, so good on ya! I personally like the layout, I
was easily able to find my way around the admin, and I recognize a few jQuery
libraries in there that I've worked with before.

With that being said, I'd move the Notes textbox to the confirmation page, I
think having it on the event selection page just floating there in the middle
is kind of confusing.

I like it, and I wish you luck. As for traction, you might spend some time
looking around at websites for different salons and see who their web
developers are, than approach those developers directly. My daughter's ballet
teacher's website was created by a web dev shop that specializes in dance
websites, I'm sure there are shops out there that have a large client base of
salons and such, so once you sell it to them they can sell it to their clients
who already trust them.

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killerstorm
Thanks, that's a great idea!

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evlapix
People with smaller/medium businesses don't typically put a lot of emphasis on
websites (based on my measure/references). Users of these services probably
acknowledge that fact and have grown accustomed to scheduling appointments by
phone.

On the other hand, small/medium businesses that do put a large emphasis on
their website, and do have a client base that regularly utilizes their online
presence, might have anxiety about passing their clients along to another site
to place appointments. They may or may not have their own online solution for
this. But regarless, I'd bet they want to own that function themselves. Do you
offer your service as module/plugin that they may insert into their site
easily?

Another thing I'd suggest is being more clear on your home page about what you
actually do (as a software). The testimonial on the home page is great, but
not the best place for it.

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killerstorm
> People with smaller/medium businesses don't typically put a lot of emphasis
> on websites.

Indeed they don't, but perhaps they could consider a web site as a source of
additional customers, or as a way to offload phone scheduling, or maybe they
just want to organize their booking system better (they can use admin part of
the site for it) and booking via web is just a bonus. Of course that won't
necessarily fit into everyone's working process, but I hope at least some
might look to adopt it.

> Do you offer your service as module/plugin that they may insert into their
> site easily?

Well, yeah. There is a way to embed it on site via iframe, and also we're
working on integration modules for some CMSs. For a larger customers we can
make custom integration, whatever they want, basically, as long as they pay
for it :).

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killerstorm
Clickable link: <http://doreserve.com/about/demo>

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iceter
Looks excellent to me ! I am sure there will be many happy clients using this
one.

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mshafrir
Site seems down to me.

