If you are creating a new online store with Booqable, or plan to integrate Booqable with an existing website, setting up your online store preferences is an essential first step.
Keep reading the article below to learn how to customize a range of online store preferences to set up your website to run the best way possible for your rental business.
How it works
Head over to Settings > Online reservations > Preferences in your Booqable account to customize the reservation process so that it feels completely at home on your website and fits your company perfectly.
1. Availability
Set up real-time availability to either prevent or allow over-bookings.
Disabling availability can be useful if you don't want people to see how many items you have in stock, or want to accept an order regardless of availability. That way you can either purchase more items, or contact your customers to do an up-sell.
If enabled, your customers can only place an order when all items in their cart are available for the requested period. When the checkout is completed, Booqable reserves the items on the order.
When disabled, the availability of items is not displayed, and your customers can always check out their cart, regardless of availability. The order is added to Booqable as a concept order and you'll need to reserve the items yourself.
2. Last-minute reservations
If you need some time before customers come to pick up their items, you can set a minimum notice for reservations.
3. Default locations
Set default locations for online reservations.
The default locations are also applied when the Location selection setting is set to "Don't select locations".
4. Add to cart button
Add to cart button can be used to either add products to cart or to allow customers to proceed directly to the checkout.
The latter method is used when only one product is being offered on the website, or to promote 'one product at a time' workflow.
5. Categories
💡IMPORTANT: Categories and subcategories are not applied to the Booqable website builder. Collections have to be used instead. Categories and subcategories are only applicable if Booqable is being used on a 3rd party website.
Categories are the primary way to group products with similar features. If needed, you can add subcategories as well.
6. Branding
To change the color scheme to suit your brand, enter your color code under brand color, or choose one of the preset colors.
The color you choose will affect a number of items, like the shopping cart, add-to-cart buttons, and the checkout page.
💡Note: Don't know you color code? Use this website or one like it to get color codes from an image.
7. Sorting
You can choose how your products are sorted when a customer first visits your online store.
How to set the default sorting method.
In your Booqable admin, go to Settings > Online reservations > Preferences.
Scroll down to the Sorting section and choose your desired Default product sorting method.
8. Show prices
You can change the way prices are displayed online, or hide prices completely to let customer request a quote, for example.
Read more about online pricing
9. Set up a custom domain
When you enable Online Reservations, your online store is available through booqable.shop by default. Your URL will look like this: https://example.booqable.shop/
Do you own a custom domain? You can connect a custom domain to access your Booqable Store with your branded website address.
10. Back to website URL
By default, the Back to website button redirects to [your-company].booqable.shop.
If you use the online store on your own website, you can change the URL to let your customers return to a different page.
11. Terms and agreements
If enabled, the customer needs to agree to your terms before the checkout process can be completed.
You can turn this setting on and add your own terms in Settings > Online Checkout > Terms and Agreement
12. Online store status
Here you can choose if you want to accept online reservations, and if you want the Booqable hosted store to be visible.
If you disable the hosted store, you can still accept online reservations by adding Booqable to your website. This can also be considered as unpublishing your website.
You're all set!
You have now successfully learned how to set up store preferences in Booqable.