My Experience with Cal.com: The good things and the sad things

From Smooth Onboarding to Surprising UX Flaws — Here’s What Worked & What Needs Improvement

I wanted to create a booking page for my leads (free consultation and sales call)

So, I decided to select a scheduling software.

There were many options out there.

But, there was one great app.

Cal.com

I decided to choose this app as my scheduling software.

After signing up,

Since I have signed up with Google, they have prefilled my name, time zone and a custom link for me.

This is a great practice, as it reduces the interaction cost.

The onboarding went smooth.

Then, I was redirected to this page:

Instead of showing this random homepage, they could have just asked the user to create a new booking page, right off the bat.

I decided to explore the app.

Here again, there are different timings.

I don’t even know what are they for.

Everything is the same. 🤔

I decided to delete the two other than default, and edit the default timings:

But for me, they had an option to lesser my hard work.

The copy option copied my times to other days too.

Here, they have reduced the effort to be taken by me by doing the repetitive tasks.

Next, I navigated to the teams section:

Wow!

They have dedicated an entire section for a specific paid feature.

Hmm… That’s great!

After this, I decided to edit my booking page for the 15 min free consultation I offer.

While editing the page, I noticed this:

Cal video?

What is it?

I even opted to Google Meet during the onboarding.

Happily, I found out this page on their website.

They could have avoided this confusion by telling about it upfront.

In the advanced section under the booking page,

I saw this:

What?!

This thing is advanced?

These are the essentials.

They need priorities on what features to show to the users.

Asking details is one of the high ROI things to do in a booking page.

But, they have put it somewhere under the advanced section!

I then saw this option of redirecting the attendees after booking.

I decided that I will give my attendees instant access to my free to paid user journey map.

So, I created a landing page and pasted the link into it.

When I pasted the link:

Wait!

Is there a success page?

Really?

I removed my link.

But, I couldn’t find the success page.

My attendees will still get the free to paid user journey map through email.

We will get to that part in a second.

I navigated to the workflow section.

This simple tooltip helped me understand what workflows were.

Within minutes, I set up my first workflow (as they have prefilled some parts there).

That is the workflow which I set to give my attendees instant access to my resource.

I saw another section namely Webhook.

I decided to explore it.

But, I just wondered what webhook was.

I saw a chatbot at the bottom right.

I thought it would be some AI chatbot.

So, I messaged there.

But, to my surprise:

Nothing.

I was confused.

Then I realized that this was not a AI chatbot.

When I asked them about this:

Anyways, I want to know what webhook is…

After googling, I saw these two websites:

Even though I could understand what they were, I couldn’t see the use cases.

So, I asked ChatGPT:

I finally understood what it was.

I decided to create something with it.

But, it felt a bit complicated.

So, I left it.

A little later, I went to their app store.

I suddenly realised I didn’t know about Cal Video which I have given as an option to my attendees.

I searched for it in the app store.

But even in their page, there wasn’t too much info on how are we gonna use it.

After some time, I realised that I will check how my booking page looks like.

It looked sleek.

In the confirmation page, I had an idea.

I thought that I will add a website option.

So, I went to the app again.

There was all these things known as Identifier, Label and Placeholder.

But, I wondered what were these.

They could have added a clear instruction on what was this about.

And the website went to the bottom of the fields.

I wanted it next to the email.

So, I tried to drag it as I drag such things in other websites.

But, I wasn’t able to drag.

It was because they had this dragging option which was different from other websites.

I then remembered a law from Jakob Nielsen:

Jakob’s Law says users expect your site to work like other websites they use.

So. if you change drag-and-drop behavior, even if it is intuitive, or they’ll get frustrated.

Instead, they could have used the normal dragging option:

Or something related to it.

A while later, I decided that I will put the booking page in the name of my agency BrightCav.

But, I struggled changing my primary email, but I don’t want to waste your time by elaborating on it.

I will just leave that part.

But anyways, I think this page needs a redesign.

Redesign created with Sample data

Here, you may have noticed many changes.

1. Collaboration is a feature exclusively available for paid plans. So, there can be a simple nudge to make them invite their team members as it would make them upgrade, if they really want to have their team members

2. A simple upgrade button they can click if users suddenly decided to upgrade.

If you want to make your users pay, help them pay.

3. The insights section is one of the features in the paid version. But, they can provide a simple insights section, and redirect them to the upgrade page if they want more insights. 😉

Thus, these are the insights you can learn from Cal.com.

I noticed a simple UX law used by them throughout the app:

Aesthetic usability effect.

A simple but effective law.

It says that, An aesthetically pleasing design creates a positive response in people’s brains and leads them to believe the design actually works better.

Even when they have some minor flaws, those flaws are shadowed by their insanely great design.

Hi, I am Farhan Tawfeeq. Founder & UX designer at BrightCav.

BrightCav is an agency which helps SaaS companies with ARR $1M-$20M use the power of psychology to convert their free users to paid customers.

We do this by designing the product’s UX such that it is optimized for conversions.

Take our free scorecard to know what’s stopping your SaaS from converting more users. Click here.

Credits:

Images used here are the product pages of Cal.com® Inc. All the credits go to the owners of Cal.com® Inc including their logo and others. BrightCav and its founder Farhan Tawfeeq are not affiliated with Cal.com® Inc or its subsidiaries.