Appointment Scheduling: Secret Sauce For Increasing Conversions
If you are here, you might already have a website for your business. And if not, I think it’s time for you to start working on one.
Now, what will be the primary goal of your website?
To increase leads, conversions, sales, etc., is the primary goal of most of the websites. If yours is one of them too, this blog discloses the secret sauce for increasing your conversion rate.
Before diving into it, let’s go over some statistics to understand better.
The average eCommerce website conversion rate in the US stands at 2.63% as compared to the global website conversion rate of 4.31%. Brands have achieved this by attempting numerous ways to increase conversions, but not all of them turn out to be effective for all businesses.
For example, widgets are productive tools to increase conversions from a website. With widgets, you can catch a user’s attention by using specific call-to-actions, intake forms, chatbots, notification bars, etc. According to your business needs, you can place the intake form on your contact’s page, a pop-up on relevant pages or a chatbot assisting the user throughout their experience.
But not all of them are a hundred percent effective because every feature comes with a set of pros and cons. To explain this further, let's talk about website pop-ups. Pop-ups can be beneficial because they catch a user’s attention in a split second. But, it is also claimed as a disturbance to a few readers.
Pro tip: Don’t use way too many widgets because that can easily annoy the user and increase your bounce rate.
So what you can do is assess your website and look for what kind of widgets your website needs and work on them.
Appointment Scheduling to Increase Conversions
Amidst the chaos of using different widgets, the appointment scheduling widget has stood out for many businesses. From small businesses to large organizations, almost every business is looking forward to more appointments with prospective clients, for example with a barbershop appointment software created by Fresha.
If you are one of them, this can work for you too.
Wondering how?
Appointment scheduling widgets allow users to cut to the chase and directly book an appointment. This way, you can gather more leads by reducing the lag period. This is a highly useful lead generation tool for websites wanting to increase their conversion rate in no time.
Reduces the lag time
When you want to find more leads and prospects rapidly, you will look for innovative ways to do that. And one of the most impactful ways of doing it is reducing the lag time. This lag time is prevalent with contact forms where users need to fill in their names, email addresses, and other details. As this method makes them wait for the business’s response, it gives them more time to find an alternative solution. This is how lag time can reverse your strategy.
But with the appointment scheduling widget, you directly allow the prospect to book an appointment based on your and their availability. This widget saves an immense amount of time for both prospects and the business, doesn't it?
An appointment scheduling widget can contribute wonderfully to your lead generation process because this method doesn’t leave much room for prospects to fall out of the sales funnel.
This is a scheduling calendar preview where prospects can choose the exact date and time of when they would want to set up an appointment.
Saves time to create pitches
Any business is better prepared to deal with clients when they have a well-thought and prepared pitch in their hands. This is what prepares a business owner or any relevant business person to be confident and solution-providing for their prospective clients.
But, this takes time.
And appointment scheduling widgets give you that!
You can take advantage of it and consume more time to create your business pitch. You can also work on a detailed pitch consisting of visuals, videos, etc., to make it more compelling and worthy.
On the contrary, chatbots on your website are always present to revert to a query, but it is also apparent how inhuman they can be. In comparison, appointment scheduling can notify you with a date and a time by which you can plan to prepare your pitch. Also, while booking an appointment, the smarter option is to take a few details of the prospect about their interests, needs, budget, etc., which can help you create a targeted pitch before the scheduled call.
Attract high-quality leads
When a prospect comes across an appointment scheduling widget, they will follow it to set an appointment only when they are genuinely interested in it. This eliminates a set of prospects that might be just there to know about your business or get some research done. Hence, it saves you time and effort.
Appointment scheduling gives a kind of freedom to the user of booking an appointment at whenever time and date. This is what keeps it more comfortable for the prospects and also make genuine leads stay through.
This also overtakes the usual methods, which require back-and-forth emails, the response time, etc. And the most critical part to worry about the regular widgets is ‘certainty’.
A user can have a conversation with your chatbots, fill your forms, etc., but still won’t be sure of becoming a lead. But when a user schedules an appointment, this means that they have taken out time to know about your business and are genuinely interested in it.
For example, let’s say that you have built online courses for your business and want to offer consulting as an add-on to your customers. Since you’re spending most of your time creating the courses themselves and supporting your current students, you don’t have a ton of time to deal with the back-and-forth communications to encourage a prospect to set up an appointment. Having a widget, however, will alleviate those issues.
Increased accountability
When a user reaches an appointment scheduling widget means that he/she has researched and understood about your business and is now looking forward to taking a step ahead. As soon as an appointment is scheduled, both you and the prospect will be accountable to be there on a specific date and time.
To avoid no shows and last minute cancellations, you can also use a scheduling tool to remind your lead of the respective appointments. This will ensure that prospects are continuously a part of the sales funnel. Or when an appointment is scheduled, you can give an option to the lead to save the event in their Google Calendar.
Moreover, you can also prepare creative emails to remind your leads to the appointment. This way, you can also add a personalized email and interest the reader more. For example, you can give specific highlights of the appointment you have planned or some free benefits that they will get if they claim your services, etc. After all, it all contributes to more leads and conversions.
To be more productive and to avoid any hassles with your invoicing, use invoice templates. It will save you time!
It’s a wrap
There are a bunch of widgets available to boost your lead generation process. All that matters is making the right choice, depending on the kind of business you are dealing with. If your widget boosts your chances of gaining high-quality leads, then you know that you are on the right track.
Though having an appointment scheduling widget brings a lot more to your website than other widgets. This particular widget filters the leads, and you eventually talk to leads who are genuinely interested in your brand. Hence, it also saves your time and effort.
All pumped up to try out appointment scheduling widgets on your website?
Good luck!