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You planned the perfect event. Great vibe. Solid RSVPs.
But when it came time to book… nobody clicked.
But when it came time to book… nobody clicked.
In this episode of Booked & Profitable, we unpack The Bookability Gap — the hidden friction between customer intent and your booking flow.
You’ll learn:
✔️ Why good experiences still flop
✔️ The 3 C’s of Bookable Flow: Clear CTA, Clean Experience, Compelling Offer
✔️ A 5-point self-audit to fix conversion blockers
✔️ Why many Art & Creative brands lose bookings at the last mile
💡 Booking shouldn’t be hard. Make it obvious, fast, and frictionless.
→ Follow Bookable Retail Group (BRG) on LinkedIn, X, or Instagram for more tools and tips
Creators and Guests
Host
Mark Sandeno
SR
Host
Sam Robertstad
What is Booked & Profitable?
Booked & Profitable is the podcast for physical retailers ready to grow with smarter systems, better tools, and a storefront that actually sells.
Hosted by Mark Sandeno and Sam Robertstad, co-founders of Bookable Retail Group, each episode shares proven strategies for retailers on Shopify: booking flows, storefront UX, pricing, positioning, and customer experience design.
Whether you're adding appointments, hosting events, or making your in-store experience work harder, you'll get real-world playbooks that drive revenue, not just traffic.
No fluff. No theory. Just clear advice and tested frameworks from operators who build this stuff every day.
Subscribe now and start growing your store the BRG way.
You're listening to Booked and Profitable, the podcast for experience driven brands looking to turn hosting into real growth. I'm Mark Sandinot, founder, builder, and helper of brands looking to grow long before book now was a button. I help brands like yours make retail personal again with smart booking systems, better customer flows, and hosted experiences that people actually remember. Each week, we break down what works, what doesn't, and how to grow your business by not just showing up, but standing out. Because good vibes don't pay the bills.
Speaker 1:Great experiences will.
Speaker 2:Hey, Sam. How are doing today?
Speaker 3:Hey, Mark. Doing well. How about you?
Speaker 2:Good. Great to be back on the podcast. Today, we're gonna be talking about the bookability gap. Why great events or what could be great events still flop. So what's the core pillar of this episode?
Speaker 3:Make it bookable.
Speaker 2:I mean, seems like a super basic thing. It's surprisingly difficult when we look across everyone who's doing bookable retail or hosting events. Sometimes you have to ask yourself, what were they thinking? But I don't
Speaker 1:think they're doing it on purpose.
Speaker 3:I don't think so at all. You know, they oftentimes plan an event, put a lot of effort into that event planning. Right? But when it comes time to have the experience, they realize that not enough people booked.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's crickets. And we're gonna dive into that a little bit today and say, okay. What causes people to be enthusiastic about hosting people in the retail environment, putting potentially a great event together, and then ending up with little to no participation from their community. And just a callback, like, as we always should, are we proponents of hosted retailer, bookable retail because we think brands are just bored and don't have anything to do with their time?
Speaker 2:No. We are doing it and we are suggesting it because it is one of the killer apps, so to speak, of modern retail when people do not have to leave their home to buy anything, they will travel great distances and spend significant dollars to create positive memories. And we advocate, and this is a trend, that brands do this with their customers and they keep their value proposition the thing they do at the seed of that experience. As you said, okay, you've planned this event, whether this is a micro retailer or it's a mega brand and you are excited about offering this thing. Right?
Speaker 2:Let's just say it's a local art studio or a chain of art studios. They wanna offer a paint and sip night, but bookings have stalled. So the question is why? Okay. Sam, off the top of your head, what are some of those reasons?
Speaker 3:My wife and I have done a paint and sip before. Don't know if you you've ever done one. It's a fun experience, and we did go through with it. But that said, there were a lot of hurdles that we faced upfront, just trying to figure out how do we do this thing, learn about it. You know, the booking page was difficult to find something as basic as a call to action.
Speaker 3:You had to really, really invest time and effort to search for it. You had to really want to go do this event to put in the effort to find the CTA, you know, prepay, you know, if you wanted to prepay for the event, it wasn't an option, you know, in our case. Those are a couple of our pain points that we experienced.
Speaker 2:Technologically, getting in the way of someone being able to sign up for this awesome thing. The other thing is is it's not a priority. Seemingly, once you try to interact with the store to book, it's like, do you wanna take my money? Or what we see a lot across the thousands of businesses that we've worked with helping set up bookable retail things, it's just a page on the site. The font is too small.
Speaker 2:It's unreadable. There's not great pictures. There's nothing calling me to do anything. There's no call to action. And it's kinda like, okay, I see something's happening here, but I think I'm gonna have to make an extraordinary effort to get myself there because even though they don't think like that, they have to, like, I'm gonna have to put it in my calendar.
