Tuesday, October 27th, 2020 .

Waitlist Me’s Pro & Platinum subscriptions offer more opportunities to tailor the customer experience to fit your brand image and messaging by allowing custom HTML to be added to key touchpoints. You can customize several of the views customers see when scheduling a reservation or joining the waitlist as well as the views of the public waitlist they can see while waiting and after they have been served.  

Add Yourself – When using the Add Yourself features on the main web widget and kiosk views, you can include a block of HTML to the page to display rich-formatted text and images. On the main view before customers enter the information you might provide information about rules for scheduling, requirements for entering your business, or anything else that might be helpful to customers when joining your waitlist or making a reservation. You can also add different HTML to the confirmation page that customers view after they add their info and submit their request. Helpful information here might include a link to a restaurant’s menu or a store’s catalog, so people can browse and make selections while they wait. 

You can add plain text, HTML, links, and/or pictures. Make changes by logging in to www.waitlist.me and  going to Account > Settings > Add Yourself. In the Main View section, there’s a link for Edit HTML; use this for the main widget view. Further down on the Add Yourself settings page there’s an option for Confirmation & Approval. There you’ll see another link for Edit HTML; use this for the confirmation page.

Public Waitlist Page – When you add customers to the waitlist or they add themselves remotely, there is an option to send them a confirmation text with a link to the Public Waitlist page. Custom HTML can be added to the bottom of this page for customers to view while they wait. Details about sales, links to menus/catalogs, or instructions for signing up for a rewards program could all be a great way to help customers pass the time while they are waiting. 

Public Waitlist Custom HTML Statuses – Once you’ve notified a customer that you’re ready for them, the table view of the public waitlist will no longer be visible and a graphic showing a ‘Ready!’ sign will appear. After customers are checked off the list, they’ll see a ‘Thank You’ picture. Change one or both of these to your own pictures by going to Account > Settings > Public Waitlist > Colors & Custom HTML > HTML Statuses. You can also customize the status text that appears in the boxes at the top of these views. See more details here.

Tip! Custom HTML allows you to include images that are hosted on your website or another location. If you need a service to host your images, we suggest checking out Cloudinary or Imgbb

Full-page Custom HTML Display – For the ultimate options in customization, the Platinum subscription offers the ability to fully re-create the web widget and kiosk views using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You’ll need a web developer to use these features. You can change all the visual elements of the view while still taking advantage of the structured data elements and key features like the wait estimates. And of course, you can add your personalized branding throughout each screen customers see in the process of joining the waitlist and scheduling reservations. This page has more information on these options. 

Monday, September 20th, 2021 .

Waitlist Me makes reservations and appointments simple with intuitive calendar and list views. It’s easy to schedule and manage your customers in our iOS and Android apps or from a browser on our website.   

The Pro & Platinum levels of our service offer greater flexibility and control over scheduling rules, including setting business hours, adding party limits, and blocking off whole days, among other features. We recently added a few more customization options to these calendar views to increase the efficiency of some activities.

Now it is even easier to find openings by room and by group size. You can choose to view this information next to the table names for quick reference by pressing the people and the room icons in the header bar. The group size and room name will then be visible in the column headers under each table name.

You can also sort the order of the table columns by these new dimensions using the ‘Sort by’ option on the top left. Choose to sort by rooms if you know you want to fill one room before moving to another. Sort by size to quickly find all the tables large enough for each party as you’re entering reservations. Use the ‘More’ option on the upper right of the sorting menu to add a secondary sort criteria and whether to display in ascending or descending order.

One additional improvement is being able to see the names of scheduled customers in the daily calendar view time blocks. If more than one customer is scheduled for a given time and table, just tap the box to see the details.

If you haven’t updated your reservation settings recently, we would also recommend going through this page to see some of the other features and personalization options.

Tuesday, February 10th, 2015 .

Where did NoshList go? It is now Waitlist Me. But don’t worry, everything you loved about NoshList is still there, plus a lot more.

