Have you recently started up a brand or have a company that deals in inflatables and bounce houses? Then certainly you are at the right place! Through this article, we will walk through how to make your brand more valuable and attractive to customers.

Before getting into the details, let’s talk about the basics first!

Inventory Tracking Management 

That’s right! You have ownership of your inventory! It’s given that you should know where each of your possessions is being rented out. Keep a record of all the rental customers, their addresses, contact information etc. This is where your Online Rental Booking platform comes in. Make sure you have everything you need in order to locate them. To make it easier, you can also give your customers a decided time period within which they are bound to return the inflatable bounce house. If you have a bigger budget, you can put trackers in each of the inflatables as sometimes customers may set them up in remote locations like camping sites, so this way, you’ll be sure where your products are being used.

Promotions and Marketing Strategies

Marketing and publicizing your product is essentially what will get you the orders. It’s pretty obvious that if you don’t market or promote your product, people will simply not know about it. You need to invest more towards marketing your product to people, and if you are a startup with a limited budget, you can go for the cross promotion where you can advertise your inflatables in newspapers and articles and share deals through the flyers on children’s parties, party supply stores,  etc. And as you advance in your business, you can also up your promotion game by slowly proceeding to television and youtube ads.

Placing Orders Online

Another important thing you need is the ease of order placement within your company. A feasible and fast way to do that is by establishing a secure link online that records and keeps track of all your orders. You can form a website and add this feature where customers can place online orders and also check out other products from your brand. Additionally, make sure your rental calendar is updated so that your clients can know what dates and products are available for them to make their purchases. Ideally, online reservation benefits your return on investments, a goal that every brand wishes to achieve, but not many are aware of this technique.

Accepting Online Payments for Your Rental Bookings

If you want your brand to make excessive sales, then you must add this feature to your bookings and reservation processes. Make sure you add the option of online payments. It’s not always necessary that your customers be close to your headquarters, and definitely, upfront cash payments would be a problem. This can lead to those potential customers opting for other options with a more flexible payment process. This will have you losing customers and lowering sales; that’s why make sure you have that option installed in case upfront payment is not possible for your client.

Sales Igniter offers this in the form of a deposit to reserve, so the customer can pay a percentage up front and the rest when they come to collect their order or after the return is completed. 

How Can You Accept Refundable Security Deposits?

Security deposits are essential when you rent out your products because they ensure that they will be returned to you safely. Not just with Inflatables and Bounce Houses but all rental items that are provided to the customer need to have a security deposit, so in a case where the product gets lost or damaged while rented, it can all be paid for by the customer. However, security deposits are refundable if there is no damage to the product after it has been used. Once it’s back safely to the owners, the security deposit must be returned to the customer.

Now, there are two ways you can refund a security deposit;

• Since you would already have an online payment system, you will be charging rent for the inflatables through a credit card. With the same credit card, you will add up the security deposit amount with the rental amount and charge for all of it. Once your customers give you the inflatables back, you can refund them later.
• The second option you have is to save your customer’s credit card information using a token. In the admin area, you can then charge the customer’s credit card if necessary using that saved information. The credit card number, expiration date, and security code are not actually stored on your server. This reduced risk for you, and this method is many times preferable to first charging a security deposit and then later as there may be credit card processing discount rates associated with that method. 

How Can You Design Rental Contract Signatures?

It’s pretty simple, but first, we must understand what it is. Essentially, a rental contract highlights the responsibilities of the tenant and the owner during the period of the lease. This document outlines all the rules and regulations clearly so that there is no confusion between both parties at any given time. This document also clearly states the details and information about the Inflatables and Bounce House being rented, the period of the lease and the amount payable by the individual renting out your product.

When a contract is signed, both parties are bound to follow everything in the documents and move according to what is decided. Breaking the contract can be a breach of law.

What should be included in the contract?

• The decided period of the lease
• The fee is decided per day/month.
• The scheduled payment date
• Security deposit value
• Facilities and amenities that are accessible to the rentee
• Name of rentee and all their contact details
• Name of the owner and contact details
• Details about the rental products
• The agreed payment method (whether online or upfront)
• Policies, stipulations, penalties
• Conditions that come if the rental products are defective or damaged

Watch our video on rental contract signatures to see how it all works. We also have a free rental contract template available.

Useful Tips

While you are at it, design the contracts in a way that they can be dealt with online. This will save you a lot of time and effort that is used up in sending and receiving official documents. Add a signature feature to the bounce house rental software you are using so that the contract can also be easily signed.

