We decided to give this a go.... here's some details on our results so far.. 2 jobs booked since launching only 3 days ago. Total of those jobs is a bit over $300. (Fittlebug cost $150/month with this MB promo deal). For us, spending $150 a month on something hits the budget a little more than we want. So if it wasn't working we'd be getting rid of it. So far - it has paid for itself. We were actually not expecting to book anything for a week or 2 until we start heavily promoting it on facebook etc. so that's pretty cool.
The people that booked paid the deposit we require of $25, which is also interesting. I didn't think many of our customers, or new customers would be down with giving their CC online and taking a deposit, but it looks like people don't mind it so far. I'm guessing this is because people feel more secure using paypal then just entering it onto your site. Steve gave us a link to the analytic page to see our unique visitors. The unique hits are pretty decent and are all from our service locations. The referral path these people are using to get to our fittle page is actually coming from our website "Get a Quote Now" button we have. It's actually decreased our emails asking, "how much for...." since they are seeing it online in real time.. I'll have better next landing page results from our own google webmaster tools soon. Even if people aren't booking, least they are being able to select different services and see the total price for all of those services, etc. for future decision making.
I'm promoting it first to current customers. These people know our service, what the prices are, etc. and would probably be more likely to book than a new person that still wants to know more about our service, more likely they would be calling us first. The booking in different zip codes doesn't really affect us, since we are running more than 2 trucks. Basically, just adjust the schedule so each truck stays in the same area, less than 20 minutes travel time between jobs.
The look of it is really pretty cool.
http://naturaldry.fittlebug.com(use zipcode 89147 if you check it out). We customized a couple of html codes to get our logos in there, some other images, etc. Like how it lays out the categories for what you offer. The discount or promo codes you can setup I think will work really well with how we want to promote it. Another cool part, it's mobile friendly. We added an anchor text link to our fittle page to give us an extra backlink to help with SEO.
Because we are a bit iffy of our customers not wanting to click on a link that doesn't go directly to our site, we have started promoting it on facebook as an "Offer" type post. This way they don't see the naturaldry.fittlebug.com link but instead see "Get offer" or "Book Now". We will see if this matters or not (the link not being directly to our site) as we keep testing it in the future. We do want it to look as much as possible that this online scheduling is an integrated part of our site, and not something separate ya know. Maybe in the future as fittle grows, it would integrate directly into the site some how where we could send customers to fittlebug.naturaldry.com. Now it's just getting customers in the routine of booking online all the time.
The Deposit Feature: Good idea. If they cancel within our 24 hour period, we keep the $25 deposit. Because we don't take credit cards over the phone to book appointments, this should be a decent way to help cut back on last minute cancellations, because they know they paid the deposit. Right now we are servicing approx. 130-140 residential monthly. That means we are answering the phone at least 130 times a month to schedule, on top of the "Free Quote" calls. If this program can cut back on that call volume by even 10% that is a win. And more spare time for us.
I think fittlebug is a small business/company/app still since Steve is the person who has direct contact with us. He is excellent at getting back to us asap or fixing any issues that (I) may have messed up. Example: I missed a few zip codes and had 3 phone calls from people trying to access the fittle page saying, "it says you don't service our area, do you?" and we do. I called Steve, and minutes later it was fixed. Seriously, Steve, thank you for helping us getting this going. Looking forward to the upcoming month(s) results. So far, awesome program.
