Date Pickers: The Customer Experience Nobody Questions
What is it with date pickers?
Brian Walsh
7/24/20263 min read
What is it with date pickers?
Whether you’re booking a flight, reserving a hotel room, hiring a car or arranging an appointment, the humble date picker has become one of the most common elements of the online customer journey.
And yet, despite appearing on thousands of websites, many of them remain surprisingly unintuitive.
Perhaps we’ve all simply accepted them as part of modern life.
Recently, while booking travel online, I found myself going through the same familiar experience. I clicked on the departure date field and a calendar appeared. I selected the day I wanted to travel. The same calendar then expected me to select my return date.
Simple enough in theory.
But it immediately raised questions.
Did I just select the outbound date or the return date?
Have I selected both dates correctly?
Did I accidentally choose a same-day return?
What exactly does the highlighted section mean?
And why am I having to think so hard about something that should be obvious?
The problem isn’t that customers don’t know how to select dates.
The problem is that many date pickers require customers to understand how the system works rather than making the process self-explanatory.
Booking Anxiety Is Real
By the time most customers reach the booking stage, they are already processing a huge amount of information.
A hotel website may ask whether you’d like breakfast, parking, early check-in, late check-out, room upgrades, airport transfers or flexible cancellation.
An airline might offer priority boarding, extra baggage, travel insurance, seat selection, lounge access and car hire.
Every additional option requires a decision. Every decision demands attention.
The one thing that should be crystal clear throughout the process is the date the customer intends to arrive and the date they intend to leave.
Yet surprisingly often, this most fundamental piece of information is buried within a small calendar control that leaves customers second-guessing themselves.
Two Decisions, Not One
If I’m booking a hotel, there are really two separate questions.
When do I want to arrive?
When do I want to leave?
Likewise, when booking a flight:
When do I want to fly out?
When do I want to return?
So why are these often treated as a single action?
Wouldn’t it be simpler to ask customers to select their outbound or arrival date first, confirm that choice and then present a second calendar for the return or departure date?
Each decision becomes clear. Each choice becomes deliberate.
Most importantly, the customer remains confident throughout the process.
Good design should reduce uncertainty, not create it.
Tiny Calendars, Big Consequences
Then there is the issue of size.
Many date pickers seem to have been designed for people with perfect eyesight, large monitors and incredibly precise fingers.
On mobile devices they can be particularly challenging. Tiny dates squeezed into tiny boxes create the perfect conditions for mistakes.
A single incorrect tap can alter an entire booking.
A missed date can change the cost of a trip.
A misunderstanding can result in arriving on the wrong day altogether.
Given the importance of the decision being made, it’s surprising how little attention is sometimes given to making the selection process clear and accessible.
The Missing Confidence Check
What surprises me most is that many booking systems don’t provide a final opportunity to sense-check the reservation before it becomes binding.
Once the payment details have been entered and the customer clicks the final button, the transaction is often completed immediately.
Only then does the customer begin scanning the confirmation email looking for mistakes.
Wouldn’t it be better to present a clear confirmation screen before the booking is finalised?
Imagine a page displaying:
Arrival date
Departure date
Number of nights
Number of guests
Room type or flight details
Optional extras selected
Total cost
All prominently displayed and easy to review.
At that point the customer could be offered a simple choice:
Confirm Booking or Edit Details
No penalties.
No need to start again.
No frantic search for a customer service number after spotting an error seconds after clicking “Book Now”.
Such a step would not only reduce mistakes but would significantly increase customer confidence.
Familiar Doesn’t Mean Good
One of the biggest traps in customer experience design is assuming that because something is familiar, it must be effective.
Date pickers have become so common that many organisations no longer question whether they are actually serving customers well.
But familiarity is not the same as usability. And it certainly isn’t the same as confidence.
The UXY Insight
The best customer experiences remove doubt.
They guide customers through important decisions clearly and confidently.
When customers are spending hundreds or even thousands on flights, accommodation or travel arrangements, they should never be left wondering whether they’ve selected the correct dates.
A date picker is not just a technical component.
It’s a critical part of the customer’s decision-making process.
Make it clear.
Make it obvious.
Make it forgiving.