Read your own booking page like a customer

Setting up a booking page takes about six minutes. Making it a page a stranger will finish takes one more pass, and almost nobody does that pass.

Here is the one we do on onboarding calls. Open your own link on your phone, not your laptop, and pretend you have a leak under the sink and no idea who you are calling.

1. Can you tell what to pick?

Service names written for the office do not survive contact with a homeowner. "Diagnostic — residential, T&M" means nothing. "Something is leaking" does.

Name services the way a customer would describe the problem, and put the price or the range next to it. A missing price is the most common reason somebody closes the page.

2. How many taps to a time?

The best pages we see put three openings on the first screen. No calendar to navigate, no month view, no scrolling. Three times and a "more times" link.

3. Are the questions worth asking?

Every intake question costs you a percentage of bookings. Three is the number that pays for itself:

• One that changes the price.
• One that changes what goes on the truck.
• One that gets the tech in the door — gate code, unit number, dog.

Everything else can be asked on the phone by somebody who is already booked.

4. Does the deposit line make sense?

If you ask for a deposit, the sentence above the card field is the most important copy on the page. Say the amount, say it comes off the invoice, and stop. Anything longer reads as terms and conditions.

The last check

Book a job on your own page, all the way through, and then read the confirmation text out loud. If it does not sound like your shop, rewrite it — it is the first thing a new customer ever hears from you.