Speaker 2:No one's gonna remind me of this thing. I don't have any way to pay for it ahead of time that will almost virtually guarantee that I show up, which is an interesting statistic is every chance you can get people to prepay for an experience, wanna do it because people showing up goes through the roof compared to reservations or free events. Okay. So the booking page is varied. There's no CTA and the emails are on the page.
Speaker 2:Guests can't prepay, so they're likely to not show up or they don't they're not making a commitment, period. I think the lesson here is your intention, your good vibes, what you're emanating into the universe to get a woo woo does not convert, but good flows and good actionable elements do. One of our customers is Tandem Chocolates in Reno. I don't know if I sent that to you, Sam, really close to you, and they're an example of a brand at the basics. They're doing an excellent experience building anticipation, making it clickable, and making it a powerful value proposition that's really exciting and something that is worth doing.
Speaker 2:Or maybe we'll do that in another episode where we will show some examples. But in your backyard, in everyone's backyards, are people, brands that do this well and others that just don't do a good job. And we might think, hey, you know what? What's the big deal if I put it on my page, if I throw it up on Facebook, put it on Insta? I'm sure it's fine.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be successful. And the reality is that's not just the case. So the overall, the problem is most businesses, when they first start doing this, they confuse having a booking tool or just a bookable event as having a bookable experience. So you might say, what's the difference? And so the bookability gap, the name of this podcast episode, is the invisible friction between your customer's intent and the reality of what you're gonna get out of hosting this experience.
Speaker 2:So I know, Sam, you know what some of these common causes are. That's how you roll. Your research has revealed, a few key things to keep in mind. What are some of those things?
Speaker 3:It's things like, you know, they may sound obvious when we talk through them, but they're really not. But there are things like a booking button may be hard to find or hidden, you know, and you have to remember familiarity for you guys when you're looking at it every day, you know exactly where it is, but to a new customer who's never seen it before, that booking button needs to be very clear and visible. Sometimes there's too many clicks, right? You know, a user shouldn't have to go through pages and pages and find their way through a maze, you know, to find, you know, to complete the process. Sometimes there's a lack of clarity on why, you know, you should book in advance.
Speaker 3:Sometimes the mobile flow is very clunky. And that's a really important point to lean in on is mobile. I know you know this in your world too, but most people are on their mobile phones doing this. And oftentimes, you know, design puts desktop first, you know. And so again, as a store owner, you know, you may be looking on your desktop, but not realizing that the mobile experience is completely different.
Speaker 2:Designers, at least designers that work for us, we focus on mobile first, but business owners don't necessarily focus on mobile first. One of the reasons when they're creating content, putting images on their website, especially on the booking section, is they're working on their desktops and they're not taking time to say, hey, what does this look like on my mobile device? Is this image too big? Is it descriptive in that tiny little what we call a viewport? So, yeah, those are common causes of the booking gap striking and striking hard.
Speaker 2:Another one is, well, moving forward to a mindset shift, which is coming up in a second. These issues, functional technical issues combined with the wrong mindset is a killer. It can literally completely kill the upside of having an amazing experience that's going to cause people to say, I had an amazing experience in this group of people or with my besties here. They don't say this out loud. They don't necessarily well, maybe sometimes they do.
Speaker 2:They're saying, had an amazing time, and now you're my brand of preference for sip and paint nights, or maybe you're a fabric art store, or you're a chocolate company like Tandem in your backyard, or I went there for a tasting or I got to make some chocolates, and now I'm gifting it all the time. I'm part of the subscription program. That experience, that high context moment can be completely railroaded. So the mindset shift we advocate for is to reframe, right, the bookable moment so it means it's effortless, it's an intentional thing, and it's obvious. It's part of your brand and you need to treat it, well, as much like your storefront as your actual storefront.
Speaker 2:If you want people to say, yes, I wanna do this, you can't make them work for it and it's gotta be treated like every other important flow in your checkout. Now that can be your online checkout or it can be in your person checkout. Imagine this. And I always like to use the physical analog. Someone comes into your store and they're ready to buy something, but everything on the shelf keeps moving so they can never grab it.
Speaker 2:But they finally grab it and they wanna go to the register, but the register is on wheels and the disinterested teenager working there moves the register into the back room behind the door. And you're like, it was hard enough to get this stuff. Now I how do I check out? And then they finally find the person and that disinterested teenager just stares at them. People do the technological equivalent of that.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of the stuff we're already talking about. But you have to look at this like, wait a second. This is an incredibly important venue, this online venue to get people, once we are good at promoting our thing, causing excitement for that moment to come, that experience to come, The perfect situation. So it is more like they are greeted at the door. Hey.
