If you’re looking to build a web or mobile application that offers a booking or ticketing experience, you’ve come to the right place here at LaunchPad Lab. We specialize in building applications with a streamlined and integrated booking and ticketing experience, typically using Heroku as our development platform of choice.

In addition to our expertise in building digital products, we’re also a Salesforce partner, so we can help connect your app with all the necessary tools and services it needs to succeed. Today, we are going to take a look at the common architecture we utilize when building a booking experience. Continue reading to learn more, and book your free discovery call with our team today!

Booking Experience Architecture Graphic

Hosting

Heroku is a great platform for hosting booking experiences. It offers a variety of features and services out-of-the-box, such as autoscaling, top-notch security, and support for various third-party integrations. When building on Heroku, development teams can focus on what matters most: creating a unique digital experience. With our extensive experience in Heroku app development, we can help you take advantage of everything this platform has to offer and build a seamless experience for your users. Learn more about why we love building with Heroku!

Data Management

The first thing you’ll need to manage your application’s data is a database, such as PostgreSQL. This will be used to store all of the data associated with your bookings and tickets, including information on customers, reservations, and payment history.

For clients that use other products within the Salesforce ecosystem, we often connect everything through Heroku Connect. This allows us to keep data in sync between the various Salesforce products and our Heroku-based applications.

Business Logic

At LaunchPad, we follow an API-first approach to custom application development. The core logic powering a booking experience is typically handled by a Ruby on Rails application. An API layer is often created around the client’s booking and payment systems to provide a consistent experience for users across different platforms. A robust API facilitates building custom, intuitive interfaces that seamlessly integrate with any software needed to run and grow your business.

User Experience

The goal of a booking experience is to make it as easy as possible for users to book tickets or make reservations. While oftentimes booking experiences force you to create an account before you can make a purchase, our team has helped several clients simplify the process by offering a streamlined guest checkout experience, minimizing the steps and clicks needed to complete a transaction.

Booking experiences involve several key user interactions. From adding tickets to a cart to providing payment details, all interactions must not only be quick, but easy to navigate. For a more interactive and efficient checkout experience, we often build the view layer of our applications with React, a component-based library that provides increased speed and efficiency for building custom user interfaces.

Payment Processing Integration

In order to accept payments, the booking experience needs to integrate with a payment processing service. At LaunchPad Lab, our team often works with Spreedly, a payment orchestration platform that allows us to communicate with multiple payment gateways. This way, regardless of whether our client uses WorldPay, Vantiv, Elavon, or changes to a different payment processor in the future, we are able to leverage a flexible, shared payment solution and have it work for clients across the board.

Oftentimes the clients we work with have an existing relationship with a payment processor with its own integration. In this case, we can build custom integrations with processors, such as TSYS and FreedomPay. Our experienced team can help you choose the best payment integration based on your specific needs.

Common Payment Processing Tools

Booking Experiences We’ve Helped Build and Improve

Why Choose LaunchPad Lab for Building Booking Experiences?

We approach every project with a discovery phase where we partner with clients to learn about their business, their users, current issues, and what they hope to achieve with their digital product. This helps us create an actionable plan that we can execute on together.

If you’re interested in learning more about how our team can help you build a Heroku app with a booking experience tailored to your specific needs, book your free consultation call with our digital product agency today. We’ll chat about your project to see if we’re a good fit to work together!

 

Diana Camacho

Senior Developer

Like any good chemist, Diana loves to experiment and create new things. After completing her master’s in forensic chemistry, she decided to step out of the lab and apply her analytical skills to the exciting world of web development. In her spare time, Diana loves to cheer on the Chicago Cubs and is a big fan of musical theater. When not at her desk learning the latest web technologies, you can probably find her planning her next musical weekend getaway.

Reach Out

Ready to Build Something Great?

Partner with us to develop technology to grow your business.

Get our latest articles delivered to your inbox