Turn missed bookings into Business

[Jotap]

I have seen some great/ interesting feedback about apps and websites and, quite possibly about to subject myself to the same but ? here I go anyway...

Missed calls or delayed replies mean missed bookings which means missed opportunity. As you know ? bookings are usually spur of the moment or, for a planned event ? what if customers knew when you were available now or then and can book you there or then? You wouldn't miss bookings, you wouldn't miss opportunity.

We are looking for up to 25-50 Independent Professionals to help test and feedback our website before launch. If you recall how www.bookatable.com was major for the restaurant industry, my website www.BookaDate.com will be for professionals in the intimate and non-intimate dating industry. The anticipated completion of the website will be within 8 weeks, in the mean time, your most requested features will be instrumental to the development cycle. My proposition intentionally leaves out core features, etc. as there are a number of competitors watching this forum. Of course, more detail will be provided to whomever would like to know more, however, the concept is simple ? Search/ Book/ Date.

About Me: I am a former personal security detail for woman in the industry; I designed personal websites too, before leaving the industry; to follow other ventures in the tech world around enterprise cloud strategy. After reading a relevant news piece; an idea came to mind and here we are?

Objective: To contribute to the mainstreaming of the industry, while providing a safe, secure and modern digital platform for woman, men and everyone in between. We can only do so much being a digital platform ? your physical security still rests with you. But we hope that with every booking through our site; will mean you have a little less to think about, as clients are verified through a number of options prior to meeting.

How You & I Profit: The first test members will receive the top membership level called Elite+ which allows full site functionality free forever ? no caveats. The next level is Elite and is free to all Saafe members ? again free forever no caveats. The Basic level will give functionality more than adequate to help run your business ? once again free forever no caveats. Here?s the caveat; every time a client books, a small single digit percentage is added to the booking ? no money is taken from you! To clarify, the other membership levels just give additional functionality, and will be priced better than competitive. 

Marketing: Because we haven?t established our brand in the market, strategy part 1. is a modest marketing budget to drive clients from specialty websites. Part 2. will be from referring customers; by incorporating (where possible) your unique BookaDate link into existing adverts and/ or sending your unique BookaDate link to prospective clients to make their booking. Part 3. is with plush business cards ? which we will supply you with 50 every quarter free, this has your unique profile link (a classy sexy pic too if you wish), to entice customers, and create awareness of our site - conditions apply here.

I hope you will approve of this website proposition. I?ve taken note of a lot of the feedback mentioned over the last few months on Saafe about other sites; and factored that into the design concept ? including no fake profiles to make us look bigger than we are! We know we are new starting from 0 and have a long way to go. Finally, a large percentage of revenue will be re-invested into design and marketing to bring potential clients to the site because, if you?re not making money, neither are we.

Before I commit to the project ? I want to make sure you are on board so? I look forward to any initial comments, please register your email to receive updates or send a message to get more information and request to be on the test phase group on our holding page located at www.bookadate.com

We look forward to hearing from you, take care and be Safe.

Jon

[amy]

I lost the will to live before I read it all, but in a nutshell this

every time a client books, a small single digit percentage is added to the booking ? no money is taken from you!

is your legal problem. Apart from it not being true (if a punter has paid X amount for a booking with me then that's my money, not yours, plus it guarantees you won't get any repeat business because they'll just phone or text me directly after that without using your site), if you take a fee specifically for arranging said booking then you're hurtling straight from advertising to pimping.

And the name is stupid. Punting is not dating and this is the sex industry, not the 'dating' industry (if such a thing exists). I don't follow your premise either - my autoresponder tells people when they can call me back if I'm busy and they can text me in the meantime; I can't look at your site any quicker than I can my own phone at the end of a booking, can I?

[Kay]

What Amy says, plus I switched off at the word 'date'. You can have my free alternative suggestion: bookafuck.com

[amy]

bookafuck.com

Accurate and catchy

[VoluptuousCurves]

Go for the internal rhyme, bookahooker. Bookadate sounds really sketchy, like you're trading on the sugar daddy thing or that other scam website, whats my price or something. With the name as is, I wouldn't advertise there because I'd be worried about a parade of guys who don't understand how punting works and think you'll be their girlfriend if they book you once. They won't understand appointment times, etc.

I don't object to the concept in general (apart from the name) but I'm completely confused on how your revenue model works.

How can you add a percentage to the booking fee when the customer's going to pay me in cash? Plus as Amy stated, you've made your business model illegal. Look at how AW operates - we buy advertising, clients buy credits to view movies or buy digital/physical content, but there is no exchange of money for sex that happens via the site. That's how they're still in business. Same for Backpage, Viva, etc.

