How to take appointments from your website
What online booking actually requires, what it changes about your day, and the three settings that decide whether it works.
Online booking is usually sold as a convenience for the customer. It is, but that is not why it is worth doing. It is worth doing because it captures the people who would otherwise have done nothing: the ones deciding at eleven at night, the ones who will not ring, the ones who would have called the next practice on the list because you were closed.
Decide what a slot means
This is the setting everything else follows from. For a dentist a slot is one chair for one appointment. For a restaurant it is a table with a party size. For a class it is a number of places. Getting this wrong is what produces double bookings, and it is not something software can infer for you.
Set hours you will actually honour
The most common failure is publishing hours that are aspirational. If Saturday is a maybe, do not list Saturday. A booking you have to ring back and move costs more goodwill than never having offered the time.
Decide who is told, and how fast
- The customer needs confirmation immediately, or they will assume it failed and book elsewhere.
- You need it somewhere you already look. An inbox you check twice a day is fine; a dashboard you remember weekly is not.
- Somebody has to own the response. Booking software does not answer questions about parking.
What it does not solve
No-shows. Online booking makes them slightly more likely, because the commitment is lower. A reminder the day before is the cheapest fix, and asking for a phone number is what makes it possible.
It also does not replace a phone number. Some people will always ring, and a page with only a form reads as a company avoiding its customers. Offer both and let them choose.