Appointment scheduler for your home and decor store

Since the pandemic hit the globe, while most industries succumbed to loss, the home decor industry got a chance to raise its bar.  

People spending more time indoors allowed them to connect and evaluate their homes. They felt the urge to upgrade their living space. As the demand for better furnishing and better home decor began to rise, the demand for home decors and home goods boosted. People began to search for goods that would lift the aesthetic value of the living space. Moreover, the rising volumes of real estate deals worked as a catalyst to enhance the demand for home decors.

According to the reports, the global home decor market has already reached US$ 682 Billion in 2021. It is further predicted that the market will securely reach US$ 898.3 billion by 2027 and, during the phase 2022 to 2027, the home decor industry would exhibit a CAGR of 4.8%.

The opportunity is huge! Agreed. But, to keep their business steady and accelerate the revenues, to reach the customers, and to make the home accessories accessible, the offline home decor shops had the ardent need to shift their business online. 

Shopify & it’s Online Appointment booking Applications

The shift was huge but several businesses gracefully adopted it with the help of Shopify.

Be it small or large home decor companies, Shopify offered innumerable applications to craft a website, book and track orders, and manage delivery all while maintaining a high quality of customer experience. 

With customers searching for attractive and trendy home decors - business houses had to make the entire process more flexible and easy to access. The most challenging part of executing the deals online was the missing one-on-one communication where your team gets to understand the exact needs and expectations of the customers. This was elegantly sorted by Shopify’s Online appointment booking applications. These applications replaced offline home decor stores from being the most viable home decor destination. Enabled by automation and advanced technology, online appointment booking applications have made a better replica of the traditional offline business. 

‍Benefits-cum-features of the online scheduling applications -

24/7 Booking Facility: The online appointment applications allow your customers to book a slot from your calendar, anytime, from anywhere. Since 40% of online appointment slots are booked after business hours, this is a feature you cannot afford to miss.

Simple Booking Facility: The online appointment scheduling applications usually have a very simple process of booking an appointment slot from your team’s work calendar. No phone calls, no back, and forth emails. Just a few mouse clicks and the meeting is set.

Easy rescheduling and cancellation -Compelling appointment schedulers are very convenient. They give your customers the liberty to cancel or reschedule any appointment based on their change of plans. The sections are easy to operate and take away the hassle of on-call cancellations, no-shows, or rescheduling gaps.

Automated reminders- The customers get automated reminders before the meeting in the form of SMS, app notifications, or emails that are sent to the customer's registered details. This effectively reduces the chances of no-shows to a great extent.

Integrates with work calendar-Appointment scheduling applications sync with your work calendar and auto-update your calendar according to subsequent cancellations, rescheduling, etc. So, you have complete control over your day, no overlapped bookings, and no confusion or human gaps. 

Conducting online meetings-Most services do not require a physical presence. These appointment schedulers have made it easy by integrating online platforms such as Zoom and Google Meet to conduct a voice or video call. So, meetings links can be shared, and the customer can join and discuss their requirements.

 How to choose the best appointment scheduler for your business?

Scheduling software is usually categorized based on business objectives, but all of them cater to the needs of service-oriented businesses and customer-facing teams.

If you are here for your online home decor business, you would need the best online appointment scheduler to connect with your clients, understand their needs and offer them the best proposals. This could significantly help you to alleviate the company in the home decor industry. But, that can happen only when you choose the best from the bag full of options available on Shopify.

Sounds tough? Here’s our little list of factors to be considered while choosing an appointment scheduling application:

High-end features

It must offer all the basic and advanced features to meet the day-to-day scheduling needs of YOUR business. It should actually render the above-discussed benefits to your business and make your business more accessible to your customers. A good UX would be a bonus as that would streamline the process by eliminating the chances of no-follow-up and reduce downtime. It must be able to integrate with other applications like the work Calendar, send automated reminders, and do everything an online appointment scheduler is expected to do.

Round-the-clock access

The application must offer a 24*7 booking facility and respond to customer booking requests round the clock. It must be accessible to anyone, anytime, and allow booking through a seamless and simple process. Further, it should allow you to regulate the availability of the booking time, hours, and dates.

Support Quality

The application must have active support facilities available over multiple communication channels. The most integral part of any such scheduler is the Live chat support. It must also have the facility to generate automated replies for actions executed by customers and should provide for adequate data backup. 

