The booking button is not a component

Studios like to finish the page, then “add booking”. The button arrives last, a rectangle in the corner, pointed at someone else’s product. It looks done. It is where the actual business starts to leak.

A booking is a set of rules that happen to have a visual. How long is the thing. Who is allowed to do it. What it costs to cancel. What the guest needs to know before they are allowed to say yes. Those are design decisions. They are also operational ones. Separating them is how you get a beautiful site and a front desk that still runs on messages.

We watched a salon sell colour — three hours, a patch test, a stylist who doesn’t do cuts — through a widget that offered every chair every half hour. The page was proud of itself. The stylists spent the week repairing the week.

So we start with the diary. Durations that refuse what will not fit. People who do not appear on services they don’t offer. A confirmation that repeats the rule the guest just agreed to, in the same voice as the rest of the site. The hero is allowed to be handsome after that, not before.

If you already have a page and the button feels like a sticker, it is. The fix is rarely a new sticker.