Online booking for sessions in a dog walking field

My Dog Run has four fully fenced fields located in Stewkley, Ridgmont, Ashley Green and Woodside, offering owners a safe and secure environment for dogs to run freely and play. The areas are perfect for practising training and recall or anybody just looking to have some off-the-lead fun with their dogs.

Client brief

Henry and Alice first approached us wanting to develop a website and booking system for their dog run field in Stewkley. The concept was simple but very effective. They had developed an area of land for people to use for exercising their dogs. They wanted dog owners to be able to book 30- or 60-minute sessions in the dog field which they could book and pay for online. The dog owners would then receive a confirmation of booking email which would include directions and a key code for the gate to the field to grant them access.

Software functionality and application

Our initial solution consisted of these elements:

• An admin portal with secure access for you to log in and manage all elements of the booking process (fields, prices, availability, bookings, payments, customers) and the text and photo content of the website. This can be set up with as many administrators as you need and can scale up to cope with additional paddocks/locations as your business expands. You would be able to access all your customer and booking information along with reports on booking levels, payments, etc to help you with your accounts.
• A public website designed by us with your preferred branding that presents your business to potential customers and allows them to book securely online and pay for their bookings in advance. Given your average transaction value of around £10, we would recommend using Stripe to collect the payments for this.  We can integrate this with your booking system so that as soon as a customer pays their booking can be confirmed automatically and confirmation e-mail sent to both you and them.
• Integration with an electronic gate padlock based on you setting a code at periodic intervals. These codes would be e-mailed and/or sent by SMS to customers who are due to visit the next day.  We would also provide a simple customer portal allowing someone to enter their booking reference and e-mail address in order to obtain their code, but no more than a day in advance. 

Angelfish comments

Since the website and booking system launched in the last quarter of 2021 we have continued to work with Alice and Henry to further develop the system, including adding 3 further fields. We are currently working on functionality to enable a shopping basket for multiple and repeat bookings.