Online booking for a taxi website: form, chat or app?

A passenger on your website at 11pm has two choices: book with you now, or go back to the search results. This guide compares the four ways to take bookings online, from a plain enquiry form to your own app, and sets out what each one needs behind it. By the end you'll know which suits your firm and what to ask a supplier before you pay for anything.

What are the options for online booking on a taxi website?

There are four, and they differ in how much work happens after the passenger presses the button.

A "Call us" button and a WhatsApp button are worth having on every page too. Neither is online booking, though. Each one just moves the passenger to a channel where somebody still has to take the job.

Is an enquiry form enough?

For a very small firm it's a start, but an enquiry form isn't a booking. The passenger doesn't know the price, and they don't know whether you've accepted the job until someone replies.

The gap shows at night. A form that arrives at 2am might not be read until 8am, by which time the passenger has booked elsewhere or missed their train. A form email in somebody's inbox isn't your booking record either. Section 56 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 says an operator outside London must record the particulars of every booking before the journey, in the form the council sets, so someone still has to type each enquiry into your booking system once it's agreed.

If you keep a form, reply to every one quickly, give the price in the reply, and treat the job as booked only once the passenger confirms.

What does an instant booking form need?

A booking form that quotes and books on the spot needs nine things behind it. Miss one and you're back to a person sorting it out by hand.

1. Fixed prices the form can look up. Zone-to-zone or route prices that you set, so the quote on screen is the fare you'd quote on the phone. Our guide to taxi zone pricing explains how to build the list.
2. Address lookup. Let the passenger type a postcode and pick their address. The GOV.UK Design System recommends exactly this pattern, with a manual option for addresses that are missing or not listed properly. Royal Mail's Postcode Address File holds more than 32 million UK delivery addresses. If you use Google's address search instead, Google has charged by use above a free monthly allowance for each service since 1 March 2025, so check the price list.
3. A date and a clock time. Pre-booked work needs a real pickup time. Set the shortest notice you'll accept online.
4. Passengers, luggage and vehicle needs. Include wheelchair-accessible vehicles and child seats as options, so the right car goes.
5. Extras the passenger ticks for themselves. Meet and greet, extra waiting, a bigger car. The Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 say a pre-ticked box on a website doesn't count as consent to an extra payment, so leave every extra unticked.
6. The total price and a clear button. Show the total directly before the passenger books, and label the button so it's plain that pressing it commits them to pay.
7. A way to pay. Card on the page or a secure payment link, or "pay the driver" if you allow it. Our guide to card payments for taxi bookings covers the safe ways.
8. An instant confirmation. A text and an email the moment they book, with the date, time, pickup, destination and price.
9. A booking record. The booking has to land in your booking system with every field your council's conditions ask for, not just in an inbox.

What do consumer rules say about booking a taxi online?

Most of the distance-selling information rules don't apply to taxi journeys. Two rules that do apply shape your booking page, and a third shapes your cancellation terms.

Regulation 7(3) of the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 takes passenger transport services out of most of Part 2. It keeps regulation 14(1) to (5), which covers orders placed online. Under it, you must show the passenger the main details of the service and the total price clearly, directly before they order. They must explicitly acknowledge that the order means paying, and if the order is placed by pressing a button, the button has to be labelled "order with obligation to pay" or something just as unambiguous. On a booking page that means a label like "Book and pay", not "Submit" or "Next". If you get this wrong, regulation 14(5) says the passenger isn't bound by the order.

The pre-ticked box rule sits in regulation 40, and it applies to taxi bookings too. Any extra you charge for needs the passenger's express consent.

On cancellations, regulation 27(2)(c) says the cancellation rights in Part 3 don't apply to contracts for passenger transport services. So there's no 14-day cooling-off period for a taxi booked online, and your own cancellation terms apply. Show them before the passenger books, in plain words: how late they can cancel for free, and what happens after that.

Should a taxi website use a chat assistant instead of a form?

A chat assistant is a good addition to a form, not a replacement for it. Some passengers know exactly what they want and fill in a form straight away. Others want to ask "can you take four of us and a dog to Heathrow on Sunday?" and get an answer.

The test for a chat assistant is simple: does it book, or does it only answer questions? One that answers questions and then says "please ring us" is an FAQ page in a box. One that takes the details, quotes your fixed price and writes the booking is doing the job of a form and a controller together. Our guide to the taxi booking chatbot sets out what one should do and how to test it before your passengers do.

Do you need a passenger app for online booking?

Not to start with. A booking page works in any phone's browser, with nothing for the passenger to download, and that matters for a one-off airport run.

An app earns its place when you've got lots of passengers who book again and again. It also brings costs and work a booking page doesn't. On iPhone, Apple says its Developer Program is 99 USD per membership year, and an organisation enrolling needs a D-U-N-S number. On Android, Google charges a US$25 one-time registration fee for a Play developer account. Then each app needs updating and passing store review. Our guides to the passenger app for a local taxi firm and to publishing a taxi app on the App Store and Google Play go through that in detail.

How do you get passengers to use your booking page?

Put it where they already are. Ofcom's Online Nation report found smartphones accounted for 77% of the time UK adults spent online in May 2025, so test every step on a phone with one thumb before anything else.

• A "Book online" button at the top of every page, visible without scrolling on a phone
• The same link on your Google Business Profile, so people who find you on the map can book there
• The link in your away message, your voicemail greeting and your booking confirmations
• Prices for your most common journeys shown on the page, so people can see the fare before they start

Our guide to building a taxi website that gets bookings covers the rest of the site.

Dispatch AI is booking and dispatch software for taxi and private hire firms. It gives you an online booking page and a chat assistant for your website, with your fixed prices, and every booking lands in the same system as your phone bookings.