The Bookster Podcast: Ease of use
- Episode 5
Who's Talking?
- Simon Beattie
- Robin Morris
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Another of Bookster's key pillars - Ease of Use
In this episode of the Bookster podcast, host Simon and CEO Robin Morris delve into the third foundational pillar of the company: ease of use.
Key takeaways
They highlight Bookster's commitment to reducing barriers for users by making their holiday rental software intuitive and straightforward.
Some of Bookster's clients are not tech-savvy and are more focused on managing their properties and ensuring guest satisfaction. Therefore, the software is designed to be coherent, consistent, and easy to navigate with minimal technical knowledge.
The conversation also touches on the importance of speed in software performance.
A listener's question about AI integration prompts Morris to discuss potential future applications, such as AI-generated property descriptions and photo enhancements.
Key takeaways
Ease of Use as a Core Pillar: Bookster prioritizes ease of use to lower barriers to entry for its clients, many of whom are not technically inclined. The software is designed to be intuitive and user-friendly.
Consistent User Interface: To enhance ease of use, Bookster maintains a consistent user interface throughout its platform.
Fast and Responsive Software: Speed is a critical component of ease of use. Bookster focuses on ensuring that both property managers and guests experience fast load times and responsive interactions.
User-Centric Design: Bookster's design decisions are based on understanding the needs of their users. For example, the guest-facing calendar widget only shows availability and price, as that's the information guests care about, whereas detailed booking information is available to property managers through their login.
Potential for AI Integration: AI could be used to generate property descriptions from photos or enhance the resolution of uploaded images, improving overall user experience and engagement.
These points illustrate Bookster's commitment to making their software accessible, efficient, and user-friendly for both property managers and guests.
Credits
- Producer
- Joint Beat Productions
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Transcript
- Hello, I'm Simon, and welcome back to the Bookster podcast from inside the SaaS holiday rental software company Bookster based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Minute 1
- Hi, Simon.
Nice to see you again.
Nice to see you.
Lovely.
Right.
So what, uh, we're gonna do on this episode, the last couple of episodes we've been talking about the, the pillars that, uh, Bookster has been built on.
Uh, we're now onto pillar three this week.
Uh, so if you've missed any last couple of episodes, go back and listen to them because it's a very, uh, good, uh, conversation we've had there.
Um, pillar three is ease of use.
Um, perhaps Robin, you might wanna start by telling us sort of what you mean by ease of use.
Yeah, so I mean, our broad strategy, I suppose, is to try and make the barriers to entry on books are low.
So, um, as one of those, one of the mechanisms to make those barriers low is to try anyway, to concentrate on the software being as easy to use as possible.
So trying to hide away some of the complexity and in the first instance, make it, um, possible Minute 2
- for someone who's potentially not that technical.
'cause a lot of our clients, they're not technical people necessarily.
Um, a lot of them are, you know, they're obviously running holiday rental businesses and, um, their interest is in making guests happy, uh, you know, welcoming them, making their properties nice, and, uh, you know, giving them advice on the local area.
And, um, you know, being social, their expertise isn't necessarily in, uh, you know, software or setting software up.
So what we try to do as much as we can is, you know, when we're making the software, it's trying to make it as coherent as possible, make sure it fits together, it's consistent.
So we do the same, you know, we have the same ui, UI being user interface, sorry.
So we have to, we use the same, uh, types of interfaces throughout Bookster. Minute 3
- We try to, uh, make it possible for someone to, to get through all of the basics.
So setting the property up, adding photos, et cetera, as much as possible, make it easy.
Um, which, you know, that we have competitors that are also, um, you know, relatively easy, but we also have lots of competitors, uh, where the software is quite complicated or, um, is a bit of a hodgepodge and it's been built up over time.
And so, um, so yeah, that's, that's what we're trying to do, is to make it as simple as possible for people.
So, um, yeah.
And does the, I mean that, does that ease of use, uh, flow through to sort of every stage of the, the process and The Yeah, I, I suppose what, what we, or what I mean by, um, ease of use is simply the interfaces, the things Minute 4
- that we're presenting to users when they're using Bookster.
Um, and there's, and that also goes across into the guest side as well.
So our a, uh, calendar widgets that you place on your own website are very simple.
There's not very much choice in terms of what you can do as a guest.
You're basically, you can just click on a date and that's it, and then it takes you off and launches you off in the process of booking a property.
Um, we, you know, the, the process by, after someone's placed a booking, we try and make that as easy as possible.
That journey of, um, they get sent out emails, they are directed into Bookster, uh, guest area.
We try and make that as easy to understand and as well laid out as possible.