Make Sure that the Website’s Search Engine is Optimized

Ranking well on SEO is very crucial for any site. When your website is shown in the top searches of the internet, it is more likely that people will click on it rather than surf further and invest excessive time. Therefore, when you develop a website, ensure that you write catchy and precise meta information for the page so that more people click on it. 

Here are the essentials, especially as it applies to your rental software booking system:

Meta Tags

The meta tag is basically a phrase or a statement that describes what the site or the document holds. All the information in the document is summarized into a short 150-character sentence that attracts people to click on your link.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is adding direct links into the document to match what you are writing and a set of hyperlinks that would redirect you to another resource. This helps your audience understand your content better and attach more accessibility and authenticity to your document. It is more feasible for the audience as they wouldn’t have to search it up online and waste time.

Loading Speed

Loading speed refers to the time taken to download a page. It is often measured in seconds, but it will take more time if the website isn’t updated well. In essence, if your site isn’t downloaded fast, your audience will likely leave and go for other options. Therefore, keep updating your site and check out for bugs and glitches that arise unexpectedly. You can check your loading speed using tools such as Page Speed Insights by Google or GTMetrix. 

Are There Different Delivery Fee Calculation Methods?

Definitely, the delivery fee calculation methods vary. For example, there are fixed rates for certain inflatables with the same weight; distance rates depend on how far the event site is. If it’s very far, then there are additional charges added to the cost, and table rates depend on how much your customer is willing to rent out. 

Setting Up a Multi-Vendor Site

A multi-vendor site is basically an online store or a marketplace on the internet where third-party sellers can promote and sell their products. Picture it as a massive retail shop where numerous vendors create their own accounts and manage those themselves.

Advertising and promoting products on a multi-vendor site is an excellent way to boost sales; you can upload bulk products at once and keep gaining profit. Additionally, you can work on multiple deals at once. Setting up your own multi-vendor website will allow you to create your own niche and target a specific audience to visit you in an era where e-commerce has been growing in popularity. There are two important things that you should consider;

If You Have the Time and Resources to Start Up

Analyze your routine, the amount of help you have and the number of resources you need to start your entire journey from scratch. Of course, don’t jump into something that doesn’t seem possible for you because it will only stress you out. However, to fulfill this factor, you need to evaluate your time you have available, financial backing, and effort.

Time To Market

Aside from having a physical store at a valuable location, you can also set up your brand on multiple vendor websites or marketplaces on the internet. Nowadays, online shopping is more convenient for people and it’s also widely used so it’s a guaranteed sales opportunity that your business can avail at a short price. Moreover, marketing your products online on social media platforms is also a very neat alternative. So even if you’re starting a new venture, setting camp both online and in person will have you enter markets in no time.

This is Where Sales Igniter Comes In! 

Sales Igniter is a web-based system that can manage your inventories and market your inflatable bounce houses at the right place to the right people. Numerous brands are looking for a site that can precisely give them the facilities that they need, and that’s where Sales Igniter comes in. 

A complete solution that offers:

• Easy management for all your inflatable products and additional products that you sell
• Uploading and downloading spreadsheets of your inflatable products inventory, order data and descriptions in bulk.
• A timely update on the rental calendar lets your customers know when and what time your products are available to rent.
• Sorting of your products from the most rented to children’s favorites etc. All are ranked according to the data in the spreadsheet where all the data is stored.
• Professionally designed templates – ready to go and referrals to designers who can customize them for you.

Looking for a web based system to both market your inflatable bounce house business and manage your inventory? How about allowing your customers to book their bounce castles online? Sales Igniter Reservation System features:

• Easy management of your inflatable bounce castles, water slides, concessions, and even for sale type products
• Mass upload and download spreadsheets of your inflatable products inventory, descriptions, and order data
• Customers can browse all your inflatable party rental products online and book reservations seeing what rooms or properties are available on the rental calendar. Complete E-commerce backend
• Sort your store by custom inflatable product attributes like how many children can use it at once, if it is for both children and adults, size, etc.
• Ready to go professional design templates, as well as referrals to designers who can customize it for you

Live Demo

View more about our Inflatable Party Rental Online Reservation Booking System.

Should I Choose Magento 2 or WordPress / WooCommerce?

We really like both solutions. Magento 2 is more for bigger businesses that may have multiple locations and a larger budget for customizing their rental booking system. WordPress / WooCommerce Bookings Plugin is great for businesses that have one location and a smaller budget to invest in their web site.

What Are My Other Alternatives?

Checkout how we compare to:

Point of Rental

Rentman