A David Creation

I recently told a few of you about a simple scheduling program for Google Calendar that I liked called YouCanBook.me. The overall design of the program is not as cool as some of the larger companies such as Schedulicity, Genbooks, Setster or Bookfresh. Yet YouCanBook.me works extremely well with Google Calendar: almost too well. Below is a testimonial from Steve from Burnett Painting in Southwest Florida (yes he has been on my blogs before) on how he is using YouCanBook.me and his “first” experience with a booked lead.

Hi David,

A quick testimonial: You shared www.youcanbook.me with me last week. I had Javier plug it into the front page of my site right away! While its not pretty we are working on that. Well last Friday I received an e-mail on my phone while on the road for a “booking” for Monday the 16th at 4pm.

How the youcanbook.me lead went:

At first I was concerned because Mark, the prospect’s, e mail’s with me were VERY short. Is the guy not cool? Is this a plant from a competitor?

I arrived today and learn he is a sales rep for sprinkler systems out of CA and he drinks Red Bull, HA! So he is very busy and on a sugar rush, too busy for long e-mails. My calendar on my front page was PERFECT for him.

I measured the interior and handed him our first rate proposal and went over it and his e-mail chimes on his phone. Its my local competitor with their proposal. They come in at 60% of my price! I still closed the job with deposit check in hand !

“Front page youcanbook.me calendar” is 1 for 1 baby!

Thanks for the youcanbook.me calendar tip David!

Steve

www.burnettpainting.com

I am impressed with Steve’s idea to put the calendar right on the home page. Most companies put forms to fill out for someone to contact the prospect. Steve decided to save that step and put the calendar right on the home page, which to be honest, I’ve never seen before. Why? Because it doesn’t really look as pretty and cool. Web designers tend to design for looks rather than conversions. Yet Steve’s idea worked! People searching online are typically in a hurry. They don’t stop to read much these days when looking for a service company. So making it easy for people to schedule an appointment that is convenient for them, saves them time! I applaud Steve to stepping out of the typical design standards, putting the calendar right smack in the middle of his home page and doing something different! Well done, Steve!

The online scheduling software market seems to be growing quite rapidly these days. A few months ago, I settled on two programs I liked: Setster and Bookfresh. Setster still is my favorite, partly due to good support. They are slowly making some good changes to their system, so please do check out Setster. Bookfresh looks nice, but their customer service is just terrible. They really need to get a phone number to take calls! I did not want to limit myself to just one program to recommend (as some folks have different taste) so I stumbled upon a brand new booking program called YouCanBook.me.

YouCanBook.Me is a Google Marketplace item, which links up with a businesses’ Google Apps account. The logo and website did not really attract me to dig deeper. I almost went away because the site was not attractive enough. But I decided to give it a try! Glad I stuck around! YouCanBook.Me truly is a remarkable program. It is not as flashy as the Setsters, Bookfresh or BookingBug programs out there, but the simple features are impressive. In fact, of all the online booking programs I’ve tested, YouCanBook.Me is the fastest at syncing with Google Calendar. It literally took seconds for it to show up on my Google Calendar and iPhone and seconds to remove it from all my synced calendars. This program is pretty custom too. You can create custom forms (questions to ask a client before meeting with them) and even customize the colors of the booking calendar.

I’ve contacted the developer of YouCanBook.Me, and he has been very responsive. I’ve given him a list of the features I’d like to see for service contractors, and he was very receptive. The other programs I’ve recommended are almost more geared towards businesses that have a physical location. YouCanBook.Me is so simple and custom that a service contractor can easily use this program on their emails and website. It truly is remarkable. Give it a try and let me know what you think.