Website for dog groomers, with slots as long as the dog really takes
A cockapoo that has not been in since March is a completely different afternoon from a smooth coated dachshund, and before the dog is through the door you are the only person in the world who knows that. Everybody else is guessing at an hour, including whoever is answering the phone with a wet spaniel under one arm.
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 every groomer recognises
Short version: the table is the product, and anything that leaves it standing empty costs more than it looks like it does.
A poodle is not a dachshund
One is two hours with a comb through every part of it. The other is forty minutes and most of that is the bath. Book them into the same generic slot and you either run forty minutes behind for the rest of the day or you sit there with a gap you could have sold.
Breed, size and how matted the coat has got are the whole of the estimate, and none of it is obvious to the person booking.
Eight weeks, and still chased
Your regulars come back on a rhythm. Eight weeks for most, six for the ones that grow fast, twelve for the easy ones. You know the rhythm and they half know it, which means the reminder is a text you send yourself, dog by dog, on an evening you meant to be doing something else.
Miss a fortnight of that and the diary in October is suddenly full of holes nobody put there on purpose.
A hole from half nine to half eleven
The two hour standard poodle cancels at nine. Not out of malice, just a morning that went wrong, and by then there is nobody who can fill two hours at that notice.
So you clean the salon, you do the paperwork you have been putting off, and you have earned nothing before lunch on a day you turned away a walk-in last week. It never shows up in the books as a loss. It just looks like a slow Tuesday.
The parts a grooming salon actually uses
Four of them, all pointed at the same thing: keeping the table busy with the right dog at the right length.
Every breed and size can carry its own length and price
Set up a full groom for a small breed as one entry and a full groom for a large or double coated dog as another, with different lengths and different prices. Add a from-price where the coat genuinely decides it, with a note saying so, and you are not committing to a figure before you have seen the dog.
Puppy visits, hand stripping and a straightforward bath and blow dry each get their own line too.
The customer picks the dog, and the diary works out the time
Because they choose the service before the slot, a two hour groom is only offered where two clear hours exist, and a nail clip can drop into a gap that a full groom never could.
The day fills itself in the right order rather than as a row of identical hours, and nobody can book a full groom for ten to five on a day you close at five.
The confirmation, then the nudge the night before
The confirmation goes out the moment the booking is made, with the date, the service and how long to allow. The reminder arrives the day before, which is when a customer can still tell you they cannot come and you can still do something about it.
Reminders go by e-mail as standard. Where a customer only ever answers a text, SMS is bought as prepaid credit.
They move it themselves, and the slot goes straight back
Every booking gets its own link. If Thursday has stopped working, the customer moves it to the following Monday without ringing you mid-groom, and Thursday morning is available again the second they let go of it.
That is what turns a late change into somebody else's appointment rather than a two hour hole. The notice period you set is applied there, in writing, before they click.
What the price list can look like
You name the services and set the figures. The point is that each line carries a length and a pricing type honest enough to survive the dog turning up.
Group them by size or by coat type, so somebody with a labrador is not reading through six lines about poodles first.
What dog groomers ask
That is exactly what it is for. Each service has its own length, so a two hour groom and a twenty minute nail clip are offered against different gaps in the day, and the diary never sells you an hour you do not have.
Nothing can stop it entirely, but naming the entries by size and coat, with a note on each, means it happens rarely. When it does, you can move the booking to the right service and the slot length changes with it.
They can book their next appointment straight after the last one, from the same link, and the reminder before each visit is automatic. The rhythm stops depending on you remembering to send a text on a Sunday night.
The customer cancels or moves through their own link, and the slot is back on the site immediately rather than after somebody has rung you. Your notice period is shown next to the button and repeated in the confirmation.
Yes. Anything you enter yourself sits in the same diary as the online bookings, so the two cannot double up. Plenty of salons take half their work each way for the first year.
The plans start at €49 a month plus VAT and reach €199. Hosting, an SSL certificate, nightly backups and support are behind all four, and the site runs on your own domain. SMS credit is bought up front.
More trades
- Veterinary practicesBooking against both a vet and a room.
- Personal trainersSessions against your calendar, packages up front.
- Yoga and fitness studiosClasses with real places and several instructors.
- PhotographersPackages booked outright, weddings quoted.
- AccountantsEnquiries that arrive with the numbers you need.
- Law firmsAn advisory meeting with a stated price.
- All trades
Get the grooming diary online
Say what you groom and roughly how long each thing takes, or point at the page you have now, and the builder hands back a service list, slot lengths and a working calendar that you can pull about until it matches your week.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.