A Booking Button That Opens Someone Else's Website

One tap, a different website

A visitor reads about your service, decides to book, and taps the button. A different website opens: other colours, another company's logo, an address in the bar they do not recognise.

Sometimes it opens in a new tab, sometimes in the same one. Often the only link on it leads to the booking company's own home page, not back to yours.

Most visitors carry on. Some stop, because a page they did not expect is now asking for their name, their phone number and sometimes their card.

The booking system is usually fine. The hand-off is what loses people.

What the visitor notices

• A different name in the address bar and at the top of the page.
• Different colours and type, as if they had tapped the wrong thing.
• No prices or descriptions, so they cannot check what they are choosing.
• An account to create before any times appear.
• No way back except the browser's back button, which may lose their place.
• A calendar built for a computer, squeezed onto a phone screen.

The first matters most to a cautious visitor. People are told to check the address before typing personal details, and here the address has just changed to a company they have never heard of.

Why it happens

Booking systems are separate services. The business signs up, receives a booking page on the provider's address, and the web designer links the button to it.

Nobody plans the hand-off itself. The schedule is set up by whoever runs the front desk, the site by whoever built it, and nobody looks at the two together on a phone.

Most systems offer more than a plain link: a calendar that can sit inside a page of your site, settings for your logo and colours, and a link back. Many businesses never use them.

Bring the booking into your own page

Where the system allows it, place the booking calendar on a page of your own site. The address stays yours, your header and menu stay, and the visitor can read prices beside the calendar.

Check how the embedded calendar behaves on a phone. Some fit their space neatly; others need scrolling inside a small box, which is worse than a clean hand-off.

Payment may still happen on the provider's secure page. That is normal. Say so on the page before it happens.

Put the details beside the calendar

A booking calendar shows times. It rarely says what each option includes, how long it lasts, what to bring or what it costs.

Visitors who leave the booking page to find out often do not come back to it. They have lost their place, and the reason to finish has gone cold.

So put the facts on the same page as the calendar: prices, durations, what is included, the cancellation terms, and a phone number for anything else.

A worked example

An archery range in an industrial unit, with twelve indoor lanes, sold lane time, beginner lessons and group bookings. Its website was clear and well written, and its "Book a lane" button opened a booking system on another company's address.

The booking page carried the provider's logo, a plain grey layout and a calendar of time slots with no prices. On a phone the calendar was wider than the screen.

Staff kept taking calls from people who had started a booking, wondered whether they were on the right site, and phoned instead. Others simply left a booking half finished.

The range spent about a week on it. A new booking page on its own site gave prices and what to bring, with the system's embedded calendar beneath.

The range's logo and colours went into the system's settings, and one line now explains that payment opens on a secure page. The booking system itself never changed.

When the hand-off cannot be avoided

Say before the click what happens next: "Bookings are taken through our booking system, which opens on a separate page." One line removes the surprise.

Use the system's own settings for your logo, your colours and your business name at the top, and set your website as the link back.

Make sure the confirmation email carries your business name, address and phone number, since that email is what customers keep and search for on the day.

Check it on a phone

Book something on your own phone, on mobile data, starting from your home page and ending at the confirmation email. Count the screens and time it.

Note every place you would hesitate if it were not your business: a strange address, a missing price, a request to create an account.

Then repeat it on a computer. Embedded calendars sometimes behave differently on each.

Better still, ask someone who has never used the system to book while you watch, and say nothing until they finish.

What Analytics loses at the hand-off

When a visitor leaves for another address, Analytics usually loses track of them. The booking happens elsewhere, and your site gets no credit for it.

Some booking systems can send visitors back to a thank-you page on your site after booking, which Analytics can count as a goal. Ask whether yours does.

Without that, reports show visitors leaving from the page with the booking button, which can make your busiest page look like a failure.

The counter-case

For some businesses the hand-off barely matters. Where customers already book through a system many businesses share, they may recognise it and trust it.

Regular customers who book every week know the routine, and the explanation is for first-time bookers rather than them.

And an embedded calendar that fails on phones is worse than a clear link. Embed only what you have tested.

For everyone else: keep the booking inside the site where possible, and where not, warn, match and link back.

Fixing the hand-off

1. Book something yourself on a phone.
2. Note every moment you would hesitate.
3. Ask your provider whether booking can be embedded.
4. Add your logo and colours in its settings.
5. Explain the hand-off in one line before the button.
6. Set the link back to your own site.
7. Put prices and details beside the calendar.

Step five is the cheapest change and often the most useful. A visitor who has been told where they are going never wonders whether they tapped the wrong thing.

Keeping the next step within reach on a phone is also the subject of call buttons that follow you down the page.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.