Online Booking Statistics 2026: How Customers Book Appointments
Going online is fast becoming a normal way to reach a business about an appointment. In England, 30.8% of patients who tried to contact their doctor’s office in 2026 last did so online, almost double the share two years earlier. In the US, 91% of adults carry a smartphone, and 65% were offered an online health portal and used it in 2024.
If you run a salon, barbershop, spa, studio, or clinic, these numbers tell you how your clients expect to book, when they’ll do it, and what changes once they can book without calling. A word on sources: most “online booking statistics” you’ll find online come from companies that sell booking software. We skipped those. Everything here comes from government surveys, Pew Research Center, and peer-reviewed studies. The best-measured booking data comes from healthcare, so we label every clinic figure as healthcare and never present it as a salon number.
Key Online Booking Statistics at a Glance
- 30.8% of patients in England who tried to contact their GP practice in 2026 last did so online, up from 22.4% in 2025 and 16.8% in 2024. This measures contact of any kind, not only booking.
Source: Ipsos for NHS England, GP Patient Survey 2026, 2026 - 57.6% of patients found it easy to contact their practice through its website in 2026, slightly ahead of the phone (56.9%). In 2025 the phone was ahead.
Source: Ipsos for NHS England, GP Patient Survey 2026, 2026 - 38% of people in the EU aged 16 to 74 made an appointment or reservation online with a public authority or service in 2025. The figure covers public services only, not private businesses.
Source: Eurostat, E-government and electronic identification, 2026 - 65% of US adults were offered and used an online patient portal in 2024, up from 25% in 2014.
Source: ASTP/ONC, Individuals’ Access and Use of Patient Portals and Smartphone Health Apps, 2024, 2025 - 77% of US adults were offered online access by a health care provider or insurer in 2024, up from 59% in 2020.
Source: ASTP/ONC, Data Brief No. 77, 2025 - 57% of US portal users reached their portal through an app in 2024, up from 38% in 2020.
Source: ASTP/ONC, Data Brief No. 77, 2025 - 91% of US adults own a smartphone, up from 35% in 2011.
Source: Pew Research Center, Mobile Fact Sheet, 2025 - 78% of US adults aged 65 and older own a smartphone, compared with 97% of adults aged 18 to 29.
Source: Pew Research Center, Mobile Fact Sheet, 2025 - 16% of US adults are “smartphone-only” internet users, with a smartphone but no home broadband.
Source: Pew Research Center, Mobile Fact Sheet, 2025 - 24.4% of online mammogram self-scheduling at Mayo Clinic happened outside weekday staff hours (7 AM to 5 PM), including 8.5% on weekends.
Source: North et al., JMIR Medical Informatics, 2021 - 29.5% of online self-scheduling for well-child visits happened outside staff hours, and 10.6% on weekends.
Source: North et al., JMIR Medical Informatics, 2021 - 93.5% of self-scheduled mammograms were booked in one step, compared with 74.5% of staff-scheduled ones.
Source: North et al., JMIR Medical Informatics, 2021 - Online-booked appointments at a German eye practice had a median no-show rate of 1.8%, against 5.9% for appointments booked by phone or in person.
Source: Kammrath Betancor et al., Frontiers in Digital Health, 2025 - 32% of Canadian businesses received e-commerce orders in 2023, up from 25% in 2019.
Source: Statistics Canada, Survey of Digital Technology and Internet Use, 2023, 2024 - More than 39 million people are registered for the NHS App, and it was used to manage 6.6 million hospital and other secondary care appointments in November 2025 alone.
Source: NHS England, Record numbers using NHS App to manage health, 2025
How Many People Book Appointments Online?
No government survey in the US or Canada asks everyone, “Did you book an appointment online this year?” The closest thing is England’s GP Patient Survey, which collected 654,714 responses in 2026 and asks patients how they last tried to reach their doctor’s office. That covers every reason for getting in touch, not only booking. Watch how fast the online share has moved in just three survey rounds.
Source: Ipsos for NHS England, GP Patient Survey 2024, 2025, and 2026, national results published July 2026.
The online share went from 16.8% in 2024 to 30.8% in 2026, a jump of 14 percentage points. Policy likely played a part: from October 2025, the GP contract required practices in England to keep online contact open during core hours. Across the EU, Eurostat found that 38% of people aged 16 to 74 made an appointment or reservation online with a public authority or service in 2025; that figure covers public services only. For a shop owner, the takeaway: when an online option is available, a large share of people use it, and in England that share has risen in each of the last three survey rounds.
Online vs Phone Booking: What Customers Prefer
Preference is hard to measure directly, but the GP Patient Survey gets close. It asks people who used each contact method whether it was easy. Compare the phone with the practice website and the NHS App, and look at which one came out on top in 2026.
Source: Ipsos for NHS England, GP Patient Survey 2025 and 2026, published July 2025 and July 2026.
