A large number of businesses use a booking or scheduling system alongside a website and treat them as entirely separate tools. Availability is managed in one place. The website exists elsewhere. Customers are asked to leave the site to book, or to call, or to complete a form that is then manually transferred into the booking system. This arrangement is common. It is also costing the business conversions and staff time.
The most visible cost is customer friction. Every step a potential customer has to take between arriving on your site and completing a booking is a point at which they may leave. If the booking process redirects them to a third-party platform, or requires them to call during business hours, a proportion of them will not complete it. That proportion is measurable if you have analytics, but most businesses do not measure it and therefore do not know what they are losing.
Beyond conversion, the gap between a booking system and a website creates ongoing operational overhead. This includes staff manually transferring information between systems, errors created by duplicate data entry, availability information that is not reflected in real time on the site, and a customer experience that is inconsistent because the two systems have no awareness of each other. These costs accumulate over time and are rarely attributed to the technology gap that creates them.
For ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS sites, connecting to a booking or scheduling system typically involves using the system's API to pull availability data into the site, push bookings back to the system, and keep both in sync. The level of complexity depends on the booking system and what the integration needs to do. In many cases, a relatively small amount of development work can close a gap that has been creating friction for years.
If the booking system you are using is a significant part of your business operation and the off-the-shelf tool is creating consistent friction, either because of limited integration capability or because it does not quite fit your process, a custom booking component built into your site may be the more cost-effective long-term answer. This is particularly worth considering when the operational cost of the current arrangement is high and recurring.
If your booking system and your website are not talking to each other, get in touch with Karl to find out what connecting them would take.
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Most businesses use multiple systems to run their operations: a CRM, an accounting package, a booking or scheduling tool, a stock management system. Their website, whether built on ExpressionEngine or Craft CMS, often sits apart from all of these, requiring manual data entry in both directions. That gap has a cost.
Most business websites are built on content management systems. That makes sense for most situations. But there are cases where a CMS is the wrong tool, and the gap between what a CMS can do and what a business needs it to do creates ongoing friction, cost, and limitation. Knowing when a bespoke solution makes more sense is a useful thing to understand.
Most clients come to us when their site has started to feel like a risk rather than an asset. Whether the agency relationship has ended, an upgrade has been delayed, or the site has simply grown beyond what it can handle, a conversation costs nothing.
Get in touch with KarlTrusted by established businesses and growing brands across the UK
Expression 37 works with a small number of clients at any one time. These are some of them.
Karl founded Expression 37 in 2007 and has worked exclusively with ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS ever since. He does not take on work in other platforms and does not hand work to other developers. Expression 37 is deliberately small, because the kind of support that matters to clients with business-critical sites is specific to their site, not something that scales in the conventional sense. If you work with Expression 37, you work with Karl.
Find out how we workKarl at Expression 37 has been essential in keeping our Craft CMS website running at its best. His regular updates and fine-tuning ensure that our site is always up-to-date, secure, and optimised for performance. Karl’s expertise and attention to detail mean we can rely on him for everything from routine maintenance to customised site tweaks. It’s a relief to know our website is in such capable hands with Expression 37. Highly recommended!
Kimberley Clayton-Bull ~ Head of Marketing & Communications
Capula