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Hi Community,

 

I was wondering if anyone might have some insights into why users might load my Calendly form but then bounce before completing the form.  I offer a free consultation on my website for web design services and I link to my Calendly form using buttons such as “Book a Call” and “Schedule a Free Consultation”.

 

In my analytics, I can see quite a few users click through the buttons and land on the form, but haven’t actually had a legitimate user actually complete the form yet.  I’m wondering if there’s something either in my form setup or in Calendly itself that may be scaring users off.

 

My form is pretty simple, pick a time, choose which service you’re interested in, then there’s a required freeform field to list any details about your project or what you want to talk about on the call and then an optional field to put a link to your existing website.  That’s it.

 

I can see users going to this form, but they don’t actually complete it.  I’ve tested my own form multiple times and there’s no issues from a technical perspective.

 

Wondering if anyone else has any suggestions or ideas how to reduce users bouncing when they hit the scheduling form.

Hi @Your Right Website!

That’s a great question and I wish we had an amazing answer for you. Unfortunately it’s not uncommon at all as I suspect most of have some sort of information and meeting fatigue these days.

A few things to consider:

  • Is there any sort of information you can proactively provide before people hit that form? Pricing, what a normal timeline looks like, what information is helpful, etc.? I’m wondering if people are kind of hitting your form and then thinking “I’m not sure enough yet and don’t want to waste this person’s time!”
  • Can you provide any information on exactly what to expect during the free consultation and after? Over the weekend, I was looking for a new car and had one dealership do this really lovely thing where they told me exactly what to expect if I provided my information to them and then what to expect if I came into the dealership. It was nice to know they wouldn’t abuse my time and had set expectations for both sides.

@jillian thanks for your reply!  I do have a page on my site called “Our Process” that lays out the whole process from start to finish, including the free consultation, but I can also see from my analytics that most people don’t hit that page before clicking the big “Schedule a Call” button on my site.

 

I like your idea about having a “what to expect” page though for the free consultation.  I wonder if it’s better to send people to a page outlining the process before sending them to Calendly.  I suspect it may help, but another click may also increase bounce rate.

 

For Calendly, is there any sort of analytics to see where in the form process the users are dropping off?  I’m really curious if they drop off right away or if something in the date selection / questions form is causing them to drop off.


Also, does Calendly offer any option for detecting a page abandonment and showing the user a message before they leave?  I know some websites can detect when users go for the close button and display a message.  It would be nice if there were a way I could show a customized message if the user tries to exit the Calendly page before completing the process.

We don’t have any other analytics around drop off or functionality around page abandonment… however, if you’re embedding the Calendly booking page in another page you could likely do something with that. It wouldn’t be controlled by Calendly, but maybe there’s a workflow to leverage there!

If I were you, I’d sort of treat this like an experiment. You’ve already tried one setup, so now try another and gather data. If nothing else, it’ll help you in your own pursuit to improve people’s websites!

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