Salon websites and the work a booking app cannot do

For your trade 6 min read

A booking app takes the appointment from someone who already decided. Here is the deciding part, and why it has to live somewhere you own.

Your booking app is good at the thing it was built for. Somebody picks a stylist, picks a slot, pays a deposit, gets a reminder. The hard part happened twenty minutes earlier, when a stranger was deciding whether to trust you with their hair, and a booking app is not built to help with that at all.

A booking app is a checkout, not a shop front

A checkout serves someone who has already made up their mind. It is efficient and slightly cold, and that is correct, because by then efficiency is what is wanted.

The decision is a different job. Someone new to the area, or someone leaving a salon they were unhappy at, is trying to work out whether this is a place where they will be understood. They want to see prices without creating an account. They want to know who works there. They want to know that the person who does the thing they need actually works on the days they are free.

Most booking apps hide all of that behind a login, or flatten it into a service list with names like "Cut and finish, 45 min". That list is a menu for a customer you already have.

Put the prices where someone can read them without booking

The most common thing a salon website does wrong is making a price visible only after you have started a booking. Everybody understands why it happens. It rarely works, because a person who does not know your prices does not start the booking, they leave.

Write the price list out as text on a page. Cut and blow dry, color, highlights, treatments, the lot. Where the price genuinely depends on hair length or how much bleach a head needs, say that in a sentence and give the range you actually charge rather than a single number that will be wrong half the time.

Prices are the second thing people check, and the salon that hides them loses to the one that does not.

Say who works there and what each of them is best at

This is the piece a booking app is worst at, and the piece that decides most new bookings.

A name and a photograph is a start. What people are really after is narrower: who here does curly hair, who does color correction, who is the one that cuts men's hair well, who is good with a nervous first appointment. One honest line per stylist does more than a paragraph of adjectives.

It is worth being specific even when it narrows things. A stylist who says plainly that they specialize in short cuts and do not do balayage will be booked by exactly the right people and left alone by the wrong ones, which is a better week for everybody.

Answer the question nobody calls to ask

There is always a question people want answered and are slightly embarrassed to call about. In a salon it is usually about their own hair.

Will you work with my hair type. Do you cut Afro and textured hair, and does everyone there or only one person. Can I come in with box dye on and be told the truth. Do you do children. Do you cut men's hair or is this a women's salon. Will I be lectured about how long it has been since my last trim.

You can answer all of that in one short section written in ordinary words, and it will be the section that turns a browsing stranger into a booking. Whatever the answer is, say it. A clear no sends someone somewhere better and costs you an appointment you would have dreaded.

State the deposit and cancellation policy, kindly

If you take deposits, or charge for a late cancellation, that has to appear before the booking, not in the small print of a confirmation email.

The tone matters more than the rule. "We hold your slot for you, so we ask for a deposit that comes off the price on the day, and we need a day's notice to move it" reads as fair. The same policy in capital letters with the word STRICTLY in it reads as a warning, and people who have already been made to feel like a problem elsewhere will just book somewhere quieter.

Say it once, plainly, on the page where the prices are, and again on the booking page. That is enough.

Say where to park and which door

A salon on a main street or in a courtyard loses first appointments to nothing more dramatic than a person driving past twice and giving up.

Write the practical detail out: where to leave a car, whether the parking is timed, which door, whether it is up a flight of stairs, whether there is a buzzer. A photograph of the front of the building from across the road is worth more than a map, because it is the thing they will actually be looking at.

If the shop is hard to find, saying so is not an admission of anything. It is the reason somebody arrives on time and in a decent mood.

Own the front, rent the booking

Your booking app holds your calendar and your client list. If it puts its prices up, or changes its rules, or closes, you would rather that not be the same day your entire online presence disappears.

The split that works is simple. The website is yours and holds the deciding part: prices, stylists, policy, directions, photographs, the phone number. The booking app holds the calendar and is linked to from a button. If you ever change apps, you change one link.

If your booking app already gives you a public page that does all of the above, and you are happy with it, you do not need to pay anyone for a website. That is a real answer and it applies to some salons. Export your client list somewhere you control, and get on with your day.

A short checklist

• Full price list as readable text, no login, ranges where prices genuinely vary
• One line per stylist saying what they are best at
• A plain answer on hair types, textured hair, children and men's cuts
• Deposit and cancellation policy stated before booking, in kind words
• Parking, the door, stairs and buzzer, plus a photograph of the frontage
• Phone number as a tap-to-call link for people who would rather call
• The booking app reached through a button you can change in one place
• Your client list exported and held somewhere you own

Questions people ask

Do I still need a website if I use a booking app

Only if the booking app's public page is missing the deciding part. If it will not show prices without a login, or will not let you write about your stylists, then yes.

Should salon prices be on the website

Yes, as text, before any booking starts. Ranges are fine where hair length or color work genuinely changes the number, as long as the range is one you would honor.

What if my prices are going up soon

Put the current prices up and change them on the day they change. A page that is right today and updated in six weeks beats an empty page that is never wrong because it never says anything.

How do I stop people booking the wrong service

Describe each service in ordinary language and say how long it takes, then say which stylist does it. Most wrong bookings are guesses made by someone who could not tell the options apart.

Can I link straight to my booking system

Yes, and it should be a single button that appears on every page. Keep the link in one place so that changing systems is one edit rather than forty.

What happens to my bookings if I change apps

Your calendar and client list belong to you, but only if you have exported them. Do the export now, while nothing is going wrong, and keep a copy off the app.