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Buyer Path research August 24 – October 21, 2026

What happens after you click “Book a demo”?

A buyer is ready to talk to sales and clicks the button. Sometimes that’s where it ends. We followed that click on company websites and recorded what buyers actually got.

Nearly 2,300company websites examined

100 of their sales routes re-checked every week for seven weeks.

42sites with confirmed dead ends

The buyer clicked

Book Demo Now

and got

A booking page that says: This Calendly URL is not valid.

No meeting could be booked.

Broken on August 27. Still broken nearly eight weeks later, at every weekly check.

What stopped buyers

Real sales buttons on real company websites, and what a buyer got after clicking them.

42 sites

where a sales button led a buyer into a dead end.

  • 19 a page or form that wasn’t there
  • 17 a booking link that no longer worked
  • 6 a button that did nothing

Each one confirmed by a person or by a second, separate check.

  1. Clicked

    BOOK A DEMO

    October 17, 2026

    Saw

    The site’s own 404 page: Page not found. We can’t find the page you were looking for. The Book a demo button is still in the header. The logo is blurred.

    Could they go on?

    No.

    The link behind the button was mistyped, with the site’s address in it twice. The same 404 when we checked again as three different buyers on October 18, and once more on October 21.

  2. 17–19 seconds

    before the meeting times appeared.

    1. 0 s

      Book a Meeting

      The buyer clicks.

    2. 10 s

      Ten seconds after the click: the booking page says Pick a time. Meet our experts. Nothing below it yet. The product name is blurred.

      “Pick a time.” No calendar yet.

    3. 17–18 s

      About 18 seconds after the click: the booking calendar starts to show below Pick a time.

      The booking calendar appears.

    The calendar did show up, for anyone still waiting. Would your buyer wait that long? Measured from the click to meeting times you could pick, October 7, 2026.

    Every check that day. All 11 checks we ran on October 7 took 17–19 seconds, including checks as three different buyers.

  3. Clicked

    Book a demo

    October 12, 2026

    Saw, after two clicks

    After two clicks: the same Book a demo button, still in place on the same page.

    The same button on the same page. No new page, form, dialog, or calendar opened.

    Could they go on?

    No.

    The button did nothing.

More dead ends we confirmed

  1. Clicked, on the homepage

    Request a Demo

    October 18, 2026

    Saw

    Over the homepage, with the Request a Demo button in the header, a booking window says: This Calendly URL is not valid.

    Could they go on?

    No.

    The homepage’s main demo button opened a booking window with an invalid link.

  2. Clicked

    Book a demo

    October 17, 2026

    Saw

    A 404 page: Page not found. This is not the page you’re looking for. A small logo is blurred.

    Could they go on?

    No.

    The button linked to a draft preview of a page, not the live page. Still a 404 on October 21.

  3. Clicked

    Get a Demo

    October 8, 2026

    Saw

    A meeting booking page saying: Well, this is disappointing. Please check back with the person who sent you this link, because that page is nowhere to be found.

    Could they go on?

    No.

    The booking link no longer existed: “that page is nowhere to be found.”

  4. Clicked, on the pricing page

    Request Demo

    October 21, 2026

    Saw

    A plain page: Page not found. Error 404. Sorry, the page you were looking for at this URL was not found. A search box holds the words request custom quote.

    Could they go on?

    No.

    The pricing page’s demo button opened a quote request page that wasn’t there.

  5. Clicked

    Request a Demo

    October 7, 2026

    Saw

    A plain server error page reading 404 Not Found.

    Could they go on?

    No.

    A 404 page instead of the demo request.

  6. Clicked

    Solicite uma demo

    October 2, 2026 · “Request a demo”

    Saw

    A notice in Portuguese saying the form is under maintenance, with an email button. The email address is blurred.

    “Our form is under maintenance. Write to the address below with your name, company, and phone, and we’ll get back to you.”

    Could they go on?

    Not through the form.

    The form was down. The page offered an email address instead.

Real captures from real company websites. Names and logos removed.

Your homepage button works. What about the others?

Same company, same day: one demo button reached the form, another led to a 404.

Homepage

Get a demo

A demo request form with name, email, team size, language and message fields and a Submit button.
Demo request form reached

Another page on the same site

Book a demo

The site’s own 404 page: navigation bar with the logo blurred, the message 404, Page lost in space, a Back to homepage button, and an illustration of an astronaut floating in space.
“Page lost in space…” — a 404

48%

of the sites where we looked for every way to reach sales had more than one.

381 of 794 sites, 1,362 routes in all. Each one can break on its own, and checking one tells you nothing about the rest.

It worked last week

Routes break between checks. We watched one go from an open calendar to a dead link in seven days.

A working calendar became a dead link.

  1. Sep 9

    Open days

  2. Sep 16

    Open days

    September 16: the booking calendar shows September 2026 with several days available.

  3. Broke this week

  4. Sep 23

    “This Calendly URL is not valid.”

    September 23: in place of the calendar, the booking widget says: This Calendly URL is not valid.

  5. Oct 21

    Still dead

Same page, same “Book a demo” button. Check it on September 16 and you’d see a working calendar. A week later, a dead link, and still dead four weeks after that.

Fixes need proof, too.

The “Book a demo” button behind the 404 above led to a demo form again by October 12. Without a recheck, nobody can say when it broke or whether the fix held.

October 12: the same button leads to a demo request form with name, email, team size, language and message fields.

What happens on your site?

Your buyers won’t tell you the button is broken. Pick the route that matters most. In a Proof Sweep we check it as an outside buyer in up to 3 buyer contexts you approve and show how far the buyer got, or exactly where they got stuck, with screenshots. After a fix, we check again to confirm it held.

$750 for one Path, fully credited toward an annual plan within 30 days. A Path is one public route to a demo, contact-sales, quote, or trial request; other routes can be added as their own Paths.

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Prefer to talk first? Discuss your Paths. The fit call is free.

More from the research
Routes on one site can end in different places
On 32 of 256 sites where two or more routes reached a form or calendar, the routes ended in different kinds of places. On 20, one ended at the company’s own form and another at a booking calendar.
Many routes run through someone else’s page
On the 1,000 recorded routes, 190 of 832 destinations were on a host outside the company’s own domain, such as a booking or form vendor. That page can change without anyone on your team touching it.
Routes change fast
On 12 of 1,000 recorded routes, the button or destination we had recorded was gone about three days later.

How we did it

What we examined
Public company websites. On each, we clicked a sales button for a demo, a sales conversation, or a quote, and recorded where it led: the page, any popup, the form or calendar, and what each one showed. Each check used one location, device, and buyer profile. We never submitted a form or booked a meeting.
How the sites were chosen
Mostly software companies, taken in a fixed order from broad company lists: 1,000 with one recorded sales route each, and many more where we found the sales routes ourselves (from mid-October, new companies were added only after a check that the site loaded and read as a B2B software company). Plus a 218-company comparison set from earlier BookedDemo work, a few sites checked directly in our product, and 100 recorded routes re-checked every week.
What counts
Each website counts once, however many routes or checks it had: 2,293 sites. Waits run from the click until the form or calendar could be used.
How results were confirmed
A dead end counts only when a person reviewed it (14 of 1,000 recorded routes) or a second, separate check saw it again: 42 sites in all. That is a count, not a rate. Sites were checked in different ways, and only these were confirmed.
What we left out
Free-trial and sign-up buttons. CAPTCHA and bot checks: we stopped there and didn’t count them as dead ends (37 of 1,000 recorded routes). We see what a buyer sees in the browser, not what happens inside your CRM.

How the proof works → See pricing →