Your booking page should not carry someone else's name

Almost every appointment-based business ends up in the same place: online booking is a good idea, but to have it you have to move into someone else's shop window. And that deal always has the same shape: I bring you people, I take a percentage, and along the way your client becomes mine.

It is a reasonable deal if what you need is to be discovered. It stops being one when the person booking already knew you.

What it really costs, and it is not only the commission

It is worth separating the three bills, because only one of them comes with a number.

The commission. The visible one. A percentage per appointment, every month, including for the client who has been coming for six years and would have phoned anyway.

The sign-up. To book an appointment at your salon, your client has to create an account with a company that is not you. Every step between "I want an appointment" and "I have an appointment" loses people, and creating an account is one of the expensive ones: download, enter an email, invent a password, confirm it. At eleven at night, half of them give up.

The ownership. This is the one you do not see until you leave. That person did not book with your business: they booked on a platform that also has your competitors on it. When you want to stop paying, the relationship stays there.

What changes when the page is yours

The alternative is not to give up online booking. It is for the page to belong to the business.

With ClaudIA every business has its own, with its logo, its colour and its name. Whoever lands on it picks the service or treatment, who with and at what time, leaves their name and phone number, and the appointment goes straight into the schedule. Nothing to download, no account to create and no booking commission.

Only the hours that genuinely exist are offered: the ones actually free in your schedule, with the professional who performs that service. If someone asks for "as soon as possible", the page proposes the first real gap there is.

Where to put it

A booking link is no use sitting in a panel. It goes where people find you:

• In your Instagram bio and on your Facebook page.
• In the appointment link on your Google listing, which is where people searching "hairdresser near me" or "emergency dentist" arrive.
• On your website, if you have one.
• And on the door: it produces a QR poster to print and stick up. People scan it from the street and book, whether you are open or not.

Three things you decide

A booking page with no rules accepts impossible appointments. You set these three, and they are what separates "it works" from "you can put it in front of a client":

• The minimum notice. So nobody books at 9:58 for 10:00 — on WhatsApp a person sees that and reacts, but online nobody sees it until they turn up at the door.
• How many days are visible. So nobody books a slot two years out.
• Whether prices are shown. Some businesses want that and some do not. It is your call, not ours.

What it does not do

So this is not just a list of virtues:

• It does not bring you new clients. A shop window does that, which is why it charges. Your page converts better for people who already know you or have already found you; it does not put you in front of someone who was not looking for you. If what you need is discovery, this does not replace it.
• It does not negotiate. A WhatsApp conversation can make room, move something or ask a question. A web page cannot: that is exactly why the three rules above exist.
• It has to be switched on. It ships off until the business activates it and reviews its services, its professionals and its opening hours.

Where to start

If you already have a booking button somewhere, this month's question is simple: where does it lead? If it leads to a platform that charges per appointment, you already know the cost. If you have none, the first step is your Google listing, which is the one that works on its own while you do not.

And if you want to know which of your channels genuinely brings in new clients, it can be measured without asking anyone anything: we cover it in where your new clients come from.

The booking page comes with ClaudIA, in both sectors: you get it at soyclaudia.app if you run a beauty business and at soyclaudiadental.com if you run a dental clinic.