Introducing... Day Passes

Before jumping straight into the details of our latest feature release, I wanted to kick things off by means of an anecdote.

A few months ago we decided to do a get-out-of-our-office-and-into-someone-else's-office day. After all, as purveyors of some of the finest and freshest workspace software in the known universe, we thought that it was important to get out of our plant-filled haven of an HQ and into some alternative workspaces. So we sprung it on the team, giving them the mission of finding a coworking space to work out of for the day and spread them between Bristol and London. And we were surprised by the results. It was pretty hard work to find spaces that offered day passes to spontaneous digital nomads such as ourselves via their websites. Jak, my fellow co-founder and CEO at Habu, even dropped by one space in London that told him that they’d recently stopped doing day passes as it was just too much admin work to make it worthwhile. But being lovely people, they let him work there anyway!

Having had many hundreds of conversations with coworking founders and community managers around the world we know how important it is to maximize the utilization of your space. Perhaps even more important for building a robust enduring community, is having an active list of potential new members who know your space and want to be part of your workplace community when the time's right for them.

There are many ways to achieve this, but one great way is by offering day passes as an easily purchasable product. Day passes are a way for prospective members who might have initial membership plan commitment issues, even after they’ve had that vital free day. Day passes suit freelancers who are on the move but want to feel like they have a great workspace whenever they return to town. They even work for coworking software errants such as ourselves. It’s not a strategy that works for all, but I think we’d all agree that the wonderful world of coworking isn’t a one-size-fits-all kinda place!

With that in mind, we’ve been hard at work developing a feature set that includes day passes, other workspace products that may or may not include space allowances, and the ability to have your own branded shopping cart to embed in your website while linking to Habu.

We quietly released the admin portion of day passes and products recently without any fanfare, as we wanted to announce them in conjunction with Habu’s online sales experience because they fit hand in glove.

Now, as a space admin, you can create fully customizable products, be they day passes, class passes, meeting room packages, or bananas and coffee cups. Once you’ve created them, you can sell them on your website via our Habu shopping cart or add them directly to a member's account yourself.

Below we go over each feature in a little more depth. After talking about the features, we’ll tell you a little bit about our approach to this feature set and update you on a couple of changes.

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Day Passes and Products

Habu has always supported various ways for space admins to sell things to and charge your contacts. Things such as recurring membership subscriptions, plan options and add-ons, bookings and custom charges. But these methods always had limitations that we’ve wanted to overcome.

For example, memberships and plan options only allow for monthly billing cycles, and custom charges can’t have allowances tied to them.

Now, with day passes and products, you can create any saleable item you want, add quantities, tie it to a set of allowances (or not), and set an expiry date if that’s the way you roll.

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Online Sales

While day passes and products are incredibly powerful tools for admins, we’ve always wanted to enable greater autonomy for your members and other space users. With our latest feature release, you can sell day passes and products directly on your website via your own white-labeled Habu shopping cart system.

The process is simple. When setting up a new day pass or product, set its availability to public, copy the button code, and add it to your website. Habu handles the rest, from account creation to payment.

We opted against creating an overblown shopping website for Habu customers like some other platforms out there. We know you already have a website. We know you want the experience for your members to be as seamless as possible when it comes to the software you use to manage your space. We also know it’s your direct relationship with your members and customers that matter. Our light-weight product link and shopping cart experience lets your members be more autonomous, saves you time and energy, as well as enables you to retain control over your brand experience.

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User Experience Matters

We care about user experience. A lot. At a personal level, crumby user experience drives me away from using software all the time. I think one of the marks of great user experience is one that makes doing complex things simple and in the fewest steps possible. And as a team, that’s our ethos and approach with Habu.

This latest feature release is no exception to that. It takes admins seconds to create complex products. Even more importantly, the shopping cart experience for your customers is as good as it gets. It’s quick and intuitive while providing notifications and key info such as detailed instructions on how to use the product. And, as always with Habu, this is wrapped in a security conscious framework.

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Next Steps for Habu

This is only the beginning of enabling greater member and space user autonomy, but it’s the foundation of what’s to come. In the coming weeks we’ll be working on member plan self-signup, plan invitations, and better member account management. We’ll also be adding more global payment gateways for users that are based in non-Stripe countries. In the next several months we’ll begin working on automated member check-ins via your wifi network and integrating with door access control systems.

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P.S. New Login Screen

As a minor but lovely update, we’ve rebuilt the Habu login screen in keeping with the Habu shopping cart design. The most important thing about it is that you can add a beautiful photo of your space to make it sparkle for your team and your members.   

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By the time you read this, we’ll already be hard at work on our next set of essential features for shared workspaces. But before you go, I want to leave you with a thought. Think about this: time is the one resource we can’t get more of. This means finding ways to save time is really the only way to ‘make’ more time. I can confidently say that Habu has transformed the ways our customers run their spaces and continues to save them dozens of hours per month, meaning Habu is creating more time for them in a tangible, practical sense. That’s more time to spend with their members. More time to spend keeping the space clean and inviting. More time to do marketing. More time to be inspired.

So if that sounds good to you, why not sign up for a free Habu trial and get started?