Buyer Path Research September 30 – October 21, 2026
Your main demo button works. Are your other sales routes covered?
Checking the homepage button checks one route to sales. On nearly half the sites where we looked for every route, buyers had more than one, and one route could lead to a form while another led nowhere.
12sites where one route to sales was a confirmed dead end while another reached a form, in the same check
A count of the cases we confirmed, not a share of sites. We never submitted a form, so a form that appeared doesn’t show the route worked.
Same site, same day, different result
On October 9, 2026, the homepage’s “Get a demo” reached the demo request form. On another page of the same site, “Book a demo” led to the site’s 404.
Homepage
Get a demo
Another page on the same site
Book a demo
On 12 sites, one route to sales was a confirmed dead end while a different route to sales on the same site reached a form in the same check. This site was one of them.
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.
Routes that both reach a form can still 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: the company’s own form, a form hosted by another company, or a booking calendar.
What the 12 looked like
A buyer on one route got nowhere. In the same check, minutes apart, another route on the same site reached a form.
-
Clicked, on the pricing page
REQUEST DEMO
October 21, 2026
Saw
Could they go on?
No.
Not from this button: the quote request page wasn’t there. In the same check, the homepage’s “REQUEST DEMO”, the same words, reached the demo request form.
-
Clicked, on a product page
Book a demo
October 21, 2026
Saw
A page that wasn’t there, at
/request-a-demo-0.Could they go on?
No.
In the same check, the homepage’s “Request a Demo” reached a form at
/request-a-demo. The extra “-0” suggests a copy of the page; we didn’t see why it was gone. -
Clicked, on the homepage
Contact Us
October 21, 2026
Saw
Nothing. No new page, form, or dialog opened.
Could they go on?
No.
Here the homepage button was the dead one. In the same check, “Contact Sales” on a product page reached the contact form.
All 12 sites, in date order
-
Clicked, on a product page
Contact Us
October 1, 2026
Saw
A page that wasn’t there: another product page the button pointed to.
In the same check
The homepage’s “Contact Us For Live Demo” reached a form.
-
Clicked, on a product site
Schedule a Free Call
October 1, 2026
Saw
A booking link that no longer worked.
In the same check
“Book a Free Demo” on the same product site, and the homepage’s “Contact Us”, each reached a form.
-
Clicked, on an integrations page
Book a demo
October 7, 2026
Saw
A page that wasn’t there.
In the same check
The homepage’s “Book a Demo” reached a form at
/demo. -
Clicked, on another page
Book a demo
October 9, 2026
Saw
The site’s 404 page, at
/demo.In the same check
The homepage’s “Get a demo” reached a form at
/contact-sales. The pair at the top of this page. -
Clicked, on the homepage
Get Started
October 11, 2026
Saw
A page that wasn’t there, at
/contact-us.In the same check
The homepage’s “Contact Us” reached a form at
/contact. -
Clicked, on a solutions page
Book a demo
October 11, 2026
Saw
Nothing. The button did nothing.
In the same check
The homepage’s “Book demo” reached a form at
/enquiry, and “Contact” one at/contact. -
Clicked, on another page
Book a Demo
October 19, 2026
Saw
Nothing. The button did nothing.
In the same check
The homepage’s “Book a Demo”, the same words, reached a form at
/book-a-demo. -
Clicked, on a solutions page
A Spanish-language button to book a consultation
October 19, 2026
Saw
A page that wasn’t there, at
/soluciones/contacto.jsp.In the same check
The homepage’s “Contacto” reached a form at
/contacto.jsp. -
Clicked, on another page
Book a demo
October 21, 2026
Saw
A page that wasn’t there, at
/contact.In the same check
The homepage’s “Book a demo”, the same words, reached a form at
/company/contact. -
Clicked, on a product page
Book a demo
October 21, 2026
Saw
A page that wasn’t there, at
/request-a-demo-0.In the same check
The homepage’s “Request a Demo” reached a form at
/request-a-demo. -
Clicked, on the homepage
Contact Us
October 21, 2026
Saw
Nothing. The button did nothing.
In the same check
“Contact Sales” on a product page reached a form at
/contact. -
Clicked, on the pricing page
REQUEST DEMO
October 21, 2026
Saw
A quote request page that wasn’t there.
In the same check
The homepage’s “REQUEST DEMO”, the same words, reached the demo request form.
Check your own routes
We found these 12 by following every route to sales we could find on each site, not only the main button. You can start the same way.
- List every way in
- Every button that asks for a demo, a sales conversation, or a quote: header, homepage, pricing, product and solution pages, landing pages, articles.
- Click each one where it sits
- Start from the page the button is on, the way a buyer arrives. Typing the address you expect skips the button itself.
- Note where each one ends
- Your own form, a form hosted by another company, a booking calendar, or nothing at all.
- Check again after a page moves
- When a page is renamed, moved, or copied, a button that still points to the old address can lead nowhere.
Which route are you least sure of?
Your buyers won’t tell you a button is broken. In a Proof Sweep we check the route you pick 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. When two different routes both matter, each is its own Path: Critical Paths keeps up to 2 of them checked on a schedule.
How we counted
- Which sites
- Company websites, mostly software companies, where we looked for every route to sales we could find and followed each one from the outside, September 30 to October 21, 2026. A route to sales is a button for a demo, a sales conversation, or a quote.
- What counts as a dead end
- A page or form that wasn’t there, a booking link that no longer worked, or a button that did nothing, seen again by a second, separate check.
- Same check
- Both routes were followed in the same round of checks on that site, minutes apart.
- Reached a form
- The form appeared at the end of the route. We never submitted it, so it doesn’t show that the route worked or that a request would reach your sales team.
- What 12 is
- A count of the cases we confirmed, not a share or a rate. Many sites had only one route we could follow, so it says nothing about how often this happens.
- Why a route broke
- An address can hint at it, like a page that seems to have been copied or renamed. We didn’t see why any of these routes broke.
- What we left out
- Free-trial and sign-up buttons. We see what a buyer sees in the browser, not what happens inside your CRM.
Research by Andrey Cherny, founder of BookedDemo. Published .
Cite this research
The figures on this page are from Buyer Path Research, version 4.
Cherny, Andrey. 2026. What happens after you click “Book a demo”? Buyer Path Research, version 4 (updated October 29, 2026). BookedDemo. https://bookeddemo.com/research