Picture this: You’ve got an exceptional WooCommerce store packed with amazing bookable products. Naturally, your customers will want a seamless way to find exactly what they’re looking for on their preferred dates. That’s where the Booking & Appointment Availability Search Widget from our Booking & Appointment Plugin for WooCommerce comes in.
With this widget, your customers can effortlessly check the availability of every product before they book. Not only does it elevate their user experience, but it also boosts visibility for related products. Thus, making it easier than ever for them to make a booking in no time.
1. How does the Search Widget work?
2. Adding Booking & Appointment Availability Search Widget in WordPress
3. Setting labels to the widget fields
4. Finding available bookings by a date range
5. Finding available bookings by ‘Choose a category’ option
6. Finding available bookings by ‘Choose a Resource’ option
1. How does the Search Widget work?
With the search widget, you unlock three powerful search options:
1. Range of dates: Customers can effortlessly search for products by selecting their desired Start and End dates.
2. Particular Date: Customers can choose a single date to quickly find available products.
3. Category: Customers can select a category name to streamline their search. Based on the searched date and category, a list of all the available products will be displayed on the Shop page.
2. Adding Booking & Appointment Availability Search Widget in WordPress
Booking & Appointment Availability Search Widget can be found on the Appearance > Widgets page.
On your right hand, you will find the designated areas in your WordPress site where you can place the widget.
Please Note that these designated areas are defined by your WordPress theme. They are called sidebars or widget-ready areas.
Booking & Appointment Availability Search Widget
There are multiple ways to add widgets to sidebars available in your WordPress theme. Below is one of the ways to add the search widget to the sidebar.
Click on Booking & Appointment Availability Search Widget > Sidebar > Add Widget button.
*Please note that the sidebars will differ depending on the theme you are using on your site.
Add Widget button
3. Setting labels to the widget fields
The Booking & Appointment Availability Search widget is added to the sidebar.
Here is the list of fields where you can set the label as per your business requirements.
Title Label: This sets the title of the search widget. e.g “Search Availability of Product”
Start Date Label: This sets the start date label. e.g “Start Date”
End Date Label: This sets the end date label. e.g “End Date”
Hide the End date field: Tick this option if you don’t wish to display the end date field.
Search By Category: Tick this option to let customers search by product category
Show only Child Categories: Tick this option to simply show child categories.
Category Title: Add a Category title for product search. e.g “Choose a Category”
Search By Resource: To enable searching booking products by their resources, tick this option
Resource Title: Add Resource title for product search. e.g “Choose a Resource”
Search Button Label: This sets the text to be displayed on the button. e.g “Search”
Clear Button Label: This sets the clear button label. e.g “Clear”
Text: Setting text to this will display a short note. e.g “Enter Start Date and End Date to check the availability of products on the specified dates”
At the bottom of the form, you can see the “Hide End Date Field” option. If you want your customer to search the availability of the products by selecting a particular date then you can enable this option so that on the front end only a start date field will appear to choose the date.
Once the labels are set and the options are enabled/disabled, click the Save button.
Adding details for Booking & Appointment Availability Search
4. Finding available bookings by a date range
On the front end of the website, the search widget will be displayed in the sidebar.
You can select the required date range in Start Date and End Date on the calendar and search by clicking the Search button.
Once searched, all the products that are available within that date range will be listed on the Shop page as shown below:
Products available within that date range
If you select any product from the search result, that product will have the searched dates pre-populated in the booking fields as shown below:
The pre-populated date is displayed when searched by the date range
The customer can search products only for a particular date when you have enabled the Hide End Date Field option.
All the available products on that particular date will be listed on the Shop page as shown below:
Available products after a particular date search
If you select any product from the search result, that product will have the searched dates pre-populated in the booking fields as shown below:
Pre-populated date by particular date search
5. Finding available bookings by a ‘Choose a category’ option
Customers can also select a particular category from the search widget.
A. Showing Product Categories
They will have to click on the dropdown of All Categories and select a category to see the products.
Note: Choose Category is an option that lets customers search based on a particular product category.
For instance, you can select Hotels & Stay as the category.
Selecting category to search products
Once you click on the Search Product button after selecting a category, all the products with the category Hotels & Stay will be displayed as shown below:
Products displayed as per the selected category
If you select any product from the search result, that product will have the searched dates pre-populated in the booking fields as shown below:
Search dates pre-populated in the booking field
B. Showing only Child Categories
If you have chosen to display the child category only, then on the front end, your customers can choose from child categories from the dropdown:
For instance, you have two child categories- ‘Booking for Guitar classes’ and ‘Hoodies’.
If you have selected the ‘Booking for Guitar class’ child category, then on the front end, you will be displayed those booking products.
If you have entered a child category and selected a date range, then related booking products will be displayed.
6. Finding available bookings by a ‘Choose a Resource’ option
This setting lets you search products by choosing a Resource from the search widget.
A. Resource
You will have to click the dropdown of Select Resources to select a Resource.
If you search by the Resource (teacher) Tanisha, you will see two bookable products available as shown here:
B. Date Range and Resource
If you select a date range and then select a Resource, your products will be shown accordingly:
For instance, after adding the dates you wish to book, select the resource as shown above.
You can select ‘Nathan’ who is the Tour Guide as the resource.
When you press the Search button, all the products assigned with the resource Nathan will be displayed. In this case, it is the Mumbai Ferry Tour.
C. Resource and Child Category
If you have enabled searching a booking by resources and child categories then your Booking widget will appear like this:
After selecting the resource and category, you will get the booking products for your search result as shown above.
In that instance, for the child category ‘Booking for Guitar Classes’ and resource ‘Tanisha’ (the teacher), the bookable products are ‘Advanced Guitar lessons’ and ‘Guitar lessons for beginners’.
Similarly, if you also add a Date Range along with Resources and Categories as shown below, you will see that only the ‘Advanced Guitar lessons’ product is available:
To conclude, experience the convenience of setting up the Booking & Appointment Availability Search widget from the Booking & Appointment Plugin for WooCommerce—it’s a breeze! Enhance your website with this feature to let your customers effortlessly view the available products for their desired dates and categories in one glance before they make a purchase.
Give your customers a smoother, more enjoyable browsing experience—they’ll love it!