Getting found is the easy half. Getting them back is the business.
One new client who returns every 6 weeks is worth more than 10 who came once, and almost all the advice you are sold is about the 10.
The short answer
A salon is a repeat business wearing the clothes of a retail one. The money is in somebody coming back 8 times a year, not in the first appointment.
So the question is not how to be found. It is what happens in the 6 weeks after somebody sits in your chair.
The first visit is a search and the rest are not
Somebody new looks at the map, the photographs and the reviews, and books whoever looks competent and is close. That is a search problem and it is worth solving once.
Everybody after that is booking a person they already trust. No amount of search work touches that half.
The booking app introduces a client and keeps introducing them
Marketplace apps bring you somebody who was looking for a salon and not for you, and they charge a share of that introduction. For a genuinely new client that can be a fair trade.
It stops being fair when a regular starts booking through the app because it is the only way you offer. Now you are paying an introduction fee for somebody who has been coming for a year.
What owning the booking actually means
A way to book on your own site, and a listing that lets somebody book or call without an app in between. Neither has to be clever. Both have to belong to you.
The test is simple: if the app closed tomorrow, would you still have the phone number of the woman who comes in every month.
The photographs are the portfolio
Hair is the one trade where the work is the advertisement. Photographs of what you did, on real clients who agreed, do more than any words on the page. That is also what somebody scrolls before deciding to trust you with their head.
Questions worth asking
My clients rebook in the chair. What would a website do?
Nothing for them. It is for the people who moved here last month and are looking for somebody. If your chair is full, spend the money elsewhere. If there are gaps on a Tuesday, this is what fills them.
Do I need online booking?
Only if you will keep it up to date. A booking page showing slots you have already filled costs you more than no booking page at all. Plenty of salons do better with a message and a quick reply.
Should I show prices?
A price list stops the question you answer twenty times a week, and it filters out the person who was going to be upset at the till. Ranges are fine where the work varies.
All my work is on Instagram. Can the site show it?
Not by pulling it in live. This site loads nothing from anybody else, which is part of why it is fast, and an embedded feed breaks the day the platform changes something. Your best photographs are copied onto the site and stay there.
What decides the price?
How many services you list, whether you want booking, and how many languages. A price list, photographs and a map is a small job.
Tell us how a regular books with you today, and we will tell you what that arrangement is costing. Get a free audit.
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