Creative Project: One Stop
Creative Project: One Stop Tool
Team member: Shruti Chopra, David Kapinga, and Justin Williams
Medium.com IDs:
https://medium.com/@shrutichopra
https://medium.com/@amiskapinga
https://medium.com/@justwilliams47
Our Business Tool Idea:
Many businesses require their customers to make a booking or appointment in order to receive their service or product. That is the drive behind this project. We strive to create a powerful tool which takes care of booking appointments and enables an easy payment process. Eliminating the confusion and stress that accompanies these everyday tasks, can lead to building an important and helpful system.
Building the Solution:
As a basketball trainer I (David) understand the struggle of booking clients, getting payments from them, while also keeping up with social media to gain more clients. This whole process is very tough especially for someone like me that is training clients part time while going to school and playing on a team also. This is how we come up with our creation project. We are going to build a solution to making the process of booking, receiving payments, and proper social media planning. To do so we went through many suggested software tools from Dr. Keyhani’s entrepreneur tools. From there we went into the categories that were most important to use which were social media management, scheduling & booking, and payment solutions. Within those categories we researched and tried out the software suggested until we found one that fit our vision. Through our research we found that Buffer, Appointlet, Stripe, and Zapier were best to create our vision. Knowing that Instagram is the leading social media application we found that buffer works best to management the app. When it comes to the booking, we found multiple software that were great including Calendly and Doodle to name a few. However, the reason we chose Appointlet is due to its easy integration with stripe through Zapier and the sharing calendar feature. Appointlet, allows you to create a calendar with your working hours and through the help of a link, you can share that calendar with your client so they can book themselves in bypassing the need for a secretary. Picking the payment software was difficult because we loved waveapps. However, through research we found out that Appointlet has simple integrations with stripe through Zapier. After much debate we decided that stripe works well with our vision.
Image refference: https://elitesportnet.com/how-for-the-greatest-basketball-workout/
The Tools We Used:
1). Buffer
Buffer is an internet-based social media management tool used to handle a multiple social media accounts, organize and schedule posts, and analyze social media data. Its primary function is sharing content across today’s popular social media sites while offering the ability to spread content with a simple approach. The app has the ability to connect to all social media accounts while making it easy create and schedule posts. Instead of traditionally logging in on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites, Buffer does it all at once. It makes it convenient for users to create posts and have them uploaded with a single click. The app includes a browser extension for seamless integration with Chrome, RSS readers, WordPress, and other important tools for sourcing content.
The “Optimal Scheduling” feature allows you to decide how often you want to post. You can pick anywhere from once to 16 times a day. This eliminates the worry of forgetting to post and also spaces out your posts throughout the day.
Dashboard for the Optical Scheduling Feature:
Link to Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVEQh4QRpxU
Scheduling Posts:
Link to Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAGJM620PIA
Link to Buffer:
2). Appointlet
Appointlet is a scheduling and booking software that was built for any type of businesses. Appointlet allows its users to create a calendar with their business hours. Users can change these hours at anytime. They can also create different types of appointments, whether its an hour session with a client or a 30 minute health consultation. This is great since, users often have multiple types of bookings.
Dashboard for Booking:
Link to Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3lJt0qgrPM&list=PL3fIsLcPkpdFTAKQJnmtr5lf2sluN9efK&index=7
During the creation of different type of appointments, users have the capacity to put a price to their services and could require payment before clients can book them. The great thing about Appointlet is it empowers business owner by making them more efficient without the need of a secretary. By sharing the link to the calendar, clients are able to book their time by themselves with the restrictions place by the user. Like previously said, users can even collect payments straight from the software thanks to Appointlet’s integrations with Stripe. The software as integrations with popular softwares such as Slack, ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, and Infusionsoft. It also has web conferencing integration with Zoom, Google Meet, and others. Appointlet is used internationally due to its multi-linguistic capability. It has reminders and notifications for users and works well with Google Calendar. The business owners can decide the cancelation notification period. It has a startup plan which is free and a premium plan that is $10 USD a month.
Business Owner’s Dashboard for Settings:
Link to tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpPjK9u5s68&index=3&list=PL3fIsLcPkpdFTAKQJnmtr5lf2sluN9efK
Link to Appointlet:
3). Stripe
Stripe is a tool which is apt for setting up an ecommerce business. Well established businesses such as Warby Parker, Wish, OpenTable, Amazon, Uber, and Google are just so companies that were built with the help of Stripe. In fact, billions of companies use Stripe to manage the payment aspect of their business. This makes it evident that Stripe has a lot to offer to its users and opens many opportunities.
