Video Transcript

00:00:00:01 – 00:00:24:10

Welcome to the Get Net Set Website Building Video series for tax and accounting professionals, where we cover all the essentials of creating a site that helps you grow your business. Today we’re going to talk about adding an appointment request form or scheduling tool to your site. We love this feature and consider it one of the most important elements that a tax service website can have.

00:00:24:14 – 00:00:57:10

You want your site to be the most powerful client recruitment tool it can possibly be, and landing new clients hinges on that critical moment when a site visitor reaches out to you for the first time to set up a meeting. So we want to make that process as quick and easy as possible. As you can see, we have set up a demo homepage here, one setup we like because it’s very intuitive for users is to list your appointment request form under the contact heading of the main menu.

00:00:58:00 – 00:01:38:13

So we’ll imagine that a visitor clicks here, which takes them to the scheduling tool. Next, the visitor fills out the form– name, email, phone number, a requested appointment date, and a time window. Notice that there is also a space to type a message in case someone wants to tell you more about their situation. However, that field is optional so anyone can just leave it blank.

00:01:39:00 – 00:02:01:08

Again, the goal is to make the form ultra convenient for users so you don’t want to require them to take any unnecessary steps. And then once they’re finished, they have to click here, what’s called a CAPTCHA. It screens out robots so you don’t get a bunch of spam, and then they would just click on send. And that’s really the end of it from the user side.

00:02:01:12 – 00:02:22:13

So let’s look now at what happens on your end. Now, how exactly this looks will depend on your email platform, but in any case, you will just get a simple message in your ordinary email inbox. As you can see, it shows all the essential information from the request form, including the message if the user chose to type one.

00:02:23:07 – 00:02:48:01

Now, at this point, if you can accommodate the scheduling request, you could just send an ordinary email reply or a text message to confirm the appointment. If not, you can call or message the client or potential client to work out another option. Either way, you’ve set in motion the all important process of converting a site visit into a client meeting.

00:02:48:10 – 00:03:14:14

Now, one of the great things about this simple setup is that it doesn’t require you to do anything new or create any new infrastructure. Once the scheduling tool is in place on your site, you just handle appointment requests through ordinary email, text messaging, or good old fashioned phone calls. Another advantage of this setup is that it creates multiple avenues to get to that crucial first meeting.

00:03:15:04 – 00:03:37:10

So returning to the home page, if a visitor just clicked on contact, they would get this more general form instead of the appointment request form. Now we have a separate video on how this type of web form works, but the bottom line is you would once again get a message in your inbox that you could handle like any other email message.

00:03:38:01 – 00:04:00:04

So the fact that the visitor filled out the quote unquote wrong form does not cause you any difficulties at all. There are additional options for online scheduling systems that we will cover in future videos, or you can reach out to us to learn more. For now, we hope you found this video helpful. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you in the next one.