Attract more customers with discount codes

Discount codes are a very powerful way to increase sales to new and existing customers. By offering a limited-time discount, you encourage your customers in several ways. First, everybody loves a good deal and by offering a good deal to new or existing customers, they are more likely to do business with you instead of somebody else. A time-limited discount encourages your customers to make the reservation now instead of waiting, which also helps to drive sales. And finally a discount is a useful tool to increase business during slow periods.

The latest version of WebReserv now offers support for discount codes. You can add discount codes to the system and your customers can apply the discount codes to reservations during the reservation process.

How to add a discount code

 To add a discount code, go to Setup – Discount Codes (http://www.webreserv.com/setupdiscountcodelist.do) and click Add new discount code. You will now have an empty discount code field as shown in the screenshot below.

Code: This is the code that must be entered in the discount code field when making a reservation. A code can be up to 20 characters long and consist of characters or numbers, but no spaces or special characters. Use easy to use codes such as SUMMER08 or FRIEND. If you are advertising through several channels, for example flyers and ads, you can create a different code for each type of ad and use the code to track the responses.

To control when a discount code can be used, enter a valid from date and a valid to date. A reservation must be booked within the valid from and valid to dates for the discount code to be valid.
You must also specify a Reservation From date and a Reservation To date. Use these dates to specify when the reservation must start for the code to be valid.

Finally you must enter either a discount percentage or a discount amount. This is the discount that will be applied to the reservation. The discount will be applied before taxes, if any.

When using a discount percentage, you can also specify a minimum or maximum discount amount. Use can use this feature to give a percentage discount up to a certain level, for example, 10% up to a maximum of $100.00.

When you have entered the discount information simply click Save and continue and you will be taken back to the list of discount codes.

Example:
In this example we want to provide a 10 % discount (up to $200.00) for August reservations, but the reservation must be done before July 15. The values for this discount code become:

How to apply a discount code
WebReserv.com will automatically show a discount code field in the payment section whenever one or more valid discount codes exist for the selected product. If no discount codes are valid, the discount code field will not be shown.

Availability
The discount features is available in all premier WebReserv accounts (Silver and Gold).

For more information or questions, please contact WebReserv.com support.

Fixing booking widget icons

Depending on your customer settings and reservation rules, you may experience that the date icon doesn’t align with the rest of the fields on the reservation widget as shown in the screen shot below.

The icons are pushed down below the date fields because the width of the reservation widget is too small. Fortunately, it’s very easy to correct and get the date icons aligned.

To correct it, open the HTML file for your website and look for the width of the reservation widget (IFRAME).

Change the width to be about 100-150 greater than the existing width. In most cases a new width of about 600 will be sufficient to get the icons aligned. After changing the HTML files, save it and test it to make sure that the date icons are shown correctly as shown below.

For more tips on the reservation widget, check out the Resource Center at http://www.webreserv.com/resourcecenter.do

How to filter products in the availability calendar

By adding a few parameters to the availability calendar, you can control exactly what products are being included in the list. You can also control what product should be the default product in the list.

Here’s an example of a regular availability calendar URL:

http://www.webreserv.com/book?hostcode=DCSA

Adding a product filter

To filter the products in the product list, add “productfilter=[productid]“. You can include multiple productid’s, separated by comma.

Example

This availability calendar shows only the standard single:

http://www.webreserv.com/book?hostcode=DCSA&productfilter=5

And here we show the standard single and standard double:

http://www.webreserv.com/book?hostcode=DCSA&productfilter=5,6

Making a product default

To make a specific product the default, include the parameter “ptid=[productid]“.  In the URL below, we include all products, but default to the suite (productid 7):

http://www.webreserv.com/book?hostcode=DCSA&ptid=7

See also http://www.webreserv.com/articles/20060901 for more tips on the reservation widget / availability calendar

Adding the availability calendar to your website

The reservation widget / availability calendar is a cool utility from WebReserv.com. It can be added to one or more existing websites and provides all the reservation functionality needed to make a website interesting for the consumer. The reservation widget provides the following features:  availability calendar, customer information, credit card information.

The reservation widget can be embedded within your site or it can be opened as a pop-up window. In most cases, you’ll want to embed it in your site as it looks awesome with the availability calendar right there on your website.  It is easy to customize the reservation widget to have the same look as your own website (colors, fonts etc). Whether you embed the widget or open it as a popup-window will give you the same functionality.

How to embed the availability calendar

When you embed the reservation widget / availability calendar on your website, you can make it blend completely with your website layout and many customers prefer this option for that reason. In the screenshot (and example link) we made Casa Deco’s booking component use the same colors as the website, and the result is impressive.  Click here to see it:

http://www.webreserv.com/casadeco/reservation.html.

How to pop-up the availability calendar

The pop-up version widget can be added to any website with just one line of HTML code. With the pop-up approach, you’ll get a booking button on your website, and a booking window will open when a customer clicks the booking button.
This is what the pop-up widget looks like:

http://www.webreserv.com/casadeco/reservation-popup.html.

Note: You can copy the HTML code from WebReserv.com and paste it onto your website. To get the HTML code specifically for your business, log on to WebReserv.com and select Web Components from the main menu. Click here to see it:

 http://www.webreserv.com/casadeco/reservation.html.

Adding the booking component as an embedded component requires a few more lines of HTML code and possibly a little bit of tuning to get the colors right. To get the HTML code specifically for your business, log on to WebReserv.com and select Web Components from the main menu.