A session type is one bookable thing: a name, a length, a price if there is one, and the rules about when it can be booked. Together they form the menu on your booking page, and like any menu, the structure does more work than the individual items.
Start with three
Almost everyone starts with too many. The pattern that works for most solo practices is three:
- •A short free one. Fifteen or twenty minutes, no cost, for people deciding whether to work with you.
- •Your main paid session. The thing you actually do, at the length you actually do it.
- •A shorter follow-up. For existing clients who need less than a full session.
Three covers the new visitor, the client, and the returning client, which is every person who will ever land on your page. Add a fourth when a real booking request does not fit, not in anticipation of one.
One-on-one sessions
The default. One booker, one slot, your calendar blocked for the duration. The two settings worth attention are length and what happens either side of it. A sixty-minute session with no gap after it means your day is a wall of sessions with no room to write notes, which is where buffers come in. More on those in buffers, minimum notice, and booking windows.
Set the length to the session you actually deliver. If your hour routinely runs to seventy minutes, book seventy. Optimistic durations are how days fall apart by mid-afternoon.
Group sessions
A group session is one slot that several people book into: a class, a workshop, a cohort call. The mental shift is that the slot has a capacity rather than being taken by the first booker, and the interesting settings are how many seats and what happens when they run out.
Group bookings are also where a spreadsheet stops working fastest, because attendance changes right up to the start. There is a fuller walkthrough in scheduling classes and group sessions.
Recurring and repeat bookings
Most ongoing client work is a standing weekly or fortnightly slot. Two ways to handle it: let the client book each session as it comes, which suits irregular work and keeps your calendar honest, or set the standing slot once and leave it. The first is more flexible, the second removes a small piece of admin from your client's week.
For coaching and therapy, the standing slot usually wins. For consulting and freelance work, per-session booking usually does, because the cadence genuinely varies.
Naming, briefly
The name is the part the visitor reads and the part most often written for the wrong audience. "60-min deep dive (existing clients)" tells someone exactly whether it is for them. "Session 2" does not. There is more on this in what to put on your booking page.
Set it up once
Session types are the part of the setup worth getting right early, because everything else hangs off them: your availability, your reminders, and what a visitor sees in the first three seconds. Three well-named types beat eight vague ones every time. Set yours up.