As more and more businesses from all types of industries have been signing up to manage their waitlists, reservations, and appointments, we decided having a name that was broader and less tied to food would be better. As Waitlist Me, we are excited about all the opportunities for helping people that are waiting everywhere.

The road to Waitlist Me was paved with a number of features and user experience improvements. It started with enhancements for customized notifications and waitlist views. Table management was made more flexible so customers could also be assigned to people or other resources. Later, more prioritization was put on features such as reservations and appointments that were essential to many businesses. Finally, we invested more resources into making Waitlist Me cross-platform, so it would work on iPads, iPhones, Android tablets and phones, and even computers.

Being truly cross-platform is key to bringing the services to businesses everywhere. Some businesses don’t have Wi-Fi or have concerns using an iPad because of possible damage or theft. Now, even businesses with computers plugged into the Internet can use WaitList Me for their waitlists and reservations. The Android app also runs nicely on Clover, which is revolutionizing the way businesses think about POS systems.

In addition to the name change, we have redesigned and improved our iPhone and Android phone apps, and made a number of usability improvements in our tablet apps and online waitlist. Waitlist Me is also launching with a few powerful new features, such as the post-visit feedback surveys. Premium users can now customize and enable feedback surveys to go out after customer visits. Customers can easily send quick numerical ratings back in text messages or take surveys to rate their experiences in more detail, leave comments, an even request a manager to contact them about their visit.

Waitlist Me is also rolling out its first major API integration with Enplug, a company that helps businesses better engage their customers with smart digital signage devices and software.

More details on these new features will be coming soon.

Tuesday, May 6th, 2014 .

We are happy to announce the latest version of the NoshList iPad waitlist app along with a host of new features that let restaurants improve their guest experience and their operational efficiencies. Redesigned for iOS 7, the new app makes it easier to organize a waitlist and remember guest preferences with better notes and sortable statuses. Table management has never been easier with customizable table selectors, and the ETA feature lets restaurants keep track of same-day call aheads. There are also a lot of other enhancements to the user experience and look and feel. Check out the tutorial video below to see how it works:

 

With the new Quick Notes feature, restaurants can define as many pre-set notes as they would like to appear when a hostess is adding a party to the waitlist. It’s great for common events, such as birthdays and anniversaries, or popular customer preferences, like dietary restrictions. The notes can be viewed in the waitlist for easy reference and can be synched across all devices a restaurant might have.

quicknotes image

 

A restaurant can also customize the table numbers that appear in a spinner for simple table assignment when customers are seated or added to the waitlist. Table management is a natural extension of running a waitlist, and we have made it much easier to assign and track table numbers in the new NoshList app.

table eta

 

The new app also integrates other features into the main waitlist view in more seamless ways. Seated history shows below the current list and can be toggled on and off. Parties that have an estimated arrival time are grouped below those with a quoted time, and people that add themselves to the list show up at the top with special highlighting to alert the hostess.

Tuesday, January 15th, 2019 .

For businesses looking to automate more of the reservation acceptance process, Waitlist Me has new ways to restrict how many reservations you accept by day and by hour. With a Waitlist Me Proo subscription, you can set reservation limits on the number of groups and people that you’d like on an hourly and daily basis. For example, if you don’t want any more than 4 groups to schedule themselves per hour, you can quickly set up that rule.

Simply press the gear icon in the app and head to Add Yourself > Scheduling Rules. Choose a day and you will be able to set the maximum number of people and groups you’ll allow by day and by hour.  There are four different options, but you can pick and choose the ones that work for your goals in managing capacity at your business. You can avoid having too many people schedule at the same time without all the work of tracking the usage of every single table at your restaurant or resource at your business. You can use the Copy Rules button at the bottom to apply these rules to every day, or set up each day separately.

That’s it! Your rules will apply to self scheduling done through the Web Widget and Kiosk, where customers will see a message when there isn’t availability for a particular time or day.  They wouldn’t be able to book that time, but could still check other times.

The rules will also trigger warnings within the Waitlist Me app if you try to schedule above the limit to make it easier to know when you might be overbooked.  Though it won’t block you from scheduling above the limits for cases where you know you can handle the booking.