Create a Booking Form in WordPress
Do you want to create a booking form in WordPress? Bookings are essential for many websites and enterprises. A booking form can help you schedule more appointments and increase your revenues if you accept appointments. It can also eliminate a lot of the time-consuming administrative tasks that come with handling reservations.
Why Create a Booking Form in WordPress?
Consider how many times you’ve scheduled an appointment. This can range from making a doctor’s appointment to setting up a callback, reserving a seat at your favorite restaurant, or even purchasing concert or movie tickets.
You may have made the reservation by calling the company. However, you’ve most likely made your reservations online.
We anticipate being able to arrange a variety of appointments online without ever having to speak to a live person.
This is also something that your consumers and visitors expect.
It’s a good idea to build an online booking form if your company accepts appointments. This refers to any form that allows visitors to schedule an appointment, purchase event tickets, or make a reservation online.
You’ll never lose another customer because you weren’t available to answer the phone if you have a booking form.
Many aspects of the booking process can be automated using booking forms. This includes taking payments and sending useful reminder emails to your clients. This can help to improve the consumer experience. It can also save you a lot of time and effort on administrative tasks.
With that in mind, let’s look at how to make a booking form in WordPress. We’ll teach you three different methods to accomplish it, so just pick one of the links below to get started:
Method 1. How to Create a Booking Form Using WPForms (Recommended)
WPForms is the best WordPress form builder, with over 5 million websites using it. Using the plugin’s simple drag and drop builder, you can rapidly add a booking form to your website.
There are also ready-made templates available to assist you in getting started. This includes templates for event planning, feedback surveys, and user registration.
You may also use these pre-built forms to collect money for your nonprofit website or schedule Zoom meetings with possible new customers.
WPForms also interfaces with all of the leading email marketing services. This makes sending notifications and appointment reminder emails to your customers and employees a breeze.
We’ll be utilizing the WPForms Pro edition for this post because it comes with a number of various layouts and strong addons. There is also a WPForms Lite version if you’re seeking for a free form builder plugin. All of the premium templates and integrations aren’t included.
You must first install and activate the plugin. Please visit our article on how to install a WordPress plugin if you need assistance.
After activating WPForms, head over to WPForms » Settings in your WordPress dashboard. You can now enter your license key. You’ll find this key in your WPForms Account.
Next, you need to go to WPForms » Add New. To start, give your booking form a name.
WPForms has lots of different templates so you can quickly get started and build all kinds of forms. Since we’re creating a booking form, it makes sense to select the Event Planning category in the sidebar.
Here, you’ll find templates for ordering wedding flowers, booking a school trip, hiring a DJ, and everything in between.
Click the View Demo button on a template to see it in action. This opens a new tab with the template.
When you’ve found a design you like, click the orange ‘Use Template’ button to make it your own. This opens the drag-and-drop editor for WPForms.
We’ll use the Online Event Registration RSVP form in this lesson. Customers can fill in their names and email address in the fields on this form.
It also inquires about how visitors learned about your event. This might assist you in determining which marketing channels and sources are resulting in the highest conversions.
You can use this data to plan future marketing initiatives and increase the number of people that fill out your booking form. See our complete guide to conversion tracking in WordPress for more details on conversion tracking.
Visitors can also add several people to a single booking using the Online Event Registration RSVP template. This is ideal for activities that frequently attract large groups, such as tours or shows.
Finally, customers can use the dropdown menus to pick a date and time for their visit to your event.
All of these fields can be customized to your liking. Simply click on a field to edit it. After that, the sidebar will refresh to show all of the options for the selected field.
You can also customize your booking form template by adding new fields. Click the ‘Add Fields’ tab in the left-hand menu if it isn’t already chosen.
Then, on your booking form, simply drag and drop your preferred field into place. Drag and drop also allows you to rearrange the order in which these fields appear in your form.
Click the Save button once you’ve done modifying your booking form.
It’s critical to put up some notifications now that you’ve finished creating your booking form.
WPForms will automatically send an email to your WordPress admin whenever someone fills out the booking form. You might want to send these emails to a different address at times. It’s possible that you’ll wish to email multiple persons.
