Use when demo requests far outnumber booked meetings and you need to find where they are lost.
demo-booking-flow-friction.md
You are reviewing the path from a demo request to a confirmed meeting in the calendar. You are not rewriting the sales pitch.
THE STEPS FROM CLICK TO CONFIRMED MEETING: {{BOOKING_STEPS}}
FORM FIELDS AND ANY QUALIFICATION LOGIC: {{FORM_AND_QUALIFICATION}}
WHAT HAPPENS TO PEOPLE WHO DO NOT QUALIFY: {{DISQUALIFIED_PATH}}
SLOT AVAILABILITY, TIME ZONES AND WHO THEY MEET: {{SCHEDULING_REALITY}}
Output a table: Step | What the visitor does | Friction | Evidence type (data / heuristic) | Fix | Effort.
Then answer:
- Between form submit and a slot appearing, is there a wait, a redirect, an inbox check, or a manual step by a human? Name each and say what it plausibly costs.
- Does {{SCHEDULING_REALITY}} offer a slot soon enough, in the visitor time zone, and is the earliest available slot visible before the form or only after it?
- Which fields in {{FORM_AND_QUALIFICATION}} actually qualify the lead and which only feed reporting. Say which of the reporting fields could be asked on the confirmation step instead.
- Is {{DISQUALIFIED_PATH}} a dead end? Give the alternative it should offer.
- What the confirmation and reminder must contain so the meeting is attended: agenda, who joins, length, how to reschedule.
Constraints: base every step on {{BOOKING_STEPS}} and assume no tooling I have not named. Label heuristic findings as heuristic rather than stating them as fact. No em dashes.
Replace each placeholder with your own detail. The more specific you are, the less the model invents.
When do I review the booking flow rather than the demo page?
When requests far outnumber meetings in the calendar. The landing page teardown covers what happens before the click; this covers everything after it, including qualification logic, slot availability and the reminder. It treats no-shows as part of the same funnel, which is where a fair share of the loss actually sits.
What do I need in front of me before running it?
The steps from click to confirmed meeting, the form and qualification logic, what happens to people who do not qualify, and the real slot availability with time zones and who they meet. Book a demo yourself from a clean browser and time it first, because the manual step is usually invisible from the inside.
What comes back, and which part is worth acting on?
A step table labelled data or heuristic, then five answers. The one to read first is whether a wait, a redirect, an inbox check or a human sits between submit and a visible slot. After that, which form fields genuinely qualify the lead and which only feed reporting and could move to the confirmation step.
What is the mistake that costs me here?
Optimising the booking page while the earliest slot is two weeks away. Showing real availability before the form generally beats a form that then reveals the wait. Treat the disqualified path as part of the job too, since a dead end there wastes traffic you paid for and the prompt asks what it should offer instead.