Running a business is an exciting reward unless your phone won’t stop ringing, your inbox overflowing with mails, and you have to keep an eye on appointments. So, to overcome these issues it is the right time to make your own appointment booking app. It’s just not to adopt the latest trend as every business is adopting but to make it easy for yourself and for your customers. As they can book appointments by themselves and as per their convenience and terms, you don’t have to make a call and explain every single thing to them.
But creating your own booking app might sound difficult for business owners as they may not have proper knowledge or skills. In that case they can hire a Mobile App Development Company in Chicago or by looking at our blog and following the steps they can create their own booking app.
Key Features to look in Appointment Booking Software
Before knowing the steps of creating your own booking app, it is important for you to know what features your booking app should have. As it will help in engaging more customers and you can expand your reach.
Automated Appointments & Follow up Prompt
Did the system send reminders, notifications on your appointments through email or SMS and whether you are able to communicate about Follow ups. It is very important that your app should have this advanced feature where you will get reminders and proper follow up notifications and get the option of customization.
User-friendly for Customers
The booking app that you are making should be easy to use as if customers face complexity in using they might move to another booking app and there should not be any feature that you might not be able to operate as it will be difficult for you then to explain to customers. An intuitive user interface will improve customer experience and more users will download your app.
Customized Options
Customising options is one of the best ways to engage more customers as it will give them a choice to make it as per their needs. They can make their own appointment in the way they want and businesses who are providing these options are gaining a competitive advantage.
Online Payment Integration
Make it easy for users to pay directly at the time of booking through different secure digital gateways. This will help to manage the cash easily and less chance of cancellation. And you should mention details about refund policy and if any user cancels the booking or rescheduling it then you should provide them that option of doing it and they get the date or time as per their convenience.
Customer Support
Your booking app should have AI-based chatbots that can solve user queries in real-time, as they don’t have to wait long for getting the answer. It will help in increasing user-engagement if their query is resolved within a short period of time.
How to Develop Your Own Appointment Booking App? Step-by-Step Process
Let’s explore the steps that you need to follow to develop your own appointment booking app or you can hire Appointment Booking App Developers in Chicago, if you are not able to do it on your own.
Research & Planning
Firstly, you need to research and plan what features you want to put in the app and how it can be different from competitors. The type of app you want to develop, how it will look, what all features you want, platforms it supports (iOS, Android, Cross-platform), development team, & specifications, that you need to develop before starting building your booking app.
Select Your Development Type
After that you need to choose what type of development you are looking for. Like if you go with an internal development team or you will hire app developers in Chicago. It will totally depend on your business requirements and goals. By hiring a Mobile App Development Company in Chicago you can ensure that you will get the app developed with high quality and by using the latest technologies as they are skilled enough and know how to build the app.
UI/UX Designing
While designing a user interface, you should keep in mind that it should be easy to use and users can navigate easily and be able to use all the features by themselves. A complex UI can create issues for you as users will not download your app and it will reduce user engagement. So, to improve customer experience it is important to have a user-friendly interface.
Development of App
Now designing is done, you need to focus on developing the app. In this you need to see that backend and frontend development is done in the right way. The backend team ensures that the functions developed by them should be running smoothly and if users use it then they can easily use it. And the frontend tem ensures that the design should be appealing so that more users will engage and download the app.
Test Your App
Once an app is developed you need to ensure that it will pass a series of tests that include technical testing and user testing. You also need to test if it is working on different devices and if there is any glitch or technical error then it will get corrected before it gets launched.
Launch Your App
After it passes through the testing, you should upload it in Google or Play store so that users can download it and to create a buzz you should do Social media marketing across different platforms, create visually appealing icons, paste the screenshot so that it will engage users more quickly.
Maintenance & Support Services
Your work doesn’t stop after launch but after that you need to keep an eye on what latest update is coming. And how fast you can implement it and what advanced features or technology you can put like AI chatbots, voice recognition, and get real-time user feedback. So that you can beat your competitors and expand your reach that will help in the growth of your business.
Conclusion
Appointment booking is difficult for businesses if they have many visitors on a daily basis. In that case building your own appointment booking app will be a smart move. And if businesses find it complex to build on their own they can hire Appointment Booking App Developers in Chicago, they can help them to develop the app as per their requirement and with the latest technology.