So it's easy for the guests. Minute 5
- Um, and uh, also when we are building Bookster, we, you know, we try to understand the problems that the guests, that the, that our users might be having.
So we use something called, uh, Hotjar to record some of our, um, users sessions to see what's going on.
Um, yeah, so yeah, so it goes through the whole, it's the whole process then, uh, from start to finish, which, yeah, I mean, I guess, sorry, do you have something else to add to that? Well, I was, I was gonna say that there's some things that are sometimes, so for example, speed.
So the, the speed at which, um, the software reacts is actually super important to ease of use.
It has to be fast, otherwise it becomes very frustrating and hard to use.
So that, that goes for, uh, people logging into Bookster as property managers, that we have to make sure that we're trying to make it as fast as possible. Minute 6
- And also when people are, when guests are doing, uh, searches for our sort of direct booking UIs, um, the speed is very important there, that it, you know, it, it takes milliseconds to respond with a price and availability so that they can get through that process quickly or they can do lots of research, you know, they can see which properties are available when.
So all of that is, you know, speed can be a very, very high priority when it comes to making something easy to use.
Um, I mean this, I guess the question has to come, uh, you don't have to give any names away or anything, but I mean, does this sort of come from personal experience using other sites that you realize that perhaps there's mistakes been made somewhere and you know, and then you, you've brought it into the Bookster? Yeah, I mean, definitely around speed.
That's, so you, you will see, um, and this applies to some of our clients as well.
So some of our clients are using, uh, Minute 7
- maybe like a WordPress site or something.
Um, I don't wanna necessarily this WordPress per se, but they might be using, um, they might have their own website.
And when you go onto their website, it's maybe slow just where it's hosted or whatever, how it's set up, um, and difficult to navigate around and difficult to, you know, therefore book a property.
They might have, they might have say five properties, but you can't search across all the properties just the way they have set their website up.
And so, you know, you can see that with clients or prospective clients, um, and you know, it's going to be confusing, um, for a prospective guest.
Um, so yeah.
And another thing that we come across quite often, um, and Jonny probably gets this when he is demoing Bookster, uh, but a lot of our prospective clients Minute 8
- or clients, when they look at the, our, um, calendar widgets, the things that the, the guest sees on the front end on the public facing calendars, they, they say things like, oh, I, I can't see when my property is booked.
Um, now actually, from, from a guest perspective, they don't care when a property is booked.
They just care when it's available and the price.
So they're not interested if it's booked or if it's just blocked out because you're doing maintenance or whatever.
The guest doesn't care about that.
They just wanna know when it's available.
So, you know, we try and strip it back and say, these are, this is the vital information for the guest.
But from a property manager's perspective, they're like, oh, wait, well wait a minute.
Uh, this, this is, um, I can't understand when my property's booked or not. Minute 9
- But that UI is not actually, that interface is not being, is not targeted at them.
If they wanna see when the property's booked or not log into Bookster, see it there, or, you know, so, you know, so that's an example of where you, you, you know, we, we have really thought about what's best for the use case that really matters, which is 99% of the people are prospective guests, not property owners, uh, or managers.
No, absolutely.
I mean, do you find, I mean, I'm sure there's a number somewhere out there in the world, but you know, in terms of speed and ease of use, do you have a, an idea of how long, you know, an average person would sit in front of a screen and then before they got bored or frustrated or, you know, left to do another, go on another site, for example, and what's your sort of target speed or whatever? I dunno, of uh, well, remarkably low, I would think, you know, less than a second probably would, would feel very slow for someone. Minute 10
- And then frustrating right.
That when you're loading a webpage, um, and yeah, it reminds me of, uh, I can't remember what the exact number is, but, uh, in my, my undergrad degree was civil engineering.
One of the things they, we were talking about traffic management and they were talking about how long would someone wait at a traffic light, a red light? Yeah.
Yeah.
So there were studies about how long people would wait before they just got annoyed and would, you know, would just drive through.
It doesn't matter if it's red and it's remarkably short, really, it's, it's really short.
It's, you know, I can't remember what it is.
It's like three or I don't know what it is.
I'm not gonna say what, but it's, it's minutes, basically three or four minutes or something.
Sure.
When someone's like, ah, this is, this is obviously broken, I'm going.
But, you know, in the context of a webpage, it is seconds that, you know, people will be like, ah, this is too difficult to use.
I can't, I'm not gonna sit here Minute 11
- and wait every time I have to do something.
It's taking a couple of seconds or a few seconds to load.
That's, you know, they'll be back out and, you know, back to their search engine, Google or Bing or whatever to, you know, um, to find something else.
'cause they're too, too frustrated.
So yeah, it, Yeah, Both.