In 2025 the phone still led. In 2026, the practice website edged ahead: 57.6% found it easy, against 56.9% for the phone. All three methods improved, so this isn’t a story of phones failing. It’s a sign that a decent online option now matches a phone line for ease, and it doesn’t need someone free to answer. If your front desk is also your chair, every booking a client makes online is a call you don’t have to take mid-service. Our guide to booking psychology covers how small bits of friction change whether people finish booking.
Mobile Booking Statistics
For many clients, going online means using a phone. Pew Research Center has tracked smartphone ownership among US adults since 2011. The curve below shows why a booking page needs to work on a small screen.
Source: Pew Research Center, Mobile Fact Sheet, November 2025.
Smartphone ownership climbed from 35% in 2011 to 91% in 2025, and it’s been flat at about 90% since 2023. That means almost every client you have can book from their pocket. With ownership near its ceiling, further growth in mobile booking will depend more on habit than on new devices. Pew also found that 16% of US adults are “smartphone-only” internet users: for them, your booking page is your website. Canada looks similar: Statistics Canada reported that 95% of Canadians aged 15 and older used the internet in 2022.
A common worry is that older clients won’t book online. The age split shows how much that has changed.
Source: Pew Research Center, Mobile Fact Sheet, survey February to June 2025, published November 2025.
78% of Americans aged 65 and older own a smartphone. That’s lower than the 97% of adults under 30, but it’s still more than three in four. If your clientele skews older, keep the phone line open, but don’t assume older clients can’t or won’t book online.
The same shift shows up in how Americans reach their health care portals, the place where many of them first learned to book online. Watch the app share grow while web-only use shrinks.
Source: ASTP/ONC, Individuals’ Access and Use of Patient Portals and Smartphone Health Apps, 2024 (HINTS data), July 2025.
Among Americans who used a patient portal, 57% reached it through an app in 2024, up from 38% in 2020. Web-only use fell from 60% to 42%. The takeaway for a service business: design your booking flow for a thumb first and a desktop second. Clients are likely to compare your booking experience with the apps they use every day.
After-Hours Booking: When Customers Book Online
When a client books online, you can see the time stamp. Two Mayo Clinic studies looked at exactly that: when patients used the self-scheduling tool compared with the hours staff answered the phone (7 AM to 5 PM on weekdays). The donut below splits almost 13,500 mammogram self-scheduling actions by time of day.
Source: North et al., JMIR Medical Informatics, December 2021. Weekday business-hours share calculated as 100% minus the reported 24.4%.
About one in four self-scheduled mammogram actions (24.4%) happened when the scheduling office was closed: 15.9% on weekday evenings or early mornings and 8.5% on weekends. For well-child visits the share was higher still, at 29.5% outside staff hours and 10.6% on weekends. Think of that in salon terms: if one in four bookings arrives after hours, a phone-only business either misses them or answers them on its own time. Here’s more on why 24/7 online booking pays off.
See how online booking works for your business
Does Online Booking Reduce No-Shows?
This is where the evidence gets mixed, so it’s worth looking closely. The chart compares no-show rates for appointments that patients booked themselves online with those booked by phone or by staff, in four peer-reviewed healthcare studies. Look at which way the gap runs in each setting.
Source: Kammrath Betancor et al., Frontiers in Digital Health, May 2025 (German eye practice and clinic); North et al., JMIR Medical Informatics, March 2021 (well-child); North et al., JMIR Medical Informatics, December 2021 (mammograms).
At a private eye practice in Germany, online-booked appointments had a median no-show rate of 1.8%, compared with 5.9% for appointments booked another way. At a university eye clinic in the same study, the result flipped: 14.3% for online bookings against 11.2%. The Mayo Clinic studies split too: well-child visits showed no significant difference (3.1% vs 4.1%), and self-scheduled mammograms had slightly more no-shows (5.7% vs 4.6%, a statistically significant difference). The honest reading: online booking on its own doesn’t guarantee fewer no-shows. What it does show is less back-and-forth. At Mayo, 93.5% of self-scheduled mammograms were booked in a single step, compared with 74.5% for staff-scheduled ones. Pair online booking with reminders and a clear cancellation policy if no-shows are your problem.
Small Business Adoption of Online Orders
There’s no official count of how many small businesses offer online booking. The nearest government measure is whether businesses take orders online at all, so the figures below are an e-commerce proxy, not a booking rate. Statistics Canada’s digital technology survey tracks the share of businesses receiving e-commerce orders, meaning orders placed over the internet through a website, app, or online platform.
Source: Statistics Canada, Survey of Digital Technology and Internet Use, 2023, September 2024.
32% of Canadian businesses received e-commerce orders in 2023, up from 25% in 2019 and about level with 2021 (33%). Read that the other way round: roughly two in three Canadian businesses still don’t take any orders online. On the customer side, e-commerce reached 17.1% of all US retail sales in the second quarter of 2026, according to the Census Bureau; that figure covers retail goods, not services or appointments. Neither number counts online booking, but together they suggest that a business offering online booking, through a website form or small business appointment booking software, is likely still ahead of many local competitors. If you’re moving off a paper book, this step-by-step guide to online scheduling walks through the switch.
