Beds24.com User Forum

This has been a terrible season for us here in Nelson, New Zealand so I was a bit flabbergasted to receive a telephone call from a punter yesterday to tell me he was trying to book one of our most expensive rooms for a week but kept getting error messages.

Naturally I asked him for the URL that he was at and exactly what the "error message" in red said.

He then told me he was at
https://www.beds24.com/booking.php?subg ... 2013-02-18

and that he was endlessly being told to "change details" whatever details he entered.

Consternated I quickly looked for myself and was then able to explain that the "change details" message in red that he was reading at the top right of that page was neither an error message nor a command (I explained that if it was intended as a command, it would have had an exclamation mark at the end, thus: "Change details!")

After explaining that this was NOT an error message but merely anchor text for a hyperlink to "change details" if and only if he actually wanted to change his previously selected details such as the arrival date, length of stay, number of guests and room to be booked, we then agreed that it would have been less confusing if it read: "change details?"

Obviously we want to lose as few people as possible at that stage of the booking process (when they have already entered their name and address, chosen a bike to hire, etc and are just about to go to the final page in the booking process and enter their card details) so may I suggest a wee tweek?

Keep the red colour but
1) add the question mark so that it then read: "change details?"
2) place the question inside a button similar to the "Update" and "Continue" buttons below it on the same right hand side

To be honest I think the large quantity of optional extras has pushed the important stuff down off the bottom of the screen, I guess he didn't realise he needs to scroll down to continue.
This is not good, I will have a think about how to improve it.
The page layout was never originally designed to contain so many extra items.
We are currently working on a new booking page to go with the new control panel so this is quite timely.

By the way, if your punter doesn't show up, go down the street and make sure he's not waiting for the stop sign to change to GO.

markkinchin wrote:To be honest I think the large quantity of optional extras has pushed the important stuff down off the bottom of the screen,

Even with no optional extras whatsoever, if you are going to harvest the address and phone numbers of the punter, that screen will always need to be scrolled down on every laptop and the vast majority of desktop monitors.

With respect, that's not the issue here.

This punter, not unreasonably in my view, associated a two word "message" in red (and not within a button) as an ERROR MESSAGE.

Is there a way that you can change the colour of the message (or we can?) and put it inside a button, please?

While we're on the topic of intuitive user interfaces, how can we change the colour of the hyperlinks right at the foot of the first booking page to blue?

(I mean the ones either side of "page generated in 0.19 seconds" here:
powered by Beds24.com page generated in 0.19 seconds hosts sign-in)

Later: Right, we can change the "Link Colour" in the new Control Panel at: Settings > Booking Page > Design and I have now done that. Can you please change that "change details" message so that it has a question mark at the end: "change details?"
and also style it within a "button" - or can we do that too? (and, if we can, how exactly?)

markkinchin wrote: I guess he didn't realise he needs to scroll down to continue.

No, he realised that instantly - the very fact that we do have so many optional extras such as bicycle hire, Abel Tasman trips, massage, Early Bird discounts, etc does make it extremely obvious to all that the page is more than one screen's worth.

markkinchin wrote:By the way, if your punter doesn't show up, go down the street and make sure he's not waiting for the stop sign to change to GO.

Nice one!
I'll have to remember that!

amberbb wrote: Is there a way that you can change the colour of the message (or we can?) and put it inside a button, please?

The following CSS will change the colour of the link, my example makes it light grey, set the 6 digit color code as you wish.
The CSS goes in the CUSTOM CSS setting and this method can be used to change pretty much anything on the page.

markkinchin wrote:

amberbb wrote: Is there a way that you can change the colour of the message (or we can?) and put it inside a button, please?

The following CSS will change the colour of the link, my example makes it light grey, set the 6 digit color code as you wish.
The CSS goes in the CUSTOM CSS setting and this method can be used to change pretty much anything on the page.

Code: Select all

.bookchangedetails{color:#bfbfbf}

Won't that just change the display colour? (We've already changed the display colour).

What about the question mark at the end and styling it within a button?