Speaker 2:We're so glad you're here. We can't wait to see you at the sip and paint night. Oh, by the way, we have some great wines we're ready to share. Don't worry about bringing any of your own paints or the canvas. You don't even have to have an apron.
Speaker 2:We're gonna set you up completely. And just so you know, it doesn't matter if you've ever painted a day in your life. You're gonna have an amazing time. Then when they physically show up, they're greeted. Someone puts that apron over their head, adjust it so they look good in the pictures later because you want them to share that moment.
Speaker 2:So engineering this entire time is part of making things effortless, intentional, obvious, and exciting instead of like, yeah, we put something on our website. I hope someone shows up for it. And then being confounded when no one does.
Speaker 3:That is so true, Mark. I love that analogy too, by the way. I think going to this mindset shift, really, the best experiences don't sell themselves. You have to do something and that booking flow, think of that as part of your experience. Right?
Speaker 3:If it feels clunky, hidden, there's too much friction that's gonna reflect poorly on your brand, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:And here's some signs you can look for. People like, I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to now how do I sign up for something? Like, if you hear I mean, occasionally, you're gonna get people who don't even know that they're on planet Earth. You can't help people who don't know how to use a computer or drive to your store.
Speaker 2:But if you hear enough people saying, like, I just it was hard. I don't get it. And sometimes we see that in our practice. We see there's technological constraints or issues or something's not quite working. It's like you're moving the door of your store to the side of the building and putting it behind a shrub.
Speaker 2:It's like, well, how do I get in? I don't even know how to get in. And this is a ridiculous example. Listen for people saying, hey, I don't know how to
Speaker 1:get in. I don't know what
Speaker 2:to do. The other thing is you're looking at your analytics or your traffic, like, I'm getting traffic, but no one's converting. Now this is a little bit trickier because it could be a technological issue, it could be an expectation setting issue, or you could just have a lame experience. It's possible when we go back to effortless, intentional, and obvious that your offer and the value there is not obvious. The intentionality behind what you're going to provide for people as part of a memorable experience just isn't there.
Speaker 2:Right? So there's technical and then there's experience design stuff. And then the other thing is is you're using tools that just don't play nicely together. So can you give me an example of that, Sam?
Speaker 3:I was gonna ask pause on that. When there's traffic with no bookings or you're stitching tools together, you know, like you said, don't play nice together. What do you typically look at first when a client brings, you know, these types of concerns to you?
Speaker 2:Well, the first thing we're looking at is what are you offering? Is it compelling at all? Now, typically, that's not the problem. I mean, people know their business. Retailers, just to go back a little bit, retailers know what people want.
Speaker 2:Brick and mortar retailers of all sizes, they are experts at what people want. There is such a huge consequence if they don't get it right. They have a bunch of inventory that doesn't sell. You'll go bankrupt really quick. Right?
Speaker 2:And so they usually if they have any experience in business in retail, the offer is usually pretty good. Okay? So the next thing is is, like, where is it? Is it buried in my footer? One link?
Speaker 2:Is it a page that's not being indexed by the Internet? When I see this juicy, exciting, like, come and have this amazing thing at our winery or, you know, the variety of experiential stuff is crazy. Like, hey, Let's say it's a chain of, runners, clothing, and footwear, and they'd say, join one of our run club type of situations and where you can come and you can demo a pair of shoes or something. I don't know. Maybe bike company is a little bit different or, like, somebody sells mountain bikes or whatever.
Speaker 2:And then you you, like, oh, that sounds great. You click and then it's just there's either so much information, there's not good visual hierarchy, the content isn't compelling. Those are the kind of things we look for. The technological stuff is actually pretty easy. It's more of the mindset plus the experience design part of it where I'm going from as a consumer, oh, I'm interested in that and how do I escalate their energy into an actual moment of participation.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Absolutely. So we understand the problem. You've, you know, shared definitely some of those specific pain points and some solutions. If we were to apply a framework to this for a good bookable flow, you know, what might that look like?
Speaker 2:I mean, we have our payer framework, which we are gonna talk about all the time and in a late later podcast, plan, arrive, experience, remember, return. But, I mean, here's a mini framework. You have to have a clear CTA. It's a design concept in marketing called visual hierarchy. If you have a page and you're asking for a whole bunch of stuff at once, we might think, oh, we're giving people lots of choice.
Speaker 2:Actually, we could be creating moments of friction because they're undecided. So decide what you want a page to do. Decide what your website or that signage on the a frame outside your space should do for you? What are you optimizing for? Hey, come on inside and just kinda look what we got.
Speaker 2:So there's the physical version of that, there's a digital version of that. Or is it join our mailing list and learn about our great products and our great classes? Or is it, do you know that when someone comes to take a cooking class with you, maybe it's a 55, maybe it's a $100 cooking class, you've got them for life, You'll get them on your mailing list after that. They'll buy the expensive knives and pots and pan, then lead with that. Right?