Budget

Last but not the least, the most crucial factor to narrow down your search list for an appointment scheduler is your budget. Most of the applications come with a 7-days free trial session. And, this can help you to experience and understand whether the application can meet the business objective. 

Best Appointment scheduling application for Home decor

While all the applications have cutting-edge business enabling features that provide a compelling customer experience,  this list could help you make a wiser choice:

Appointo 

If you want to set up and speed up your online home decor business, Appointo would be the best appointment booking application. This application, developed by SidePanda has taken leaps in solving purchase abandonment problems. It provides super optimized features to book, cancel or reschedule appointments in just a few clicks. Further, its multi-calendar integration feature helps you keep control of your day along with its automated reminders that ensure no part of it is wasted.

Feature Highlights: 

• Allows group appointment scheduling.
• Sends confirmation emails for meeting scheduling, cancellations, and rescheduling.
• Send reminder emails and notifications before the scheduled meeting.
• Allows you to regulate the days and hours that should be available for booking.
• You can deal with multiple customers to schedule simultaneously.
• You can easily integrate the application with Google, Microsoft, Outlook, and iCloud.

Appointo comes with a free trial, and the paid package starts at $10 per month. So, if you are looking for an application with a simple and elegant interface that can be easily customizable, then this is your best bet.

‍Appointment Booking Cowlendar - Business generating application

This is a perfect appointment scheduler for home decor stores. It allows the customers to book appointments for free. You can very easily integrate this application to have a smooth booking system so that appointment scheduling, cancellations, and rescheduling can be accomplished in a jiffy. The application automates your appointment booking system and helps you cut down the cost of hiring a manual workforce.

Feature Highlights

• Notifies customers of bookings, cancellations, and rescheduling through notifications and automated confirmation mail. 
• Customize the structure and content of automated email reminders and confirmations.
• Works really quickly and fast without any downtime.
• Allows to cancel and reschedule the booking directly from the dashboard.
• Allows multiple bookings at the same time.
• Supports multiple languages which help in easy translation.

You can try out the free version of the application or opt for $9.99 per month, which renders some more flexibility and offers some other customizable features.

Sesami – Reliable Booking App

Sesami is counted among the most reliable booking apps in the Shopify store. Sesami provides a personalized booking facility that allows integration with the Shopify POS. You can rely on this application if you want to raise your revenue and make it easy for customers to reach you and pay for your service. This application superbly expedites the online booking process to foster the online growth of your business.

Feature Highlights

 Runs smoothly on every device where the Shopify store is supported.

• Sends email messages and notifies customers about the booking dates.
• Supports multiple languages, and you can convert it based on your time zone.
• Smoothly syncs with Google calendar.
• Very easily tracks all the daily appointments and ensures overall productivity.
• Makes it super easy to cancel and reschedule appointments.
• Links with applications like Zoom, Google Meet, etc.

Sesami offers a free plan, and the paid plan starts at $19/month. So dive in and opt for it, especially if you are working in groups or teams.

 Easy Appointment booking - Revenue-generating application

If you want to turn your visitors into customers, then the Easy Appointment Booking application from Shopify would be your best bet. It helps potential customers learn about your business. encourages and allows them to connect with you to make the purchase call.  

Feature Highlights

• Syncs with Google Calendar for quick scheduling and rescheduling appointments.
• Super easy to use and customizable.
• Allows you to regulate dates or timings to be available for booking
• Sends out automatic reminders through emails.
• Supports multiple team management tasks.
• Multiple language support and translations.

Nothing can compete with the value imparted by the Easy Appointment Booking application's simplified booking facility. This not only saves time but also helps increase revenues by keeping your work calendar sorted, reducing no-shows, and helping you be more accessible to your customers. The application is available free of cost for up to one service. So, go for it if it ticks off your list of features.

Conclusion

With Shopify, you get some of its best options when it comes to adopting an appointment scheduling application. 

While finalizing the application, ask yourself -

• Does this offer the maximum number of features within my budget?
• Is the appointment scheduler application reliable?
• Will I be able to gain profit after incorporating this app into my decor website?

So, now, it's time to gear up and adopt a flexible, feature-loaded booking system for your customers and take your business to the next level.