The goal for most businesses is to attract new customers
and retain existing customers. Businesses need to offer features
that make it easy and convenient to do business. Remove the
barriers that might prevent clients from booking an appointment. Turn potential
customers into actual clients and retain your current client base.
Location, location, location
In real estate they say location is everything.
The same is true for web pages. Users of web pages won't stay at your site for
very long if they can't quickly find what they want. Proper placement and style
of your link to appointment scheduler is important.
Consider placing links to your Flash Appointments Client Scheduler
everywhere clients are likely to want to schedule an appointment.
1. Home Page: Your home page is a great place
for existing clients to access your online appointment scheduler. It is the
first place most people will enter your site. From there they can be one click
away from booking a new appointment.
2. Service Pages: For every page on your site
that describes a service or set of services you will want provide quick access
to the scheduler. Imagine.. a potential customer peruses your site, discovers
a service they want, sees the link to schedule an appointment. They click the
link to schedule an appointment and boom they are now a client.
3. Be Consistent: Place the links in the same
relative position on each page. Your customers will appreciate the ease with
which they can find and navigate to the online scheduler.
4. Prominence: Make the links stand out so that
customers quickly see them as they scan a page. If your site is anchored around
a "Home" link, consider making the links to your scheduler the same
color and/or style as the Home link. Align them to the Home link and place them
in close proximity.
5. Wording: What should your link say? Again,
be consistent with the wording style of your web site. Here are some ideas for
your site:
--- "Schedule Now"
--- "Make an appointment online"
--- "Online Scheduler"
--- "Appointments"
6. HTML Code: The following is an HTML code sample.
Just copy it and paste it into your HTML document.
Important: You must
replace the number "1" at the end of the link
with the business identifier number that was supplied to you in the email after
you signed up.
Things to avoid
1. Do not place the link below a reasonable page length.
Requiring your customers to scroll down to find it means that a lot of customers
will miss it and fewer online appointments will be booked.
2. Be careful when placing your link in a banner type image. If
it looks like advertising most users will ignore it.
3. Do not animate your appointment link unless
it is very subtle. Studies show users will ignore it. Like animated ads - users
find it distracting and annoying.
4. Avoid wording of the link that is too general or imprecise.
Here are some examples that don't work well:
--- "Calendar" Users may associate the
word calendar with a schedule of events.
--- "Reservations" Users may associate
reservations with hotels and airlines.
