Most, if not all, small business entrepreneurs understand the value of having an online presence, with many owners of salons, and barbershops dedicating resources and time into building a dedicated website to promote their services.
However, having a website is simply not enough. If a potential client visits your site and cannot easily find the information they’re looking for, there is an immediate action to book elsewhere. That’s lost business!
To avoid the loss of a potential client there are 8 cardinal rules every small business who offer hair, beauty, wellness or personal services must follow to ensure maximum bookings all year round.
Are clients able to book your salon or barbershop services in real-time… on your website? If the answer to this question is no, you need to take action to set it right asap.
In 2020 Genbook processed over 13 million bookings and realized that website is a key marketing channel for salon and barbershop owners. The study found that clients are twice as likely to book services from a website if they have a book now button.
Adding a ‘book now button’ while creating a website may seem simple enough but many entrepreneurs are missing out on bookings when there is no option to book in real-time. Manly & Sons—a popular barbershop in LA, is a great example of a business using the book now button on their website effectively.
The business operates from multiple locations and a book now button, on their barbershop website, makes it easy for their clients to choose and schedule appointments easily depending upon which location they want a shave or a cut at.
Giving your new or existing clients the ability to book instantaneously and conveniently is an essential part of any small business website. A scheduling solution makes it possible to check your and / or your employee’s availability for a specific date and time.
With Genbook, adding the ‘book now button’ on your small business website is easy and can be done in under 10 minutes!
According to Statista, when it comes to local search, personal care is the fifth most searched category amongst smartphone users in the US.
Your present and prospective clients are always on the lookout of “salons near me” or “barbershops near me”. There’s a huge chance that such queries will take them to your website.
But imagine if the website is not mobile optimized and responsive? As mobile online usage has become widespread, it is essential for small business websites to become mobile compliant and responsive, especially when data suggests that 82% of the online bookings are done through mobile devices.
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If you have a hair salon/ barbershop website, you can generate more bookings and convert potential customers into paying clients by:
There are many small business websites that actually turn clients away because their services price list is higher on their website than it is in their spa, salon or shop, or they have no service menu at all .
Some of the reasons for this could be that the booking solution used on the small business’s website doesn’t integrate with a system that manages all the online booking sources and/or the entrepreneur’s website only features a ‘booking enquiry form’.
With limited resources and only a select number of hours in a day it is near impossible to manually keep across all of your availability, employee availability and communications if you are advertising across multiple booking sources like Google, Facebook or Instagram. This is where smart salon and barbershop owners will integrate their website to an all-in-one system that will manage their availability across their sources.
Nowadays, your website is as much of your shopfront as is your physical location. User experience is everything. A well designed website can portray the standards and even values of your business.
This doesn’t necessarily begin or end with the way that you’ve designed your website. It also extends to site content, such as photos and video.
Organic Tanning, a Winnipeg based tanning salon and a Genbook user, seems to be following this advice. The company website has a well laid out top header menu, beautiful images, detailed description of their services, FAQs and booking information, —everything that’s needed by their clients to make a decision.
It is a clever idea to invest in a quality photographer to take photos of your spa, salon or shopfront, of yourself and of your employees performing the services.
Brit Carmicheal, from OMGhairstyles (another Genbook user) uses video on her website to make it relatable for her clients. This way her clients know what they are getting and, especially for personal services, who they are getting it from.
A few specific points you could use to make your site even better from a user-experience perspective:
If the user wants to navigate to other key pages on your website, make it easy and make navigation choices obvious.
Place all the best elements of your website, including a book now button to book, at the top of the page so that a client is motivated to make an appointment booking from the word go.
Savvy clients are becoming more vigilant about Internet security, especially when it comes to their credit card usage.If your website does not partner with a PCI (Payment Cards Industry) compliant booking solution, clients could feel uncomfortable sharing their credit card details and in turn a large proportion will not follow through with the booking process.
Today’s consumer expects you to have the right technology on your site because it lends credibility to your website and to your business. Integrating with a smart and simple online solution that offers a booking site that complies with these security standards will overcome such objectives.
Many beauty salon/ barbershop or small business websites don’t tell clients how to actually book. This is a fundamental principle of effective e-Commerce and must be taken into consideration.
There are a number of ways you can show potential clients how to create a reservation. One way is to make sure your scheduling web page is a simple booking process. Clients should be able to select their service, their preferred service provider, and an available time with ease.
Trust is one of the most important elements when it comes to service bookings, in fact, research suggests 61% of consumers will not purchase a service if they haven’t read a review.
Our biggest tip? Add online reviews to your website and booking page. Make sure your reviews are recent too, as consumers don’t trust reviews older than 3 months.
An all in one booking and management solution like Genbook, automates the collection of online reviews and integrates those to Google and your booking page with ease.
Why not check how effective your booking page is by asking a few friends and professional contacts to make a booking on your website. If this friend can easily book without asking you questions, then you know that your booking solution is really easy to use and the likelihood of you getting booked online is now substantially higher.
Keep an eye on your website traffic on the back-end by using an analytics tool such as Google Analytics to see where your potential clients get stuck or ‘bounce’ from your site. Adjusting those pages with better content, easier navigation and clear ‘Book Now’ or ‘Appointment’ buttons will decrease your bounce-rate.
Make your website a booking magnet by ticking off the above tips and enhance your chance of maximising your time and revenues. Consequently you will be maximising the investment in your website and booking software; the most important tools in getting booked online today.
