Website for barbers with booking that fits a short slot
Your next customer is deciding right now, standing outside somewhere with a phone in one hand. He is not going to ring you at half four on a Saturday while you have got clippers running and three lads sat on the bench waiting their turn.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.
Three things about a Saturday
None of this is about being disorganised. It is about a trade where the slots are short, the door keeps opening and nobody is on reception.
The bench and the diary
Two lads are sat on the bench who did not book anything. Three more are booked in for the next hour. You can take the walk-ins or you can keep the booked ones to time, and on a busy Saturday you cannot do both, so somebody waits twenty minutes for a twenty minute cut and quietly decides to try the shop down the road next time.
Nobody rings any more
The phone is face down on the counter with the clippers going over the top of it. Half the people who call get a voicemail they will never leave a message on. The other half want to know what a skin fade costs and whether you could do half five. Both of those have an answer that could have been on a screen.
Every four weeks, from scratch
The regulars come back on a four week rhythm, and every one of them starts the whole thing again from nothing. A message on the Tuesday, no reply until Thursday because you were working, and by Thursday the slot he wanted has gone. They are the easiest bookings in the shop and they take up more of your day than anything else.
What actually changes in the shop
The rest of it is there as well. These four are the ones that change how a Saturday runs.
Ten seconds, one thumb, no pinching
Pick the cut, pick a time, done, and the whole thing works on a phone screen without zooming, because a phone is the only device your customers will ever use for this. The times on offer are the ones you can really take: a cut is a cut length, a cut and beard is longer, and the slots follow the shop rather than the clock.
He moves it himself at eleven at night
Every booking comes with a link of its own. When something crops up and Thursday no longer works, he changes it at eleven at night without ringing anybody, and that Thursday slot goes back on the board straight away for whoever is looking at that hour.
A reminder the day before, not a phone call from you
The confirmation goes out the second he books, carrying the time, the barber and the address. The reminder lands the day before, while there is still room to move it rather than just not turn up. E-mail is part of every plan; SMS is a prepaid add-on if that is where your customers actually read things.
Quiet Tuesdays and the student rate
Tuesday morning is the hour you would rather not have standing empty. Put a code against it, or run a student rate that only applies before three, and let the booking work it out at the moment it is taken instead of you doing the sums at the till with somebody waiting.
What the price list looks like
You choose the names and the amounts. This is the shape: one pricing type per cut, and each one holding the length of slot it really needs.
Cuts can be grouped into categories, cuts, beards and children for example, each with its own prices.
What barbers ask before they sign up
No. You decide how much of the day is bookable and how much stays open for the door. Block out the hours you want to keep for walk-ins and they simply never show as available online.
Yes. Each barber goes in as a resource with their own hours, and the customer chooses the person as well as the time. Nobody ends up booked in on a day they are not working.
It is built for the phone first. The page, the prices and the booking all work with one thumb, and there is nothing anybody has to zoom into to read or to tap.
A confirmation goes out at once and a reminder the day before, and he can move the slot himself from his own link. A slot handed back at nine in the evening can still be taken by somebody else that night.
No. That site can be imported, so the wording and the prices come across, then the builder fills in whatever is missing. After that you change things by clicking the pencils on the page itself.
Plans run from €49 to €199 a month plus VAT. The site on your own domain, SSL, hosting, nightly backups and support are in every plan. SMS is a prepaid add-on.
More trades
- Nail salonsThe three week refill books itself.
- Lash techniciansBookings that arrive while your hands are busy.
- Beauty and skin clinicsConsultation first, the course of treatments in the calendar.
- Massage therapistsSlots per treatment length, and gift cards.
- Foot health practitionersOne calendar for the phone and the web.
- Hair salonsBooking per chair and treatment length.
- All trades
Get the shop online
Describe the shop in a few sentences, or point at the page you have now, and the builder puts together a first version with the cuts, the prices and the booking already in it. Then you change whatever you want by clicking the pencils.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.