Yeah, I think, um, probably the, the world that we live in, if people don't have time to sit around and wait for a webpage to, to load too long, it seems to be the way.
Anyway.
Um, I mean, that does lead us onto a question, actually.
We had a question from, uh, somebody who's seen a previous, uh, podcast, uh, video.
Um, it's come from, uh, Jonathan Baek, and he actually has a question that says, um, has Bookster ever considered using AI technology, uh, to enhance the service to customers? Which probably feels quite right as a, a question for this episode.
So, I mean, does AI help in this sort of visitor journey Minute 12
- or the experience, or have you used, you know, I, I dunno how you differentiate AI from just websites.
It's all computers, isn't it? But, um, you know, I dunno, do you have an, do you have an answer for that one? That's, That could be our new, uh, motto.
It's all computers.
It's all Computers, it's all ones and zeroes.
Um, so what people typically think of, I suppose, as ai, um, would be things, you know, at the moment, the, the sort of, not trendy, but the things that are getting the headlines are those large language model things that, um, sound like humans when you, you give them a prompt of some descriptions.
So it does feel like, so we don't have it inside Bookster, but it feels like it, it could be that they would produce potentially quite good property descriptions, for example.
Like, it might be that you could use AI to look at some photos and describe your property from that, Minute 13
- or at least suggest a description.
We don't, we don't really have any of that as the short answer in a way.
Um, uh, the other thing being, um, you could use, you could an analyze a photo and just describe the photo and put that in the photo description, which potentially would be helpful.
Especially as, you know, persuading clients to actually describe a photo that they upload is, is quite difficult.
They just, they just, uh, they much prefer IMG 0 0 0 0 1, Right.
JPG, that is a much better title Apparently.
Well, I think, Yeah, I mean, the other, the other, I mean, we have, so I, there was quite an impressive bit of AI that someone showed me quite recently, which was, and this does go to ease of use 'cause it would be helpful, and that is, um, improving existing photos. Minute 14
- So say you have a, uh, grainy or low resolution photo, um, which, you know, we, a lot of our clients upload these kinds of photos.
They're either heavily cropped or they're old Mm-Hmm.
Um, and this ai, um, the, you know, would basically improve the resolution, but in a way that made it look like, you know, so it's taking the original photo and filling in a lot of the gaps.
Or, you know, say for example, there was a rug and the rug was all pixelated, well, it, the AI would, it probably doesn't know that it's a rug, but it might, it would sort of identify it from the other millions of photos that it looked at and, uh, put in the texture of a rug, right? Uh, so rather than this pixelated thing, it becomes really sharp.
So that was quite impressive.
So something like that.
So we building in those kinds of things potentially would be, you know, Minute 15
- it's a bit like in movies where they say, um, enhance.
Yeah.
So maybe, Yeah, yeah, it all happens super quick.
But, um, yeah.
Yeah.
But no, I mean, I think that's quite interesting actually.
Yeah.
And, and to, to get used to technology like that would sounds like it would be a good thing eventually.
Um, so, uh, watch this space for Bookster, then perhaps we can have some AI additions to it.
Well, John, Jonathan Ballek, thank you very much for that question.
That was, that was a good question.
Thank you.
If anyone has any further questions they'd like, uh, answered or to put to, to Robin or any of the guests we have on the podcast, please do, uh, email them into podcast@Booksterhq.com.
Uh, that's podcast@Booksterhq.com and we'll get round to answering them, I'm sure.
And, uh, I think, like you say, ease of use, a very important aspect to the running of, well, any business, but obviously bookstore in particular as well.
Um, so with that in mind, uh, thank you for your time again this morning, Robin. Minute 16
- You're welcome.
And, uh, for everyone, uh, listening and watching, thank you for taking the time to tune in.
Um, now for, uh, everyone out there, um, as we always say, we do have our sister podcast, uh, which is smashing your holiday rental goals, um, that is out there in the world.
We'll put a link to it in the description below this.
Uh, if you'd like to search that out, please do.
And please, if you can leave a favorable review for this podcast or that podcast, it's very gratefully received.
Um, we will see you again very soon.
We'll chat about, uh, their fourth pillar next time, and that'll wrap up our sort of mini series of, of the pillars.
Um, so we look forward to doing that.
Um, but in the meantime, thank you very much, and we'll speak to you again soon.
Bye-Bye.
Thank you.
Bye bye-Bye.
Follow along as Bookster discussed their journey and their inner workings.
Thank you for joining us, and we hope that you find these conversations insightful, but ultimately helpful.
Now, I'm joined today as always by CEO and co-founder of Book Star Mr.
Robin Morris.
Hello, Robin.
Welcome back.
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