Mobile-Friendly Checkout for Photo Booth Businesses: Five Things to Check
Plenty of customers will find you on a phone, often in the evening, and a booking flow that works well on a laptop can still fail on a phone in small ways that add up. You can check yours in about ten minutes with your own phone.
This post lists five things to look for, what each one looks like when it goes wrong, and what to change. It is a checklist, not a study: there are no conversion figures here, because the numbers that matter are the ones from your own site.
How to test your own booking flow
Use your own phone, or better, borrow one from someone who has never seen your site. Start on your homepage and go all the way to a paid deposit, as a customer would. Note every moment where you have to zoom, scroll sideways, retype something or switch app.
If you can, repeat it on an iPhone and on an Android phone, because date pickers, PDF viewers and email apps behave differently on each.
Five things that go wrong on a phone
These are the problems to look for, roughly in the order a customer meets them.
- Pricing tables wider than the screen, so the customer has to scroll sideways to see what a package includes
- A long enquiry form that asks for everything up front, which is slow to fill in with one thumb
- Date pickers that are hard to use on a touchscreen or fight with the phone keyboard
- Deposit invoices sent as PDFs, which some mail apps open awkwardly and which have no button to pay
- A contract that has to be printed, signed and scanned, or a signing page that does not work on a phone
What to change
Each of these is usually a small change rather than a redesign.
- Show packages as cards stacked one above the other on a phone, with the price and what is included on each card
- Ask only for what you need to check the date and give a price: name, email, date, venue or town, and the package. Ask for the rest once they have booked
- Use the phone's own date picker, so the customer gets the calendar they already know
- Send a payment link rather than a PDF, so the deposit can be paid in a couple of taps
- Use a contract the customer can read and sign on the phone, with a signature box big enough for a thumb
Signs your checkout has a mobile problem
If your website analytics show most visits coming from phones but most bookings coming from computers, customers are probably giving up on the phone and finishing later, or not at all.
Another sign is enquiries that stop at the form: people who start booking but never reach the deposit. Ask a few recent customers which device they booked on and whether anything was awkward.
How BoothZen handles this
The BoothZen booking page is built for phones: the customer picks the date, the booth, the package and any extras step by step, and signs the contract on the phone. Deposits are paid through your own Stripe or PayPal account, straight to you.
If you use another system, the same checks apply. Run through your own booking flow on a phone and fix whatever makes you zoom, scroll sideways or switch app.
A booking page that works on a phone
BoothZen is free to start, with no booking fees. Try the booking page on your own phone before you send it to a customer.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to check my own booking flow?
About ten minutes on a phone: go from your homepage to a paid deposit as a customer would, and note anything awkward.
Which change should I make first?
Whatever stopped you first when you tested it yourself. Customers meet the pricing and the form before anything else, so problems there cost the most.
Should I build a separate mobile site?
No. One site that adapts to the screen size is easier to keep up to date than two.