When customers place orders on your website, they often have one question in mind: “When is the item I need available?” Knowing when a product is available shouldn’t be a guessing game. That’s why we’re introducing a powerful new addition to your online store: the product availability calendar.
The color-coded calendar shows a product’s availability in real-time, making it a breeze to find a suitable rental period. This instant feedback not only saves your customers time; it also dramatically reduces the number of phone calls and emails with availability-related questions, saving you time as well.
Additionally, better insight into availability can decrease shopping cart abandonment by a significant amount. Now, let’s go over some of the options you have in displaying availability in your online store. In your Booqable account, head over to Settings > Online reservations > Availability to get started.
Enable or disable availability in your online store
Of course, not every rental business displays availability in its online store, so it’s possible to disable availability altogether. However, it’s important to note that enabling or disabling availability affects how Booqable adds the orders to your account.
When availability is enabled, Booqable shows the availability of products and reserves the orders automatically; this ensures the displayed availability is correct at all times and prevents overbooking.
When you disable availability in your online store, your customers can always place a rental order, regardless of whether the items are available or not. Also, Booqable does not automatically reserve webshop orders; they’ll come in as concept orders instead, and you’ll need to confirm them manually.
Start your rental business for just $29/month
Put your toes in the water and test the demand in your area with a rental website for just $29/month.
Free 14-day trial
Show quantities
Additionally, you can show or the available quantities. By default, Booqable shows the exact number of available items; “2 available”, for example. If you hide the quantities, Booqable only shows whether or not an item is available.
Show availability on the calendar
Finally, you can hide the availability calendar altogether if you want, but you’d lose many of the before-mentioned benefits.
So there you have it; our new availability calendar is live, and you can activate it on your Booqable account now. It’s the first of an exciting two-part update that promises to change the way customers interact with the calendar on your store forever, so stay tuned!