Using WPForms, this is simple. Click Settings in the left-hand menu to adjust your email notifications. Then choose Notifications from the drop-down menu.
Find the ‘Send To Email Address’ field on this screen. This is set to admin email by default. This is a variable that tells WordPress to utilize the email address associated with your WordPress administrator account.
This dynamic content can be removed and replaced with any other email address. Simply type the new address into the section labeled “Send To Email Address.”
If you wish to email numerous persons, simply use a comma to separate each address.
You must ensure that any emails sent from your website are sent to the recipient’s inbox rather than the spam folder. Using an SMTP service provider is the easiest way to do this. See our tutorial on how to solve WordPress not sending email for more information.
It’s time to publish your WordPress booking form once you’ve completed building it. You have the option of creating a new page or adding this form to an existing one.
That being said, the procedure is the same. Simply open the webpage where you want your booking form to appear. Then, on the black Plus button, click.
WPForms has its own block, so type ‘WPForms’ first.
When this block appears, add it to your webpage.
In your new WPForms block, click on the dropdown menu and select the booking form that you just created.
You can now update or publish your page.
That’s it! Visit your website and you should now see your booking form in action.
Method 2. How to Create a Booking Form Using Formidable Forms
Formidable Forms is the industry’s most powerful WordPress form plugin. You can construct a booking form with more complicated features like calculations using Formidable Form’s drag and drop interface.
Other technologies you may already be utilizing, such as MemberPress, WooCommerce, or your email service provider, function well with Formidable Forms.
We’ll be utilizing Formidable Forms Pro in this post because it provides a large number of booking form templates. This makes building a user-friendly booking form for your WordPress website a breeze.
The first step is to download and install Formidable Forms Lite, which is a free version of the plugin. Formidable Forms Lite serves as the foundation for the Pro version’s enhanced capabilities. See our article on how to install a WordPress plugin for more information.
After that, go to Formidable » General Settings to complete the process. Then click the ‘Click to manually enter a license key’ option.
You’ll find your license key in the Downloads section of your Formidable Forms account.
You can now paste your license key into this box and click on the ‘Save License’ button.
After activating your license key, select Formidable Forms from the WordPress menu.
Then, click on the ‘Add New’ button.
You can now pick the template that you want to use. Since we’re building a booking form, you may want to focus on the Event Planning category.
To view all of the templates in this category, start typing ‘Event Planning’ into the search field. When the Event Planning category appears, give it a click.
You can now pick the template that you want to use. We’re using the Travel Booking template in all of our screenshots.
After choosing your template, give it a name and enter a description. Then, click on Create. This launches your template in the Formidable Forms editor.
Give a field a click to edit it. The Formidable Forms sidebar will then show you all of the options for your selected field.
You may easily add different fields to your form using this sidebar. You may use these fields to collect additional information from your visitors or to provide them with options. You may, for example, allow them to request a room with a view of the sea or inquire about their dietary restrictions.
You can also use drag and drop to rearrange the order in which each field appears in your form.
To save your changes, click Update whenever you’re satisfied with your design.
If someone fills out your reservation form, you’ll want to know! Formidable Forms, like WPForms, sends emails to your WordPress administrator by default.
You can tell Formidable Forms to send these emails to any other address if you wish. These emails can be sent to several accounts.
Click the Settings tab to change the default emails. Then, from the left-hand menu, choose ‘Actions & Notifications.’
Next, click on Send Email. This adds a new section that has all the settings you need to set up your email notifications. This includes changing the person who gets these emails or adding more people.
The final step is adding this booking form to your WordPress website.
At the very top of the screen, click on the Embed button. This opens a popup where you can choose to add this form to an existing page or create a new page.
Adding this form to a widget is another option. This is a simple way to display your booking form in the sidebar or header of your theme.
Click Insert Manually if you wish to manually add your form to a widget. After that, Formidable Forms will display a shortcode. This code can now be copied and pasted into any Shortcode block.
We hope that this post has shown you how to make a booking form in WordPress. You might also want to check out our list of essential WordPress plugins for business websites or discover how to create a free business email address.