Virtual shopping baskets: Drive multiple bookings

Of the many upgrades made to the eola booking widget in our recent redesign, one of the most important additions was the shopping basket.

In this article, product manager Jamie outlines the challenges involved in bringing our shopping basket to fruition, and most importantly how you can use it to grow your business.

What makes eola’s shopping basket unique

As much as possible, good product design is about guiding the user without ever getting in their way. Though it may not seem like it, a virtual shopping basket is a powerful tool for growing your revenue. Just by keeping the door open during the booking process, you can encourage your customers to explore what you have on offer and book more sessions or lessons in one go.

More than most e-commerce businesses, experience businesses and activity centres require a lot of information upfront from their customers. Alongside choosing what to purchase, customers have to select dates and times, sign disclaimers and question packs, and potentially invite other attendees.

The eola shopping basket, which is featured as standard in the eola booking widget, caters to all these variations. It automatically handles multiple types of products and services, from preset activities to customisable rentals and vouchers, multi-activity passes, and membership products. And customers can use it to purchase individually discounted items, with no fuss.

Crucially, it manages all this as part of a booking flow that remains intuitive and straightforward for your customers.

What does this mean for me?

Your customers are on the hunt for unforgettable experiences, but these don’t have to be just one-offs. By allowing your customers to check out multiple activities at once, the eola shopping basket opens up a whole new realm of possibilities when it comes to setting up activities and other products you’d like to offer. 

For example, perhaps you want to encourage people to stay on your site for longer. You could promote two activities together - alongside a morning session, they could book a second, complimentary activity for the afternoon, and enjoy a whole day out. 

Or perhaps you offer an introductory session guiding beginners in the basics of an activity. If they catch the bug, you could direct them towards a multi-week, multi-session course to level up their skills. 

Without a shopping basket, marketing these scenarios would require asking your customers to check out multiple times in a row. The eola shopping basket makes all this, and more, easy. 

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