How to create an appointment / booking page with Gravity Forms

1. Use cases for taking online bookings
   1. Taking bookings alongside purchases
   2. Taking bookings on specific dates
2. How to take bookings using Gravity Forms
   1. Display booking charges
   2. Offer discounts on the weekends
3. Create your Gravity Forms booking page today

If you organize events or offer services, you might consider adding Gravity Forms booking features to your WordPress website. It’s a quick, convenient, and extensible way to create an online appointment or booking page.

The key benefit of using Gravity Forms to take appointments, bookings, and online registrations is that you don’t have to use a dedicated booking WordPress plugin which may require significant setup. It’s incredibly easy to use and you can set up Gravity Forms booking on your website in a few simple steps.

In addition to this, it simplifies the process of facilitating bookings and taking reservations online. This is ideal for event managers and small business owners that are looking for an easy way to allow clients and attendees to make appointments. Plus, you can pair it up with Gravity Perks – GF Conditional Logic Dates and GF eCommerce Fields – for even more extensibility which WordPress plugins like the Ninja Forms plugin and Contact Form 7 plugin don’t offer.

With the current global COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses are looking for online appointment booking options. Setting up a Gravity Forms booking page is perfect for local gyms, restaurant reservations, private doctor’s practices, and art classes.

Use cases for taking online bookings

As an online business owner, there are different ways you might take online appointments and bookings.

Taking bookings alongside purchases

If you run a private doctor’s practice or you offer art classes, you might need to charge customers an upfront fee at the time of booking. This is possible with Gravity Forms’ pricing fields. The GF eCommerce Fields perk lets you add essential eCommerce functionality to your Gravity Forms booking page. In addition to this, you can charge tax, apply discounts, and display the subtotal. The best part is that you don’t have to install WooCommerce.

If you’re organizing art classes, you might want to automatically apply a discount if clients book on a specific day. Similarly, if you run a gym, you might need to charge customers for sessions with a personal trainer in advance. In this case, you could apply a tax. And, if you provide an airport pickup service, you could use GF eCommerce Fields to charge customers as a guarantee of upfront payment.

Taking bookings on specific dates

Unless you offer a 24/7/365 service, you’ll likely need to exclude or block off certain dates to ensure clients and customers don’t schedule appointments with you. This might include weekends, holidays, or off-times (in case of a restaurant).

The GF Limit Dates perk lets you show an inline calendar field and block dates when you’re busy. You can use it alongside GF Limit Choices to limit your availability to X time slots.

In addition to this, you can offer customers weekend discounts by using the GF Conditional Logic Dates perk. GF Limit Dates also lets you add a calendar view to your Gravity Forms booking page so site visitors can quickly see your availability at a glance. You can use it to add limits to your bookings by the number of people or timeframe.

GF Conditional Logic Dates is perfect for business owners that need an easy way to display notices or banners on the Gravity Forms booking page. You can combine it with the GF Conditional Pricing perk to charge more (or less) depending on the date customers request your services. For example, you can charge a rush fee, offer early-bird discounts, or set up holiday pricing.

You can also combine GF Conditional Logic Dates with GF eCommerce Fields to offer customers a discount based on the booking date. This is useful for anyone who needs to charge customers more money on specific dates.

How to take bookings using Gravity Forms

Assuming you already have the Gravity Forms plugin installed and activated on your WordPress site, here’s what you need to do to set up a Gravity Forms booking page:

Head over to Forms from the WordPress admin panel and click the Add New button to create a new form. Next, add some fields to the form builder depending on the type of booking form you’re creating.

For example, if you wanted to take bookings for art classes, you would simply add name and email form fields and prompt the visitor to select the art class they’d like to take and on which day.

Your form might look something like this on the front-end:

Click the Update button to proceed.

Now, whenever a visitor fills out the Gravity Forms booking form, their data will show up under Forms > Entries.

Display booking charges

If you need to charge visitors tax or apply discounts when they book their art classes, you might consider using the GF eCommerce Fields perk. For example, you can use it to charge attendees for art class materials before classes begin or display booking charges without using WooCommerce.

For this, you’ll need to get Gravity Perks and install and activate it on your website. Once that’s done, head over to Forms > Perks > Install Perks and install GF eCommerce Fields.

Now, you can add eCommerce fields to your Gravity Forms booking form. For example, you can offer discounts, charge tax, or display the subtotal. The perk also improves on Gravity Forms’ coupons and shipping field.

Offer discounts on the weekends

You can use GF Conditional Logic Dates to add an appointment calendar view to your Gravity Forms booking page and configure it in a variety of different ways. For example, you can set it up so site visitors can quickly see available booking dates at a glance. Or, you can set it up to add limits to your bookings.

Get Gravity Perks and install and activate it on your website. Head over to Forms > Perks > Install Perks to install the GF Conditional Logic Dates add-on.

For example, you can offer attendees a 10% discount if they book a session on a weekend.

Create your Gravity Forms booking page today

Creating a Gravity Forms booking page is perfect for anyone that doesn’t want a full-fledged appointment and booking system on their WordPress website. This is perfect for anyone that needs to let attendees book a one-off session or service.

And, you can use Gravity Forms booking with GF eCommerce Fields and GF Conditional Logic Dates appointment booking add-ons to display upfront booking charges or apply conditional logic based on the user’s date selection.

What sort of a Gravity Forms booking page are you thinking of creating? Let us know in the comments section below.