Companies Using Stripe:
Image reference: https://stripe.com/about
It enables mobile commerce, which is highly valuable in today’s time and age. Customers are able to securely save their payment information which enables a hassle-free shopping experience. When cards expire, the new information is automatically updated on the payment information. As long as Stripe is supported in the country to which the business belongs, they can accept payments from anywhere on the globe. Stripe uses API to create virtual cards such as employee expense cards, and this also enables people to pay using their phones. This feature can be created through the SDK (software development kit). The “On-Demand Economy” feature allows people to shop for things from all categories such as food, accommodation, and rides. Some companies such as Lyft, use Stripe to power payments to scale. Stripe traces the availability of the service or product in the market and gages its standard.
See how Lyft uses Stripe to power their business: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQjGzK_GHk
Also, Stripe is great for creating subscriptions. Matters such as cancellations, changes to subscription, multiple seats, and discounts, are all easily monitored. Third-party apps can be connected with Stripe in order to track workflow, study your customer base, and more.
Dashboard Setup:
Link to Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwklziE5HKo&t=23s
Link to Stripe:
4). Zapier
Zapier is a very useful and unique platform that helps you connect different apps and tools, and also manage them. It enables the user to perform an automated workflow or automatically move information between web apps (over 1000) by connecting them. This helps the user save their time, and effort as the tasks are automated. A zap is created from a trigger found in one app and is used to prompt one or more actions on another app. Every action executed is an equal to a task, a task which is performed automatically for you.
The “Delay” feature allows you to control when each action is performed. This means that you can decide when each action in the que (after the trigger) is performed.
The Delay Feature:
Link to Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5w2WLKe3aM&t=61s
The “truncate Text” feature lets you choose the number of words that can be used on apps such as Twitter. This feature can also be used to detect certain phrases or words and delete them. There is also a numbers action and formatter. Formatting phones, currency, performing math operations, and entering spreadsheet formulas are made possible through this. Webhooks (also known as, http requests) enable retrieving data.
Using the Numbers Actions and Formatter Feature:
Link to tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pksMMaQ-nZw
Zapier also has a way of importing and exporting data which already existing on the app which is being used to retrieve the trigger function. This is made possible if the data can be put into a spreadsheet by it being exported. Then Zapier can use the spreadsheet to import the data and put it to use. Google Sheets (recommended), Excel Online, and some other apps can be used to perform this function. Zapier has some great features to offer, which when learned can be very helpful to businesses.
Using Google Sheets on Zapier:
Tutorial Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biBG8WNV5sk
Link to Zapier:
How Each Tool was Used:
For the highly efficient business tool that we are creating, we would need the help of Zapier and Stripe. Zapier would help us to retrieve the data from Appointlet, regarding when a booking is made. This would set off a trigger which would result in a payment taking place through the help of Stripe. The “Delay” feature in Zapier would be used to pick when the customer would actually pay. The payment could be held off until the service was completed, or product was delivered, and then the transaction of the payment could take place. The “Delay” feature would also be implemented in order to send reminders to the customers at some time prior to their appointment. Zapier would used with Appointlet to send out an email reminder to the customer. Zapier could also be used with Buffer, Zapier’s “truncate Text” feature could be implemented with Buffer in order to monitor the length of posts’ text. Zapier’s numbers action and formatter can be used to format the phone numbers (in Appointlet), and the currency (in Stripe). Zapier could be used to take data from Appointlet, with the help of Google Sheets, and analyze it. Data could also be collected regarding how much each customer spends and on what services or products. This information could be used to send the customers customized offers and target advertising. Content for social media posts could also be derived based on the information collected. Once the business is aware of what people like the most, the next step is the attract customers with the same.
Appointlet Integrated with Zapier:
Link to Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFf_51UK-vc&list=PL3fIsLcPkpdFTAKQJnmtr5lf2sluN9efK&index=5
How We Predict the Tool Will Help:
In Conclusion, by integrating all four tools (Zapier, Buffer, Appointlet, and Stripe) a very helpful system can be created for all businesses. Essentially all businesses require appointments to take place. Even if a business is open to walk-ins, they are usually open to reservations or appointments. Also, every business is based on a money transaction to take place, otherwise it would not be a business. Therefore, the tool that is being created is useful to a board range and number of businesses and is thus very valuable. This tool will create ease for both the business owner(s) and the customers. Automating tedious tasks will help to save time, energy, and effort. It is important to have a user-friendly system as this could help attract loyal customer and keep them happy with the services of the company. This system would allow customers to go online and make a booking at any time and day, which is something that is usually not possible otherwise. Usually appointments are made over the phone during the operating hours of the business. The schedule being presented on a calendar online also makes it easier for the customer to see exactly which dates and times are open. The company having access to a powerful tool such as this could help to eliminate the need for certain employees (such as a secretary) which could result in the company saving some money.
