Would you like to allow your customers to make online restaurant reservations with Planyo on WordPress?
All you need to do is create a WordPress form and integrate it with an online restaurant booking system.
In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through how to take restaurant reservations online by connecting your WordPress forms to Planyo.
Create Your Restaurant Reservation Form Now
Why Allow Online Booking?
A few benefits of creating an online reservation system for restaurants are…
- Convenience: Your customers can easily reserve a table on the go.
- More revenue: Online restaurant reservations help you fill more vacant seats, in turn, helping you make more revenue.
- Promote online: You can offer special discounts to regular customers who book online and increase brand loyalty and customer happiness.
Now let’s take a look at how to create a restaurant reservations system on your WordPress site.
How to Take Restaurant Reservations With Planyo WordPress
Follow these steps and you’ll be taking online restaurant reservations on your WordPress site in no time.
In This Article
1. Install WPForms
The first thing you need to do is to install and activate the WPForms plugin.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin if you need extra help with this.
We’ll also be using the Zapier addon to integrate your WPForms plugin with Planyo. To activate the addon, you’ll need to go to WPForms » Addons.
Then find the Zapier addon and click Install Addon.
The Zapier addon lets you connect your contact forms to 7,000+ web apps including Planyo so that you can save your time by automating different tasks. You can learn how to connect WPForms with Zapier.
2. Create Your Restaurant Booking Form
Next, you’ll need to create a restaurant reservation booking form. Go to WPForms » Add New and enter a name for your form. Then search the available templates and select the Dinner Reservation Form template.
The template will load in the form builder. It includes fields for basic information such as the guest’s name, email address, and phone number as well as the date and time they would like to schedule their reservation.
You can add, remove, or edit any fields you’d like in the template. If you need help getting started, you can check out our tutorial on how to build a simple form.
When you’re done customizing your form, don’t forget to save it.
3. Submit a Test Entry
Before you head over to Zapier and start setting up your connection, you’ll need to submit a test entry to your dinner reservation form. This is required to connect WPForms to Zapier, so don’t skip this step!
Click the Preview button at the top of the form builder.
Then fill out your reservation form and hit the Submit button.
Great! Now we’ll need to connect this form to your Planyo account via Zapier.
4. Connect Your Form to Zapier
The next thing you need to do is to log in to your Zapier account. Then, select Create Zap.
Then you can begin to create your zap by selecting WPForms as your Trigger App.
You’ll then need to select a trigger action. The only option for WPForms is New Form Entry. Go ahead and choose it from the dropdown.
Now you’ll need to log in to your WPForms account to allow Zapier to access it. Click the Sign in button.
In the popup that opens, you’ll need to enter your website’s URL and your Zapier API key.
To find your Zapier API key, head back to your WordPress dashboard in a separate browser tab and go to WPForms » Settings » Integrations. Find the Zapier section and expand it.
You can copy your API key here and paste it in the Zapier sign-in popup.
Once you’ve entered your API key and URL, click Yes, Continue.
Now Zapier will be able to pull data from your WPForms account, including the reservation form you created. Choose that form from the dropdown on the next screen, then click Continue to connect it to your Zap.
Then Zapier will test your connection to make sure everything is working as it should. Click Test trigger to begin.
If you’re set everything up correctly, you’ll see a success message and the test entry you submitted earlier in Step 3.
The first half of your Zap is done. Now you need to connect Zapier to Planyo.
5. Connect Zapier to Planyo
Now that you’ve connected Zapier to WPForms plugin, the next step is to connect your form to Planyo.
First, you’ll need to choose Planyo Online Booking as the action app.
Then, for the action event, choose Create Reservation.
This will automatically create a new reservation in Planyo whenever someone submits your reservation form on your WordPress site.
Now you’ll need to log in to your Planyo account. Click the Sign in button to begin.
A popup will open and Zapier will ask you to enter your Planyo API key. You can generate a new key in the Administration settings in your Planyo account. Then copy and paste it into the field provided in the popup.
Click Yes, Continue to move on to the next step.
On the next screen, you’ll set up a template for all new reservations made through your form. There are several required fields here. First, you need to select a Resource ID, which is generated in your Planyo account.
The rest of the required fields can be filled out by mapping fields from your form.
Next, Zapier will test your Planyo connection just like it did for WPForms. Click Test action to begin.
If everything is set up correctly, you’ll see a success message.
In your Planyo account, you should also see a reservation created from your test entry from Step 3.
All that’s left is to Publish your Zap so that it’s live and starts sending entries to Planyo from WordPress.
That’s it! Now you know how to connect WordPress to Planyo with WPForms and Zapier.
Don’t forget to embed your reservation form on your website so that guests can fill it out.
Create Your Restaurant Reservation Form Now
Next, Create Your Custom Support Form
We hope this guide helped you to take online restaurant reservations from your website and manage them on Planyo.
If you enjoyed this article, you may also want to read how to create a custom support ticket form in WordPress.
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The user does not see the status of available slots on the frontend, right?
Is there any possibility with wp forms to do something like this:
– Create a calendar input field with dates/times that are available and each slot can be booked – lets say 3 times.
– Once somebody books a date/time, only two more bookings are available for that specific slot.
As you already save the entries in WP, I assume this is not that difficult to provide it as an add on, would it?
Hi Torben,
We don’t currently have the ability to limit or restrict entries in the way you’re describing, though I agree it would be useful. I’ll add this to our feature request list to consider adding in the future 🙂
Thanks for the suggestion!