Over half of Swiss people book appointments online
A study commissioned by Localsearch shows that 61% of Swiss people have already booked an appointment online. The highest demand is for table reservations in a restaurant, doctor and hairdresser appointments.
On the last Friday in November, the global shopping event with discount campaigns, Black Friday, takes place once again. According to studies, bargain hunting has increasingly shifted to the digital world in recent years. This also applies to other areas such as booking appointments. A representative Switzerland-wide online survey conducted by the Innofact research institute on behalf of the booking platform Local.ch shows that 61% of respondents have already booked an appointment online.
"Every SME should recognize this strong need among the population as a great opportunity for success in the digital world and make their appointments bookable online. Otherwise, SMEs run the risk of losing customers to competitors with corresponding digital offerings," says Localsearch CEO Stefano Santinelli in a press release.
In a subsample of the study, respondents were asked where they had already booked an appointment online - with multiple answers possible. This showed that booking a table in a restaurant was the most popular request (30.9%). This is followed at some distance by appointments with doctors (25.7%) and hairdressers (23.6%), as the top 10 ranking of the survey shows.
Strong demand for online appointment booking in the healthcare sector
As the study also shows, online appointments with Swiss healthcare providers appear to be gaining in importance among the population in general: A quarter of respondents (25.7 percent) have already booked a medical appointment online, while 18.4 percent have done so for dental practices. And more than a tenth of respondents (11.3%) had booked physiotherapy appointments online.
More than a tenth of respondents have also booked an appointment online for a car garage, beauty salon or sports facility such as a tennis court. By contrast, appointments for driving lessons (4.2 percent) and for tax advice or legal representation (2.6 percent each) are (still) rarely booked online.
The results of this survey are consistent with an evaluation of the business contact figures from Local.ch: the same three services were most in demand on the booking platform, which according to Mediapulse records 1.7 million visitors per month, in the same top 3 order in the first half of 2023
The representative Switzerland-wide Online survey was conducted by the market research institute Innofact in Zurich on behalf of the booking platform Local.ch in June 2023 among 2011 people. Online bookings included all online searches via mobile, tablet and desktop. Reservations via email, however, were not included.