Speaker 2:You have to find how these things work together, but you have to have a clear CTA and you cannot bury the lead. And experimentation is often required. Right? We know looking across our customer base that when people create positive memories with the brand as a kernel part, the seed part of that experience, that everything else, referrals coming from that customer, mailing list stuff and purchases, they are more valuable customers. They stick around for longer.
Speaker 2:They buy more every time they buy things. So with that in mind, don't bury the lead. The other thing is, you know, it's a clean, good looking experience. Right? That's an easy one.
Speaker 2:And then a compelling offer. What are you doing? Right? I wanna say one other thing. This pricing thing is another part of this overall conversation.
Speaker 2:If you undervalue you your offer, and I see this all the time, you are not going to be successful mainly because you won't be able to afford to do the experiences. And the other part of is that people don't value it as much. Right? There's very few experiences today that should be $30. Most of them should be 50 plus for an hour long experience even when there's no materials to consume, even if they have to buy their own materials, like a a knitting kit or something like that.
Speaker 3:That's an interesting thought there. It's really valuing this service, the product, the experience, you know, that you're building and delivering to the customer. If you're doing it right, then I think you're exactly right. It should be $50. This mini framework, it seems so simple, but is very effective.
Speaker 3:I would suggest that if you can't pass these three c's, you know, you're probably not even ready to go live, much less offer $50 for your solution.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Here's a quick audit you can do. It's a five point audit. First step, is it clear? Is the what and the why of your experience obvious?
Speaker 2:Two, accessibility. And, we're talking about accessibility for hearing vision impaired people, but in general, can I quickly create a booking without calling or digging around? Three, simplicity. How many steps does it take to do a booking? Sometimes we'll see people that say, well, yeah, I first, I want them to go to a collection of experiences, and then I wanna click into the experience they want, and then I wanna click a button, then they need to choose a day, then we need to collect some information, dietary requirements if they're bringing anyone, and then they need to check out and pay.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's exactly what you need. A lot of our customers have, you know, eight to 10 steps. But if you can get it done in under three clicks, maybe not including the payment checking out, you wanna optimize for that. Don't collect any information you don't need. Right?
Speaker 2:There's some pretty interesting science. Every field you put in front of someone to type something into or make a choice is reducing your conversion even when their intention is otherwise to complete it. It's like, I'll come back to this later, or I don't know how to answer that question right now. Maybe I do wanna bring a friend. Like, no, just book them and then hit them up in the automation after effects.
Speaker 2:Like, hey, did you know you can bring a friend? And then confirmation. Did they get an immediate confirmation with, hey. Here's the next steps. And then did they get a reminder?
Speaker 2:Then the last thing is, so we have had clarity, accessibility, simplicity, and confirmation. And then the conversion of all opportunities. Can you upsell them? What are the follow ups look like? Soft sell upfront and then increase the value of that visitor whether when they arrive or even saying, hey.
Speaker 2:Here's another thing you can do if you want before the event happens. And there's this comment or this concept we talked about last podcast called pre savoring. People are highly susceptible to investing more in a future experience before they have that experience, not because they don't know what it's actually gonna be like, but because humans are anticipation machines, and they want to enhance it. And when you sell into where you speak into that moment of pre savoring, the gap between when they've booked something and when they arrive, they actually have a heightened experience during the consumption of that experience.
Speaker 3:That's all, you know, fantastic. And it's a great sanity check. And as Mark just explained, I mean, that you will even fixing or focusing on one or two of these areas can significantly lift, you know, your bookings.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So here's a challenge. This week, audit your booking flow. Is it obvious, fast, and frictionless? Better yet, ask a friend or trusted customer to test it cold and see where they struggle.
Speaker 2:Like, hey, is it obvious that we have experiences? Was it accessible? Was it easy? All of these kind of things. And and start to take action yourself on your bookability gap.
Speaker 3:One suggestion too is pull out your phone and film the screen while your friend tries to go through the booking experience. I think you'll catch things that you may have missed before because you're simply too close to it.
Speaker 2:Great episode, Sam, and looking forward to the next episode where we'll talk about drop off points and where people fail to complete, whether it's over the phone, digitally, or just in your storefront.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Agreed. Thanks, Mark. See you guys.
Speaker 1:That's a wrap for this episode of Booked and Profitable. If you're building experiences people actually want to book and more importantly, come back for, we're here for it. For more insights, playbooks, and growth tools, visit bookableretailgroup.com or follow us on LinkedIn. Got a story worth sharing? Then drop us a line.
Speaker 1:Thanks for hanging out, and we'll see you next time.