Website for a hair salon, with booking that respects the chair
The chair is the business, and an empty hour at four on a Thursday is not money you can earn back later in the week. The bookings that would have filled it turn up while both your hands are in somebody's hair, or at nine in the evening with the salon dark and the phone on the counter.
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 hours you do not get back
The salon is not short of demand. It is short of a way to take a booking at the moment somebody wants to make one.
Twenty past two, both hands in a colour
The phone goes. You are mid application with a timer running and somebody sitting under it, answering means gloves off, and the question is going to be about a Saturday you cannot check without walking to the front desk.
So it rings out. Whoever that was has opened another salon's page before you have finished rinsing, and they will not ring back, because they have found somewhere that let them book there and then.
A trim is twenty minutes, a full head is four hours
The book on the desk is ruled into boxes of the same size for everything in it. A dry cut and a full head of highlights with a toner and a blow dry go into the same column, and only one of the two fits.
When it goes wrong it goes wrong in the worst way: the colour overruns, the two clients after it wait, and by six o'clock nobody has had a break and one person has been apologised to three times.
Nine in the evening, and the salon is dark
This is when people book. Sitting on a sofa, phone in hand, having decided the roots have gone on quite long enough, looking for somewhere that will show them a Thursday.
A number and a list of opening hours turns that into a thing to do tomorrow, and tomorrow it will be somebody else's Thursday. The salon that could be booked at that exact moment is the salon that gets the appointment.
Four things that keep the chairs full
There is more than this in the system. This is what a salon feels in the first month of using it.
Treatment first, then the time it needs
The client picks the treatment before the time, and every treatment carries how long it genuinely takes in your salon. Twenty minutes for a dry cut, an afternoon for balayage, and a cut and colour booked as the single appointment it actually is.
What they are shown are the gaps that can hold that treatment, so nothing lands in an hour that was never long enough for it.
Chairs and stylists, not just a list of names
Four chairs and three stylists on a Saturday is the real ceiling, and if one of the three does colour and the others do not, that is a ceiling as well. Staff and chairs go in as resources, and treatments are tied to whoever and whatever they need.
Colour can then only be booked with a colourist, and nobody ends up double booked because two names looked open on paper.
Cancellations that come back in time
Every appointment has a link of its own. A client who cannot make Thursday moves it themselves on the Tuesday, while there is still time for the hour to be taken by somebody else.
That is the whole difference between a rebooking and a gap. The hour returns to the site the moment they let go of it, and in a busy salon it rarely sits there long.
A confirmation, then a nudge the day before
The confirmation goes out as the appointment is made, with the treatment, the time and the stylist on it. The reminder arrives the day before, which is the last point at which a four hour colour slot can be saved rather than lost.
E-mail reminders are part of every plan. SMS, which is where most clients will really see it, is a prepaid add-on.
A salon price list, set out to be bookable
You choose the treatments and the prices. The useful part is which pricing type each one takes and how long it is set to run.
Cutting, colour and treatments can each be a category of their own, with prices per category and a separate page for each.
What salon owners ask
Yes. A treatment can be priced per category or per member of staff, so a senior stylist and a graduate carry their own numbers without you needing two separate price lists on the site.
Set it up as a treatment of its own with its own length. The client books one appointment, the diary holds the whole of it, and the chairs behind are not sold an hour that has already gone.
The reminder goes out the day before, and every booking carries a link the client can use to move it. An appointment released on the Tuesday can be filled again. One released at nine on the day cannot.
Yes, by tying each treatment to the staff who perform it. Colour only shows the colourists, and the chair is a resource too, so nothing can be booked that the salon could not physically deliver.
Because the paper is on the desk and the client is on a sofa at nine at night. The book carries on working exactly as it does, but it is also open at the hours when people decide to book.
Plans run €49, €99, €149 and €199 a month plus VAT. Every one of them carries the site on your own domain with SSL, hosting, nightly backups and support, and SMS is a prepaid add-on.
More trades
- BarbersA booking that takes ten seconds on a phone.
- 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.
- All trades
Get the salon bookable
Describe the salon, the treatments and roughly how long each of them takes, or point at whatever you have online now. What comes back is a first version with the price list and a diary set to your chairs, ready for you to change on the page.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.