Are there any e-commerce platforms that are specifically designed with 'time-based' businesses in mind?
Your 'average' e-commerce platform seems to have stock control of items based around a simple process of availability. You create your product, allocate various attributes, tell the system how many you have and let the site manage your stock availability. And once you've sold everything you have in stock, that item becomes unavailable until you replenish your stocks or an item is returned and moved to available stock.
Where a 'time-based' business differs is that you're not selling a physical product, but instead selling the time that the product is available for. Generally speaking this will need to be done around a calendar-based system where you can show customers the time periods that are available and block off those that have been purchased so you can work out what you have available and for what periods of time.
Are there any platforms out there that will allow this flexbility?
Ideally I'll need the customers to be able to select their chosen duration from a calendar that feeds directly into the availability system - that way they can only select a period that is available and once they have chosen their time period that is reflected in the availability shown for that particular 'product'.
I guess it will also need to be clever enough to deal with having multiple examples of an identical 'product' and work out the best way to allocate the availability around the purchased usage periods, rather than this having to be done manually.
To me this seems horrendously complicated, but I'm assuming that with plenty of businesses that revolve around availability of a product being 'time' rather than physical stock (hotels, car rental, restaurants, etc) there's got to be something out there somewhere - it's just that I don't know where to look!
NB. I'm no programmer and have zero experience with designing websites and/or coding for them, so whatever I use will need to be easy enough for a simpleton like me to tinker with.
Your 'average' e-commerce platform seems to have stock control of items based around a simple process of availability. You create your product, allocate various attributes, tell the system how many you have and let the site manage your stock availability. And once you've sold everything you have in stock, that item becomes unavailable until you replenish your stocks or an item is returned and moved to available stock.
Where a 'time-based' business differs is that you're not selling a physical product, but instead selling the time that the product is available for. Generally speaking this will need to be done around a calendar-based system where you can show customers the time periods that are available and block off those that have been purchased so you can work out what you have available and for what periods of time.
Are there any platforms out there that will allow this flexbility?
Ideally I'll need the customers to be able to select their chosen duration from a calendar that feeds directly into the availability system - that way they can only select a period that is available and once they have chosen their time period that is reflected in the availability shown for that particular 'product'.
I guess it will also need to be clever enough to deal with having multiple examples of an identical 'product' and work out the best way to allocate the availability around the purchased usage periods, rather than this having to be done manually.
To me this seems horrendously complicated, but I'm assuming that with plenty of businesses that revolve around availability of a product being 'time' rather than physical stock (hotels, car rental, restaurants, etc) there's got to be something out there somewhere - it's just that I don't know where to look!
NB. I'm no programmer and have zero experience with designing websites and/or coding for them, so whatever I use will need to be easy enough for a simpleton like me to tinker with.
