A Booking Flow With Six Steps

The flow

A service business with online booking. Six screens between a visitor deciding to book and the appointment existing.

Choose a service. Choose a staff member. Choose a date and time. Create an account. Enter details. Confirm.

Twenty-three required fields in total, including a password, a full address, and a question about how they heard about the business.

Roughly a third of the people who started the flow completed it.

Where they left

Not evenly, which is the useful finding.

A small number left at service selection, mostly people who had arrived by mistake.

A larger group left at staff selection, because they had no basis for choosing and no option to say it did not matter.

The largest group by far left at account creation, which was the fourth screen and the first that asked for something rather than offering something.

Almost nobody who reached the final screen failed to complete, which tells you the problem was entirely in the middle.

The four items doing the damage

• Account creation before booking.
• Staff choice with no no-preference option.
• A full address for an in-store service.
• Marketing questions inside the flow.

Each was added by somebody with a reason. The account was for repeat bookings, the staff choice because some customers have a preference, the address for records, and the marketing question because somebody wanted to know.

Account creation is the expensive one

Worth isolating, since it costs the most and is defended the most.

Requiring an account before an appointment exists asks somebody to commit to a relationship before receiving anything.

It also introduces a password, which is a genuine obstacle: people have to invent one, they will forget it, and a proportion will abandon rather than deal with it.

The stated reason is nearly always managing repeat bookings, which is a real benefit that arrives after the first appointment rather than before it.

Offer the account afterwards, on the confirmation screen, once somebody has something to log in for.

The people who want it will take it, and the people who do not will still have booked.

A worked example

The business rebuilt the flow to three screens.

Choose a service and a time on one screen, with a no-preference option added for staff. Name, phone, and email on the second. Confirm on the third.

Seven required fields instead of twenty-three.

The address was collected at the appointment, the marketing question moved to the confirmation email as optional, and the account was offered after booking.

Completion rose from around a third to over two thirds.

The information they had been collecting up front was still collected, just later, and the account signups fell only slightly because the people who wanted one still created it.

The test for every field

One question, applied field by field.

Is this needed to hold the appointment.

A name, a way to contact them, and the slot are needed. Almost nothing else is.

An address is needed if you are travelling to them and not otherwise. A password is never needed to hold an appointment.

Everything else can be asked afterwards, in the confirmation, or at the visit, where the person is already committed and answering is no longer a barrier.

Apply the same question to every screen: does this screen have to exist before the appointment does.

Steps and fields are different problems

A distinction worth making, since the fix differs.

Screens cost more than fields, because each one is a decision point where somebody can stop and reconsider.

Combining two screens with three fields each into one screen with six fields is usually an improvement, even though nothing was removed.

The exception is a screen that is genuinely long, where a single overwhelming form is worse than two short ones.

Aim for the fewest screens that do not produce an intimidating page, which for most small business bookings is two or three.

Give the phone number equal footing

Since not everybody wants to book online at all.

Put the phone number on every screen of the flow, including the ones where somebody is stuck.

Somebody who cannot find a suitable time, or who has an unusual requirement, should be able to switch to a call rather than abandoning entirely.

That is not a failure of the booking system, it is a customer choosing a route that suits them, and capturing them is better than losing them.

Businesses frequently hide the number during booking to push people through the flow, which converts a phone call into an abandonment.

Test it yourself, on a phone

The check nobody in the business had ever done.

Book a genuine appointment through your own flow, on a phone, as a new customer rather than a logged-in one, and count the taps.

Note every point where you have to think, look something up, or scroll to find a button, since each of those is where somebody less motivated stops.

Do it with the keyboard covering half the screen, which is the actual condition and is invisible on a desktop preview.

Businesses that run this test usually find at least one field that is genuinely difficult to complete on a phone, and it is frequently the one with the highest abandonment.

The counter-case within the flow

Some of the original steps were justified.

Staff selection genuinely matters for services where customers have strong preferences, and the fix was adding a no-preference option rather than removing the step.

A business taking payment at booking needs more information and more screens, and that is a legitimate cost of reducing no-shows.

Where appointments are expensive to hold, a deposit and the friction it brings may be exactly what you want, since it filters out people who were not serious.

Remove what is not needed to hold the appointment, and keep the friction that is doing a job.

What to change

1. Count the screens and the required fields.
2. Find where people leave, not just how many.
3. Remove account creation from before booking.
4. Add a no-preference option to any choice.
5. Ask only what holds the appointment.
6. Collect the rest afterwards.
7. Show the phone number on every screen.

Step two is what makes the rest efficient, since abandonment concentrates at one or two points and fixing the others changes nothing.

The equivalent decision in a shop is covered in guest checkout versus making an account.

Frequently asked questions

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