How to get more bookings from your website.

Make the first screen ask for the booking

On a phone, the first screen should say what you offer and where, and show the booking button without any scrolling. The button should say what it does: "Book a cleaning" or "Check availability" works; "Submit" and "Learn more" do not.

If your booking tool can show real availability, put the next open time near the button. A visitor who sees a free slot tomorrow has a reason to book now. If it cannot, say how soon you usually have space. Some people want to pick a time online and others want to call, so show both, with the one most customers use first.

Put the booking route on every page

Many visitors never see your home page. They arrive on a service page from a search or a landing page from an ad, and each of those pages needs the same booking button with the same words. Use one label everywhere: if the header says "Book now", a service page says "Request a visit" and the footer says "Contact us", visitors wonder whether these are different things.

On phones, keep the button in a bar that stays on screen as people scroll. Add a second one at the end of each service page, where a reader has just made up their mind.

Ask for less

Every field is a reason to stop. A booking request usually needs a name, a phone number or email, the service and a preferred time. Anything else can wait. Questions you need answered before a first visit can go in a short form sent with the confirmation.

Let people pick a time from a list instead of typing one, and check that the phone can fill in their name and email by itself. Then fill the form in yourself on a phone, with the keyboard covering half the screen.

Answer the questions that stop a booking

People hesitate over the same few things: what it costs, how long it takes, what happens at a first visit, whether they can cancel and where to park. Answer them on the service page, next to the button. Few people go looking for an FAQ page halfway through booking.

A clear cancellation policy next to the button answers the worry of booking too early. Your inbox shows which other questions come up most. A chatbot can answer them at any hour from information you approve and take the booking request in the same conversation, as a booking chatbot does.

Make the booking route fast on a phone

A slow booking page loses people who had already decided. Booking widgets from other companies are often the heaviest thing on the page, so load them only on the page that needs them.

Test the whole route on a phone over mobile data: the service page, the button, the form and the confirmation. Fix the slowest step first. Then try it inside the Instagram and Facebook apps, because visitors from ads book in the browser those apps open, and some booking widgets behave differently there.

Reply fast and confirm at once

If bookings are requests you confirm by hand, speed decides many of them. A request that waits until tomorrow may already be booked somewhere else. Send an instant confirmation that says when you will be in touch, and alert the person who confirms bookings. Give one person that job each day, with a named backup for days off.

If your booking tool can confirm real slots online, use that. Every step you remove is one fewer place to drop out. Booking automation can then copy each booking into your calendar and records, where your booking tool's API allows.

Use reminders to cut no-shows

A no-show wastes a slot that someone else could have booked. Send a reminder the day before with the time, the address, anything to bring and a link to move or cancel. If your booking tool can send text messages, use them for reminders, because many people read a text sooner than an email.

A cancellation the day before can be filled. A no-show cannot. Making it easy to move a booking turns some no-shows into cancellations you can use.

Find where people drop off

Count each step: visits to a service page, taps on the booking button, forms started and bookings finished. The biggest gap between two steps is where to work next. Look at phones and computers separately, because a step that works on a laptop can fail on a phone.

Most analytics tools can count these steps as events without recording who the visitor is. Book something yourself every month too, because a broken form sends nobody an error. The bookings just stop.

Ask people who phoned instead of booking online what stopped them. Their answer usually points at the step to fix. We build websites with the booking route checked on real phones before launch.