Whether you’re running an online empire or a one-man-band, you’ll need a booking and scheduling program to display your appointments and services, get booked, and most importantly; get paid.
You need a tool that frees you up and automates the manual tasks that steal time away from running your business.
One of those tools is ScheduleOnce, part of the OnceHub suite of tools. ScheduleOnce was created by brothers Rami and Gilad Goraly in 2007 and has since developed into a formidable tool in the scheduling and automation space.
Yet as all things are not created equally, we’ll be taking a look today at nine must-have scheduling features we’ve built into Book Like a Boss which are missing from ScheduleOnce.
The TL;DR
ScheduleOnce is a formidable scheduling tool with plenty of options to fine-tune and customize your booking process; but it’s just that … “booking forms”. Book Like A Boss gives you everything ScheduleOnce offers, plus goes one … two … twelve steps further by providing an a-la-carte suite of exclusive features that progress beyond booking forms to give you dedicated, customizable booking pages designed to convert your visitors and leads into sales.
Book Like a Boss is beyond a worthy alternative to ScheduleOnce. Whether you’re a one-man-band or running an empire, Book Like a Boss is the all-in-one toolkit for managing appoints, selling your services, and getting paid without the stress-inducing back-and-forth messaging.
You can see that ScheduleOnce and Book Like a Boss share many of the same, fundamental features. At their core, they are both wonderfully simple-to-use tools that give you the power to make scheduling appointments easy and frictionless.
Let’s dive into the seven exclusive Book Like a Boss features that really set these two powerhouses apart:
- Fully customizable booking pages
- Payment integrations
- Coupons
- Testimonials
- Video embeds
- Digital & physical product sales
- Donations & ‘pay what you want’
- Fully customizable booking pages
… because there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all booking page.
Having total freedom to customize the look and feel of your booking pages is a complete game-changer in Book Like a Boss. Showcasing your brand and having control over which information you display is paramount to creating attractive, high-converting booking pages that get people excited to connect with you.
ScheduleOnce does allow basic appearance customizations such as changing the background color, modifying text labels, and adding an image and your own logo, but any branding and design modifications beyond that are completely out of your control.
- Payment integrations
… because you got to get paid, upfront, without chasing down invoices.
Time is money and if you’re offering any kind of consulting or paid service, then you need a dead-simple way for your customers to pay you.
Unfortunately, at the time of writing this article, ScheduleOnce does not offer any integration with the largest, most highly-valued payment processor in North America - Stripe. ScheduleOnce does integrate with Paypal making it possible for customers to pay by Paypal or credit card, but the catch is that credit card payments are processed through Stripe.
Paypal’s credit card processing system often requires customers to log in to their Paypal account in order to complete their payment (despite having opted to pay by credit card, not Paypal).
In some cases, depending on location, the customer is forced to create a Paypal account in order to complete their transaction. To go even further, Paypal charges a whopping 4% fee for processing credit card transactions on top of ScheduleOnce’s own per-transaction service charge. Yikes … those fees add up.
On the other hand, Book Like a Boss integrates with Stripe, Paypal, and Square and never takes a cut of your earnings. Period.
- Memberships & Subscriptions
… because not every sale is a “one-off”
Need to accept recurring payments through subscriptions and memberships for your gym, consulting practice, client retainer, or “whatever-reccuring-charge-you-can-think-of”? That’s not happening with ScheduleOnce. You’re limited to single sessions and packages without recurring payment options.
At Book Like a Boss, we understand that it’s much easier to retain a customer than to find a new one. Subscriptions and memberships make it easy for your customer to continually work with you without requiring them to whip out their credit card every time they want to repeat a payment, and you get consistent, repeatable sales; it’s a win-win.
- Coupons
… because you want to maximize your sales.
Coupons are a massively powerful tool for converting visitors into customers. If you are in any way, shape, or form accepting payments for products or services, coupons are a must-have.
Blippr.com reported that online shoppers who use coupon codes spend 24% more than shoppers who don’t use them.
At the time of writing this article, ScheduleOnce doesn’t offer the ability to create or distribute coupon codes and from what we’ve gathered through inquiry, don’t plan to offer them any time soon.
Recognizing what a game-changer coupons are for marketing and sales, at Book Like a Boss, we’ve created a robust system to create and offer coupons to your customers that you can customize according to parameters such as expiration date, quantity, minimum spend, etc., and can be applied to any of your appointments, products, or services.
- Testimonials
… because you know that testimonials build trust, and trust converts leads into sales.
Nothing shows off the kind of trust and professionalism that gets people booking with you like some grand-slammin’ testimonials. Testimonials are the business-professional version of word-of-mouth marketing and they have a major impact on your sales and conversion rates.
Regrettably, testimonials aren’t something you can add in a meaningful way in ScheduleOnce at this time.
With Book Like a Boss, testimonials can be added to any of your booking pages and can be used to show off how fantastic you are to work with. #TootYourOwnHorn
- Video embeds
… because you want to personalize the heck out of your booking page.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words … but what about video?
With Book Like a Boss, you can harness the power of video to elevate your booking page through personalization. Check out what one of our Bosses, Greg, had to say:
“The fact that Book Like A Boss allows me to integrate a YouTube video right inside my booking page is a pretty huge deal. Being able to create a video that welcomes people to my booking page and personally invite them to book an appointment with me is a game-changer.”
With ScheduleOnce, you can add a text link to a video in your service description, but embed one directly into your booking page? ... Nope.
- Countdown timers
… because you’re not just booking … you’re selling
Countdown timers create a sense of urgency and fear of missing out that fuel conversions. In fact, De Nieuwe Zaak, a full-service eCommerce agency in the Netherlands, ran an A/B test and found that the mere presence of countdown timers lead to a near 10% boost in sales.
As ScheduleOnce offers only standalone forms for scheduling and booking, countdown timers are unfortunately not part of their roster.
At Book Like A Boss, we stand behind our commitment to providing you the best all-in-one toolkit for managing your bookings while growing your sales and conversions. That’s why you can add our trusty countdown timers to event pages to instil a sense of urgency and drive up that attendee list. The more the merrier!
- Sell digital and physical products
… because you’re not selling just your time.
Likely, your time isn’t the only thing you’re selling. Maybe you’re a nutrition consultant offering private coaching + you sell an ebook with nutritional advice. Perhaps you’re a guitar teacher and also want to sell your own personalized, branded guitar pics.
Whatever you’re offering, you shouldn’t need to use another tool or website to sell any kind of digital or physical product.
With ScheduleOnce, you can charge for appointments, but only appointments. In fact, there isn’t even an option to add digital or physical products of any sort to your offerings.
As your one-stop-shop for everything bookings and sales, Book Like a Boss lets you add and accept payment for both digital and physical products right on your booking pages. Cha-ching!
- Accept Donations / Pay what you want
… because sometimes you need to take a different approach.
People come in all shapes, sizes … and budgets. Giving people the option to donate or choose an amount to pay is an unexpected surprise that people don’t often come across.
Book Like a Boss makes it simple to accept donations or allow your customers to pay what they want. Yet unfortunately, this is another feature not included in ScheduleOnce at this time.
The real winner
While ScheduleOnce is a wonderful tool in its own right, there’s another, better solution - Book Like A Boss.
You get unique features from a complete suite of payment integrations to total control over your booking pages that you’re not going to find in ScheduleOnce … and for a lower cost.
Book Like a Boss is the all-in-one toolkit for managing appointments, selling your services, and getting paid without running the stress-inducing gauntlet of doing every little task manually.