That aside, I'm also envisaging issues when I'm on tour and expecting to see guys pretty much back to back, the vast majority of whom will be booking by phone. So even assuming there's a way for me to update in real time my available slots on your site/app, by the time a potential client books a slot and I see the request, I may have had a phone call booking that slot anyway. Plus, none of us will accept a booking without speaking the client on the phone, so it feels like your app would just be adding an extra step to the booking process.

Right now my process is:
Client finds my number on AW
Client calls me and asks if I'm available at X o'clock
I say yes or no, but would you like a different time
A few more simple questions, followed by a definite booking

If I'm reading it right, your process would be
Client goes on bookahooker, finds my profile, pulls up my availability and requests a slot at x o'clock
I then get that request
I check my diary to see if I can do that time
I message the client back to say yes that's available, please call me to discuss further
Client calls
Then as per above.

So at this point there have been 4 extra steps to get him to the point of actually phoning me, which is when the booking will be accepted or declined.

[Aqua Allegoria]

I love bookahooker.
I think it's just so straightforward it could help us keep time wasters / freebie hunters down to minimum.
Can we just do I already ? Use the term "punters", no "hobbyist" here please

[amy]

Yeah, but the trouble it is that it's another American term which isn't widely used here and they're trying to market the site to UK people. It'll just cause confusion like that other numpty with 'hobbyists' (and even he appears to have seen sense and changed his tune) and I wouldn't advertise on a UK site that couldn't understand the difference between British and American English as I'd wonder what else they hadn't paid much attention to. The fact they've gone for such a daft name makes me think somebody must have already snapped up the extremely obvious 'BookAnEscort'.

I'll stick with BookAFuck. I wonder if we could think of a use for FuckABook?

[Aqua Allegoria]

Yeah, but the trouble it is that it's another American term which isn't widely used here and they're trying to market the site to UK people. It'll just cause confusion like that other numpty with 'hobbyists' (and even he appears to have seen sense and changed his tune) and I wouldn't advertise on a UK site that couldn't understand the difference between British and American English as I'd wonder what else they hadn't paid much attention to. The fact they've gone for such a daft name makes me think somebody must have already snapped up the extremely obvious 'BookAnEscort'.

I'll stick with BookAFuck. I wonder if we could think of a use for FuckABook?

BookAnEscort sounds a bit like that Uber escort thing we had a while ago. That didn't end well, did it?
I was going to say BookaHooka but I guess too late now, we do not want to be confused with our overseas friends. Though BookaHooka sounds gangsta. I like it. We could play some rap music and smoke weed and all that shit.

I'm in for BookAFuck and as for FuckABook I'm sure some of our time wasting friends must have tried. Shelves and shelves. I hope they stayed away from Narnia but I will never forget that one who clearly did The Jungle Book with all his wanking on aw...

[amy]

BookAnEscort sounds a bit like that Uber escort thing we had a while ago. That didn't end well, did it?

I'd forgotten that one already

Though BookaHooka sounds gangsta. I like it.

Nothing sounds gangsta when middle aged women who are not Dr Dre or Ice Cube say it, no matter how many times I've they've listened to Straight Outta Compton .

I'm in for BookAFuck and as for FuckABook I'm sure some of our time wasting friends must have tried. Shelves and shelves. I hope they stayed away from Narnia but I will never forget that one who clearly did The Jungle Book with all his wanking on aw...

If the current US president has a book out I'll happily do hardsports on it and send it to him for free, if that counts? I'd spare whichever poor sod actually wrote it, obviously.

We're really just killing time until this one comes back. I'm still interested to know how he claims his amazing invention will be quicker than my phone. Has anybody bothered looking at the website?

[Kay]

Ladies, ladies - we should be charging for this market research information!

[VoluptuousCurves]

The website just says "coming soon".

[Aqua Allegoria]

The website just says "coming soon".

17/07/07 
Oh no wait, that's Winter ! And that's good stuff!

[VoluptuousCurves]

17/07/07 
Oh no wait, that's Winter ! And that's good stuff!

It is known!

[Aqua Allegoria]

Ladies, ladies - we should be charging for this market research information!

We should. But not for educating them a bit. If education was free, all morons could read. If all morons could read...we wouldn't be repeating the "please read my profile" ...
And if pigs could fly... The US president would be even more entertaining:)

[amy]

Well the OP's spent a fair chunk of today hanging about here reading but, strangely, made no attempts at answering anybody's questions. Problem with your keyboard, OP?