In times like this, where everything seems pointless, whether it’s job, education or business, health is everyone’s topmost priority.
Because if we’re not healthy, how could we focus on other things in life?
And to make sure everything’s going right inside our body, doctors are the one that comes first in the line.
If you’re a doctor or a business owner who manages several doctors websites and looking for a way to create a WordPress doctor appointment booking system, this tutorial can help you learn how to do it.
We’ll use the Date and Time Picker plugin to complete our booking system with other useful plugins as well.
But first, we’ll see what a doctor appointment booking system is and how it can help your patients book a doctor appointment online.
Let’s find out that real quick.
What’s Doctor Appointment Booking System
A doctor appointment booking system is an online system that allows patients to easily book their appointment at a particular clinic related to their health issue.
Such as Dental, Injury, Metal health, Muscle strain, Obesity, Arthritis, Asthma, etc.
Many people are suffering from several different diseases (around 95% of the world’s population). Each week, many people from those book appointments to a nearby doctor to get the treatment.
And if your clinic or doctor website has a doctor appointment booking system, then you can take a lot of leverage from it.
It’s a booking form with different fields that ask the patient to fill it up and submit it to consider it as an appointment.
This whole process saves a lot of time for the patient as well as you. Plus, with this, you can manage different aspects of the business pretty well.
There are various benefits of a doctor booking system that you can find in the below points.
Benefits of a Doctor Appointment Booking System
- Time and money savings.
- Saves resources.
- Makes it easy to manage all the appointments and bookings.
- Proper following of the guidelines in times of health crisis.
- No rush hours and better sessions with the doctor.
- Better flow of income.
- Income from pre-bookings.
- Convenient for patients to easily book appointments.
- And much more.
How to properly Use the Doctor Appointment Booking System
The best way to use a doctor appointment booking system is to place it on the homepage of the site.
Or perhaps at above the fold area of the site, just like the below screenshot.
The form is placed at the top of the time. So that as soon as the sick person comes on the website, he/she can easily book a doctor appointment without searching here and there on the site.
Other areas on the doctor website you might want to consider to add an online doctor booking form could be different health services pages, footer and contact us page.
Because many people have the tendency to directly open the contact us page as soon as they arrive on a website. So, missing that would be a massively wrong approach to web designing.
You can also try to add it on a popup to increase the leads on the site.
Now, as we have learned what a doctor appointment booking system is, what are its benefits and how to use it properly.
Let’s find out how we can create it without spending too much money and time as well.
What’s Date and Time Picker
If your website is on WordPress, it’s much easier to build a booking system for a doctor website using the Date and Time Picker and other useful plugins.
The Date and Time Picker is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to convert input fields of a contact form into a date time picker with a calendar on it.
It’s an easy-to-use plugin that comes with loads of powerful features that can turn a contact form into a highly functional booking form.
Using this plugin you can perform the following actions on your WordPress doctor booking form,
- Hide past dates.
- Show opening hours of the clinic or hospital.
- Disable specific weekdays and dates like festivals and national holidays.
- Change its theme for dark mode websites.
- Create a date slot on the calendar within which the business is accepting appointments.
- Create different appointment forms supporting different languages.
- Add specific working times for each weekday in between you’re accepting appointments.
- Show date calendar on click or by default on the form.
- And much more.
If you get the premium version of the Date and Time Picker plugin, you get more features to add to your doctor booking system.
But now, let’s see how we can use this WordPress appointment booking plugin to create an appointment booking for the doctor website.
How to Use the Date and Time Picker as Doctor Appointment Booking System
The following steps will help you easily create your doctor appointment booking system,
Step 1 – Install a Contact Form Building Plugin
The free version of the Date and Time Picker plugin supports several contact form builders to create a booking form.
It can easily convert the input fields of Contact Form 7, WPForms and Divi Contact Form Module.
If you want to install Contact Form 7, then follow this guide.
Using the Divi Builder? Then read the documentation to know how to use the Divi Contact Form module.
And if you’re happy with WPForms, then this guide will help you install the lite version of WPForms.
Once you’ve installed the desired Contact Form builder in WordPress, move to the next step to learn how to create a date time picker field with a calendar.
Step 2 – Create a Date and Time Picker Field
To use the Date and Time Picker plugin as a doctor appointment system, we first must need to install it on our WordPress website. To do that follow the below steps,
a) Installing Date and Time Picker
- On your WordPress dashboard, go to the Plugins → Add New
- Search Date and Time Picker, click Instal Now for the following and after installation, click Activate.
b) Create a Date Time Picker field
The plugin has been installed. Now, we need to create a date time picker field for our online doctor appointment booking form. The following steps will help you do that easily,
- On your WordPress Dashboard, go to the Input WP in the left bottom corner.
- It will open a field editor with different rules and options. Here, select Date and Time picker, and in the CSS Selector option, input a class name. For example, ‘.Doctor.’
- For the Divi Contact Form module, you need to input a different CSS Selector. Visit here to know more.
c) Assign Field Rules and Save It
- After adding value to the CSS Selector, explore other settings of the Date Time picker and apply them as required.
- The Date Time picker allows you to disable past dates; create a date slot using Minimum & Maximum Date. Change date format, disable weekdays, specific dates; show opening hours using the Minimum and Maximum Time option, and much more.
- Once defined the rules as required, scroll up to the CSS Selector and click Save. Then copy the Class name from CSS Selector and move to the next step.
Step 3 – Create a Booking Form Using the Form Builders
After you’ve created the date time picker field for the doctor appointment system, you need to create a booking form to get it to work.
If you’re using Contact Form 7, follow this tutorial to learn how to add a date time picker on Contact Form 7.
By following this particular blog post, you can learn how to convert input fields of WPForms into the date calendar and time picker.
And for the Divi theme builder, you can check out this tutorial to add a date picker in the Divi Contact Form module.
Upon following the step by step instructions properly, you’d be able to use the Date and Time Picker plugin as a doctor appointment booking system, just like the below illustration.
Do More With Date and Time Picker Pro
When you upgrade to the Date and Time Picker Pro you get more advanced features that can help you build an outstanding appointment form for your health business.
Features like more support to different contact form builders like Gravity Forms with automatic integration. You can also integrate your WordPress appointment booking with Google Calendar, Outlook, Airbnb, Booking.com, or any other tool that exports .ics file (URL).
Convert fields into a date range picker. So, users or patients can select multiple dates in a single booking for a recurring health treatment session.
Plus, it also includes options to style the date time picker completely to match the look and feel of the site and the form.
Get it today, and create a highly functional and beautiful appointment booking system for a doctor website with Date and Time Picker Pro.
