AlleyTrak version 5.54.0 Introduces the CardConnect Payment Gateway, New Features for Booking Questions, Package Price Scaling Controls, and Enhancements to User Experience and User Interface
CardConnect Payment Gateway
We're excited to roll out CardConnect as our 5th payment gateway available in AlleyTrak. CardConnect, part of FirstData/Fiserv, will enable businesses to consolidate the services they use for payment processing all under one roof. With the CardConnect integration we've added in the ability to issue refunds for payments through the AlleyTrak Admin panel.
Booking Questions: Per-Lane Questions
We've extended Booking Questions to allow you to ask questions based on the number of lanes being booked. When configuring your questions, you can now configure “How to Ask This Questions” as either: “Once Per Party”, “Per Guest/Participant”, or “Per Lane”.
This new option will enable you to collect additional information for bookings that may be pertinent per lane.
Package Price Scaling
We've added a new control to Packages, which allows you to determine if additional charges should be applied to the order if the event books additional time. For example, you may have a Cosmic Bowling package that allows customers to book between 1-3 hours. Ultimately you may want to charge the same amount if the customer books 1-hour or 3-hours.
With this setting, packages will continue to charge the appropriate amount for additional lanes purchased, but if you disable “price scaling”, AlleyTrak will not charge for additional time purchased. This setting is enabled/disabled per-package, and can be managed in the package settings.
User Experience Enhancements
We've taken some time to review and improve the customer checkout experience. We want to ensure that the booking process is very intuitive for customers and that the look-and-feel of the booking process is up-to-date and reflects well on you and your business.
With that in mind, we've made some fairly significant improvements to the user experience, creating more consistency in the look-and-feel while also giving AlleyTrak a fresh coat of paint.
Some notable changes include:
Package Addons User Experience
One of our major initiatives for the first half of 2023 is to improve the booking experience and management process for Order Addons. In last week's update we added a new Addons reporting dashboard. In this week's update we took our first step at revamping the customer checkout experience for Package Addons.
With this change, we've started to streamline the checkout process for the customer. Previously, customers would select a package, then their package addons, then they could add “global addons” to their order. This created multiple steps, which we wanted to simplify.
Package Addons now display within the same checkout page as general addons. This means the customer can select their package, then proceed to add any addons both “package addons” or “global addons”.
With this change, we also greatly improve the user experience for customers who are starting the booking process with a package direct link, for a package that has package addons available. Previously, the application would load and route the customer directly to the package addons, which could be confusing in some instances.
General Style Changes
We've made some general style changes which reflect a more modern look and feel. With this you will see rounded corners, and an extra splash of colors in drop-downs, and buttons to make call-to-actions a bit more eye-catching.
The available time slots have also been updated to display as a button list, as opposed to a text-based listing with a selection button on the right-hand side. This makes both the viewing and selection more straightforward.
On-Site Integration
We've made some significant changes to our on-site integration tool to provide a better user experience. Instead of having AlleyTrak fly-out and pin to the left-hand-side of the page, the AlleyTrak booking portal will open up in the center of the page similar to a modal dialog on a page.
Background Images
We've added a new control which allows you to set a background image that is displayed within the application. This provides a more welcoming experience, and allows for a bit of additional branding by your organization. The Background Image can be configured in Settings > App Settings. From the settings, you can pick from a few curated images, or upload your own.