Misleading UI in Calendar makes users cancel booking process: when dates are selected it falsly appears that other dates are not available any more | Feature Requests

Misleading UI in Calendar makes users cancel booking process: when dates are selected it falsly appears that other dates are not available any more

Judith K

Problem
Users cancel booking process at the last step due to misleading UI: On a listing site the user cannot see available dates once she selected a time period on the calendar. She is forced to click on "clear" first which is not very intuitive. Before clicking on CLEAR all dates including the available ones are shown with the CSS Property text-decoration: line-through. The problem is users ignore the clear button. I conducted a couple of usability tests and 4/5 users got confused at this point, thinking that there are no further dates available and completely ignoring the clear-button. This means I miss out on revenue and lose customers at the very last step.
Solution
Only non-available dates should have a text-decoration. Keep showing available dates as black or at least greyed out to help me as a user understand which other dates are available. Ideally, as a user I can select new dates without having to click on the clear button at all. This allows me to browse through the calendar to check for alternative dates as an intuitive next step.

Penta Props

Bump! 😇🙏

Penta Props

🦘 BUMPITY 🦘

Wildflower Cabins Lake City

Please consider this update seriously

Doug Fletcher

I bought the book you mentioned in an email to us, Vince Breslin (The Book Direct Blueprint).  
In there you very honestly wrote: 
"Uplisting ... is ideal for getting started with direct bookings, but when you need something more advanced as you build out your direct booking strategy, Boostly is there to help! Boostly integrates directly with Uplisting to provide an even better direct booking experience."
So for me, the questions are:  
i) Does your team plan on doing big upgrades to the UI / User Experience with our current bookings calendar?
ii) Are you going to release a whole new calendar this year?
iii) Should we really use Boostly's calendar instead?
Maybe you could email us all and ask what features we would change in your current calendar (or phrased differently - what problems are each of us currently facing with guests failing to book on your calendar?).  
I personally have had so many comments from PFG (potential future guests) that I now have put a disclaimer at the top of my homepage warning guests not to give up when they fail to book - they should call me as there probably IS availability despite what it looks like to them.
Also, my lowest price for the entire year is annoyingly displayed (see screenshot) ...without me having the option of removing it.  This is highly detrimental as a FPG was about to pay normal price, and suddenly sees that the dates they are booking are twice (or 3x) what they could be (despite it being my absolute lowest last minute discount, 2 days before arrival).  They don't even get to find that out.. they just think they're paying above the odds and are likely to walk.
P.S: I still love Uplisting and I think you do superbly in so many areas - thank you.  I also appreciate you are a young company so there will be flaws.  (It's just I think this a huge one!! - along with the lack of a mobile calendar (which I am SO excited that you are making now!) I cannot wait to be able to control my bookings calendar from my phone - and when this arrives I will finally be able to recommend Uplisting without any qualms to my colleagues who also have rentals)

Roy Fortune

Same here

Brian mcguire

Agree completely, bad user experience, i had this issue and had to be on phone with someone trying to help.

Naples Mariner

Strongly agree! By the way, the DatePicker UI component from Airbnb is open sourced here as inspiration or a potential solution. https://github.com/react-dates/react-dates

Doug Fletcher

Naples Mariner: This would be superb. In my opinion, Airbnb has the most friendly and understandable Calendar - and as it is so widespread, it inspires confidence in people to book with it

Penta Props

Vince Breslin 💡🤞🏾🤓

Penta Props

Any plans to correct soon? Having the minimum-stay days struck-through makes it appear those dates are unavailable for any dates attempted! Suggest Clear button functionality removed. Grey strike-through for Past dates. Red for Unavailable dates. Green for Available dates. Yellow when highlighting to depict min.-stay days. Add a legend... Vince Breslin This has to be THE Achilles heel for this otherwise great system!

Doug Fletcher

Agreed. Look at the screenshot - it appears August is fully booked when it’s completely empty. Scores of customers lost this way :(