Never Mind Marketing

Mashable’s Spark of Genius series review of “BookFresh”:

Quick Pitch: BookFresh makes it easy for new and existing customers to connect with businesses and schedule an appointment online.

Genius Idea: BookFresh is an online appointment book that small businesses can use to easily schedule appointments for their services, take payments online and integrate with existing websites or even Facebook.

I love being able to schedule appointments with businesses online. I don’t always have time to schedule an appointment during business hours (or more to the point, I forget to schedule during business hours) and being able to see availabilities and schedule things in advance is always really nice. BookFresh (formerly HourTown) is a whole suite of tools for small businesses to integrate into their online sites.

With it, customers can make appointments online, pay in advance (via PayPal), get an e-mail reminder of the appointment, and even schedule an appointment from a company’s Facebook page. BookFresh will send business owners SMS messages when an appointment is made, lets them sync their appointment book with iCal or Google Calendar and review appointments before confirming them. BookFresh also has an iPhone app for businesses to keep track of their appointments and bookings.

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I think that having the ability to book an appointment with a business via their Facebook or other social profiles could definitely help a small business owner stand out from the crowd.