If you’re not using online appointment scheduling, then you are almost certainly missing out on business
At Visibook, we recently did an analysis of U.S. merchants using our client scheduling app and online appointment booking software. We took a look at what time of day customers were hopping onto Visibook when they were setting up appointments with their favorite businesses. Based on our review of client appointment booking behavior, we discovered that clients have a strong desire to schedule appointments outside business hours.
53% of appointments were made at night or during the weekend
How did we define business hours? Weekdays, 9am-6pm in the local timezone for that business (for this study, we included businesses in PST, CST, and EST). We captured any appointments where customers hopped onto Visibook between 6pm to 9am (or on the weekend) and made an appointment with a business that had a Visibook calendar. For this analysis, we looked at data from September to mid-November. If you’re curious, here’s a more granular breakdown by hour:
What does this mean for you?
If you are interested in growing your business, you should strongly consider using an online scheduling program. Some of your customers will be happy to set their appointment during the business day, but a lot of your customers want to make appointments when you’re not around to answer the phone or reply to an email message.
For businesses already using Visibook online scheduling software, make sure your existing and potential customers know that you have a Visibook client scheduling calendar. Some ways you can do this:
- First, you should customize your Visibook calendar URL to make it something more friendly. You can do that in “Share Your Calendar.”
- Post your Visibook calendar link on social media. When you go into “Share Your Calendar”, you’ll see some button options that will make it easy to use social media to spread the word about your Visibook appointment scheduling calendar link.
- More specifically for Facebook, if you have a page dedicated to your business, you can place a “Book Now” button on your page. It will take visitors straight to your Visibook appointment scheduling calendar, where they make an appointment or send you a message. Here are Facebook’s instructions on how to do this.
- Add a button to your website that leads directly to your Visibook appointment scheduler. We include some custom code at the bottom of the Share Your Calendar page. All you have to do is cut-and-paste it into your website code.
Does this mean your business is going to double overnight if you use online scheduling?
I wish I could say yes, but unfortunately that’s probably not the case. Based on the data we have so far, I can confidently say you will get more appointments using online scheduling. To say how much would take more analysis and specific details on your business. For some of you, you’ll get a lot more appointments just by turning on an appointment scheduling app. Others, depending on the nature of your business, your customer base, how you handle appointment scheduling currently, the addition of appointment scheduling software might not spark as big a difference.
Set up a Visibook Account for Free
If you don’t already have an online scheduling program, check out our scheduling software. It’s free to check it out and I think you’ll be impressed! It features:
- Automatic text message reminders
- iOS, Android apps
- Integrated messaging
- Payment processing
- Google calendar sync
