October Newsletter: There’s Nothing Spooky Going on Here…

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It’s already the end of October, and for many of us, we’re sliding quickly into winter with the longer nights and cooler weather (a bit of relief here in Cyprus). Halloween is just around the corner, and with All Hallows Eve comes the knowledge that Christmas is not far behind. That means we have to start thinking about Thanksgiving (wherever you are on the North American continent), holiday marketing, and Black Friday deals. Are you ready for it?

We are all going to be super busy, whether we are marketing gift experiences as Christmas gifts, working out incredible deals for Black Friday, or planning Christmas party events. So let’s catch up with developments in October and the upcoming releases for November.

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October Activities

While we have a pretty short list of developments this month, there’s some exciting information that you might want to note.

Additional security protection

You know how important security is to both you and your clients and the functionality of the booking system. Consequently, October has seen a lot of attention to security details. 

As part of our ISO 27001 certification, we do annual security training for all staff members, and everyone will have completed their data security awareness tests by Monday, November 1st. Your data is in safe hands.

In addition, you might have noticed an increase in DDOS attacks on our servers, and we have performed some “special” measures to reduce their impact and the ability for people to affect our systems. We aren’t saying too much because you never know who might be reading this…shhh!

We can now say that there is a significantly reduced probability of our servers going down because of hackers.

Additionally, we completed penetration testing in August, followed by remediation in September, and in October, we finally got certified. 

Fixes and Enhancements

There are always minor fixes and enhancements, whether they are tiny bugs or a request for changes.

Firstly, at the request of our users, we’ve made some updates and enhancements to the POS system. 

• Highlighting the first/next available date rather than scrolling through to find the next free appointment
• Auto-selection of default values for intake forms

Secondly, again at the request of our users, we have included the addition of product add-ons to invoices.

Classes Weekly Timeline – for waiting list custom feature

Last month we released the Waiting list custom feature with limited functionality. Now that our users have had time to use the feature and let us know how it works, we have spent much of October fixing the minor hitches and adding extra functionality. 

Now, the Classes Weekly timeline is supported in the Waiting List feature, allowing your clients to join a waiting list for a fully booked class schedule.

So in the list of classes for a week, the client will see a button “Register for waiting list” instead of “Book now” for specified classes.

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Coming Up in November

Obviously, some of our developers’ time in October has been spent preparing, finishing and testing new developments for release in November.

Google Drive Upload Feature

Right now, we have intake forms to add custom fields to the specific booking and client fields for long term information about the client. The new feature will enable clients to upload documents required for the booking.

You will be able to connect uploaded documents to either a specific booking or, more generally, to the client data. It will also be possible to set the field as hidden for clients but active on the user side. For example, in this case, we would show an upload field on the booking form in the admin calendar interface but not on the client-side booking.

These uploaded documents can be found and downloaded in client history and booking details.If necessary, access to uploaded documents can be restricted to only admins and senior users.

This feature is currently in the first round of testing and should be with us by the end of November.

Telegram Notifications

Right now, users can receive notifications via email, SMS, browser and mobile push notifications. Our next integration is with Telegram messenger. On completion of this integration, it will also be possible to send all system notifications, such as booking confirmation, cancellations rescheduling, and appointment reminders via Telegram.

Custom Domain Server

Dedicated servers for custom domain feature users have already been configured on a small scale for our sister system, SimplyMeet.me. Now, it is in development for the much broader requirements of our SimplyBook.me users,
On completion, this will make creating and configuring custom domain systems for SimplyBook.me significantly more straightforward and quicker.

Service Add-ons Feature Enhancement

If you add service extras so far we have only had a text name and the price. To make it easier for your clients to see the benefit of your service add-ons, we will be adding the option for you to include both an image and detailed description to better display and sell your service extras.

Clients are far more convinced when they can see a benefit to including a service extra.

Development in Upcoming Months

Client app enhancements

At present, all client app users have to log in every time they want to use the app. On approval for cookie usage in our client app, we will enable clients to stay logged in on personal devices. It’s convenient for users when they don’t have to log in every time.

These enhancement will require updating of our cookie policy, so stay tuned.

In case you missed it…

This month we have had a nice mixture of guest authors for our blog. Some returning favourites and new face joined us with some interesting insights and information.

From Arslan Haider at Media Hicon, he has some valuable skills to add for business bloggers. Creative tips to improve your writing for your business blog. Anand Srinivasan covered an aspect of business development and growth for those seeking franchisees for their business. It’s not the only way to expand your beauty business, but it is an option. And Dmytro Spilka had some insightful advice for using email marketing with holistic data analysis. How do we use the data from a whole person to create the best emailmarketing campaigns?

A new guest poster this week is Cristian Stanciu from Veedyou Media with 5 Types of Videos for Marketing Beginners. If you’re a marketing beginner and confused by video marketing, this is a great article for you. We also had Travis Jamison join our guest poster with some interesting work on the psychology behind subscription pricing.

Sports and fitness businesses might be looking to enhance their marketing right now with ideas for attracting and expanding their services. Black Friday is not far away and you want many people to invest in that annual membership deal. With that in mind, you might want to check out some amazing advice for fitness business owners from some fabulous blogs.

We know you’ll be stepping up some hoiliday marketing soon, so how about getting in a few ideas on how to target and market your services as the ideal holiday gift.

Business analysis and admin are perhaps not the most exciting part of running your own business, but it’s necessary. Do you know how many reports are available SimplyBook.me to monitor business performance, keep on top of revenues, and maintain your client data? We have two separate articles that will show you just how much you can track through your booking system. The First is about the reports that are always available to Simplybook.me users. The second details all those that help you track custom feature usage.

One more thing…

Happy Halloween!!!