Patient Online Booking in Healthcare: The Best-Measured Case
Health care is where online self-service has been measured longest. The US Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) has asked adults since 2014 whether their provider offered online access through a patient portal and whether they used it. Portals are where many patients book, move, and cancel appointments, so the trend is a good stand-in for the online-booking habit.
Source: ASTP/ONC, Data Brief No. 77, Health Information National Trends Survey 2014–2024, July 2025.
The share of US adults who were offered a portal and used it rose from 25% in 2014 to 65% in 2024, with the biggest jump between 2020 and 2022. The same survey found that 87% of people encouraged by their provider to use the portal did so, against 57% of those who weren’t encouraged. In England, the NHS App now has more than 39 million registered users and was used to manage 6.6 million hospital and other secondary care appointments in November 2025 alone. The encouragement gap is a correlation, not proof of cause, but the lesson is easy to apply to any service business: make sure clients know your online tools exist. Put your booking link on your receipts, your texts, and your social profiles, and mention it at checkout.
What These Numbers Mean for Your Business
- Offer online booking, and keep the phone. Online contact is growing fast, but in England the website and the phone now score about the same on ease, and most patients still made their last contact another way.
- Build for phones first. With 91% of US adults on smartphones and app use rising, a booking page that’s clumsy on a small screen will lose clients. Our list of must-have scheduling software features covers what to look for.
- Capture the after-hours demand. In the Mayo studies, 24% to 30% of online self-scheduling happened when the scheduling office was closed. Those are bookings a phone-only business can’t take.
- Don’t count on online booking alone to fix no-shows. The research is mixed. Pair online booking with reminders and deposits or a cancellation policy.
- Tell clients it exists. In the US survey, people who were encouraged by their provider used portals far more (87% vs 57%). Share your booking link everywhere.
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References and Sources
- Ipsos for NHS England, 2026 GP Patient Survey Results Released, July 9, 2026.
- Ipsos for NHS England, 2025 GP Patient Survey Results Released, July 2025.
- Eurostat, E-government and Electronic Identification, Statistics Explained, data extracted March 2026.
- Pew Research Center, Mobile Fact Sheet, November 20, 2025 (survey conducted February 5 to June 18, 2025).
- Richwine C., ASTP/ONC, Individuals’ Access and Use of Patient Portals and Smartphone Health Apps, 2024, Data Brief No. 77, July 2025.
- North F., et al., The Effect of Automated Mammogram Orders Paired With Electronic Invitations to Self-schedule on Mammogram Scheduling Outcomes, JMIR Medical Informatics, December 7, 2021.
- North F., et al., Impact of Web-Based Self-Scheduling on Finalization of Well-Child Appointments in a Primary Care Setting, JMIR Medical Informatics, March 18, 2021.
- Kammrath Betancor P., et al., Efficient Patient Care in the Digital Age: Impact of Online Appointment Scheduling in a Medical Practice and a University Hospital on the “No-Show” Rate, Frontiers in Digital Health, May 2, 2025.
- Statistics Canada, The Daily: Survey of Digital Technology and Internet Use, 2023, September 17, 2024.
- Statistics Canada, The Daily: Canadian Internet Use Survey, 2022, July 20, 2023.
- NHS England, Record Numbers Using NHS App to Manage Health, December 24, 2025.
- US Census Bureau via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), E-Commerce Retail Sales as a Percent of Total Sales, updated August 18, 2026.
Methodology Note
We used only government statistical agencies (NHS England, Eurostat, Statistics Canada, the US Census Bureau, and the US Office of the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy), Pew Research Center, and peer-reviewed studies. We excluded all statistics published by booking-software vendors and used no Bookedin customer data. No survey in the US or Canada directly measures how many adults book appointments online, so we used the closest official measures: England’s GP Patient Survey (how patients last tried to contact their practice, which includes but is not limited to booking), Eurostat’s share of people aged 16 to 74 who made online appointments and reservations with public authorities and services (public services only), and US patient portal use from the Health Information National Trends Survey. After-hours and no-show figures come from healthcare studies and are labeled as such; they are not salon or spa data. The small-business section uses e-commerce measures as proxies (Statistics Canada’s share of businesses receiving online orders and the Census Bureau’s e-commerce share of US retail sales); neither counts online booking. The HINTS portal chart shows the survey years for which the 2024 data brief reports figures. The German eye practice no-show rates are monthly medians and the university clinic rates are averages, as reported by the authors. The Mayo Clinic business-hours share (75.6%) is 100% minus the reported after-hours share of 24.4%. Figures are shown as published, rounded to one decimal where the source gives one. As of September 2026, the 2024 HINTS and 2026 GP Patient Survey are the newest editions available.
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