Website for massage therapist: lost bookings

A local visitor with neck or lower back tension is looking for a session, not a medical intake. Many therapist sites ask for a health history, current medications, past injuries and the reason for the visit in one long form, and place it between the homepage and the calendar. The visitor has no way to know what a session will involve, what a first visit costs or whether a time exists this week. Some will fill in the first two fields and stop, because the form asks about medication before they know the therapist has an opening on Thursday.

• Does the booking show the first-visit length and price before any intake question?
• Can a visitor see one open time this week without filling in a health form?
• Are medical questions limited to what the therapist needs before a session, with a reason shown?
• Does the booking button stay on this site, or send the visitor to another domain without saying so?

A massage booking is a decision about the body, which is why an intake form feels heavier here than on a salon site. A therapist does need some information before a first session. The mistake is the order. When the intake sits before the calendar, a visitor who only wants a time must answer questions about medication and past injuries first, with no sense of how many there are or why each one is needed. Walk through your booking as a visitor with a stiff neck would. Count the questions between the homepage and the first open time, and note whether any of them would be a reason to leave.

Move the calendar ahead of the intake, and show the first open time before any health question. Keep the intake short, and tie each field to a reason, such as 'Tell the therapist about any recent injury so they can adjust pressure.' Save the full intake for after a time is chosen, when the visitor has committed to the session and wants it to go well.

Massage sessions are sold by length, usually an hour or an hour and a half, and some practices add an intake and a short assessment to a first visit, so it runs longer than the listed time. A visitor who books the shorter slot and finds the first visit takes the longer one has a schedule problem before the session starts. Many booking pages list each length beside its price, then hide the first-visit rate behind the intake. Check whether the first-visit length and price appear on the same screen as the session choice, in the same words.

Many therapists use a third-party booking tool, and that is a reasonable choice. The problem is the handoff. A visitor who clicks a book button on a small practice site and lands on a different domain with a different logo may think the site is a scam, or that the booking is not really theirs. A simple line before the click, such as 'Bookings open on our scheduling page,' prevents that flinch. The test follows the link to the other domain when a stranger could open it in a browser, and it reports the change of domain as a step.

Test your website before launch

Therapy practices change booking tools, add intake forms for new services and rewrite the first page each season, and any of those can put the health questions back ahead of the time slots. Run the same first-session booking after every change, including a week with no open times, so you see what a visitor is told then. A booking page behind a login needs a test account that you give the run, so the run reaches the calendar.