Websites for salons and barbers: booking and prices

Most people want to book without talking to you

Think about when someone decides they need their hair doing. It is rarely at eleven on a Tuesday morning when you are stood by the till. It is on the sofa at ten at night, or on the bus, or in a gap at work, and the salon is shut. If the only thing your site offers at that moment is a phone number, the decision gets postponed, and postponed usually means somebody else.

So the first thing on the page, on a phone, without scrolling, is a button that opens a live diary. Not a form that says we will get back to you. A form is a request for an appointment; a booking is an appointment. The difference is whether the person can put it in their calendar and stop thinking about it, which is the whole thing they came to do.

That said, not everything should be self-bookable. A colour correction on a box dye, a full head of extensions, or a first-time colour that needs a skin test are not sixty-minute slots you can let a stranger drop into your busiest Saturday. Give those their own route: a short consultation, free or fifteen pounds off the treatment, bookable online like anything else. The client still gets to book without ringing. You still get to look at the hair first.

• A booking button in the header of every page, tappable with a thumb.
• Real availability, not a request form dressed up as a diary.
• Service length shown, so nobody books a cut for a full head of foils.
• A separate consultation slot for colour corrections, extensions and anything you need to see first.
• A confirmation and a reminder by text, because that is what cuts no-shows.
• The phone number still there, plainly, for the people who would rather ring.

Note. Whichever booking system you use, the link belongs on your own domain with your own price list around it. The diary can be rented. The address should not be.

Barbers: the walk-in question

A lot of barbers do not want a diary. The trade works on turning up, waiting ten minutes and being out in twenty, and a page of bookable slots can make that feel like a salon, which is exactly what some of your customers are avoiding.

The site still has to answer the walk-in question, because that is the search. Somebody types your town and the word barber at half four on a Saturday, and what they want is whether you are open, whether they can just come, and how long the wait is. Say it in one line at the top: walk-ins all day, appointments for beards and skin fades, last cut twenty minutes before close.

If you run a queue app, put the live wait on the page and not only in the app. If you do not, an honest sentence does the same job: Saturdays between eleven and two you will usually wait half an hour. People plan around that. What they will not do is drive over, find six blokes waiting, and come back.

Put the whole price list up

The usual reason for leaving prices off is that they depend on the hair. Length, thickness, how much of it there is, what the last person did to it. All true, and none of it a reason to publish nothing. Publish a from price and one line saying what moves it, and you have told the truth and still given a number.

The cost of hiding it is not how many leads you lose, it is which ones. Somebody who cannot find a price assumes one, off your photographs and your postcode. Half assume you are dearer than you are and never ring. The other half assume you are cheaper, book, and are unhappy at the till.

The ranges below are the sort of thing seen across the UK, and they move a long way by region and by the standing of the salon. Central London sits well above the top of them. Plenty of towns sit under the middle. Work out your own numbers and use the shape of the table rather than the figures in it.

Note. If you price by stylist grade, say what the grades mean and what each one costs. "Prices vary by stylist" with no numbers reads as something to hide.

People book a person, not a salon

Ask anyone who their hairdresser is and they give you a first name, not a shop. That loyalty is the most valuable thing in the business and most salon websites do nothing with it. A page of the team smiling in matching black, no names attached, no way to book any of them, is a wasted asset.

Give every stylist a short profile and make the name bookable from it. Two or three sentences in their own words is plenty: how long they have been doing hair, what they are known for, what they enjoy and would rather do more of. Then six photographs of their own work, their price band, and a plain line saying whether they are currently taking new clients. That last one saves a fortnight of messages you can only turn down.

If your chairs are rented and the stylists are self-employed, say so and let each one keep their own prices and their own diary on the page. It is honest, it is how the trade increasingly works, and it means the profile is worth something to the stylist, which is how you get them to keep it up to date. Which is the real job here: a team page still showing someone who left last spring tells a new client that nothing on this site is current.

• First name, and the photograph they would actually choose.
• How long they have been doing it, and where they trained if it is worth saying.
• What they specialise in, named the way a client would search it: curly cutting, blondes, afro and textured hair, barbering, bridal.
• Their price band, with the grade explained.
• Six pictures of their own work, not the salon's general gallery.
• Whether they are taking new clients, and roughly how far ahead they are booked.

Instagram is the portfolio. The site is the address.

There is no argument to be had about where salon work lives. It lives on Instagram, that is where clients look, and telling a salon owner to stop posting would be daft. The argument is about what the grid cannot do, which turns out to be most of the things that get you booked.

A grid has no price list, no address, no cancellation policy, no opening hours a search engine can read, and no diary that survives the account being locked out for a fortnight. The followers are rented from a company that changes the rules on a Wednesday. The site is the part you own, and its job is to catch the person who came off the grid needing a fact.

So do both. Pull your best nine or twelve posts onto the home page so the site looks as alive as the feed. Then take the individual pictures and put them where they earn something: balayage photographs on the balayage page, fades on the barbering page, bridal work on the bridal page. A photograph captioned with what was done, how long it took and roughly what it cost is a page that gets found. The same photograph in a general gallery is decoration.

• Before and after together, with a sentence on what was involved.
• The client's permission, in writing, before anything goes anywhere.
• Photographs on the service page they belong to, not all in one gallery.
• Your website address in the Instagram bio, and the booking link under it.
• A handful of your best pictures saved somewhere off the platform, so losing the account is not losing the portfolio.

Note. If your account went down tomorrow, could a new client still find your prices, your hours and a way to book? If not, that is the gap the site is filling.

Cancellations, deposits and the words you use

A no-show on a three-hour colour is not a lost booking, it is a lost afternoon. Nobody else could have had that chair because it was already spoken for. Everyone in the trade understands this and almost nobody writes it down, which is why the conversation always happens at the worst possible moment, in front of other clients, with a stranger who says nobody told them.

Write it down once, calmly, on its own page, and link to it from the booking screen and the confirmation text. The tone that works is not legal and it is not cross. It is a short explanation of why: the chair is held for you, and at less than a day's notice it usually stays empty. People accept that reasoning. They do not accept a paragraph in capitals about fees.

In practice a deposit taken at the point of booking is worth more than any policy enforced afterwards, because chasing money from someone who has stopped answering is a job nobody does twice. Take a fixed amount on shorter services and a percentage on the long colour appointments, set it at something that reflects what an empty chair costs you rather than a punishment, and put it against the bill on the day. Then apply it the same way to everyone, regulars included, because a policy you waive for some people is not a policy.

• How much notice you need to move or cancel, in hours, not "reasonable notice".
• The deposit, when it is taken, and that it comes off the final bill.
• What happens to the deposit if someone cancels late or does not turn up.
• How late is too late to still be seen, and what happens then.
• That colour needs a skin allergy test before the appointment, how far ahead, and that the booking cannot go ahead without it.
• What you do when it is genuinely not their fault, so the policy sounds like it was written by a human.

Note. Put the same wording in the booking confirmation and the reminder text. A policy that only exists on a page nobody visited is not a policy anyone agreed to.

Getting found by someone new in your town

Most salon searches never reach a website on their own. They land on the map: three businesses, star ratings, opening hours, a booking link. The Google Business Profile does a lot of that work and wants the same care as the site — real photographs of the inside, hours kept accurate through bank holidays and the week you shut after Christmas, and the booking link pointed at your diary.

The site then has to match the words people actually type. Your town by name, in the prose, not only in the footer. Services named the way a client names them rather than the way the trade does: balayage, curly cut, wig fitting, hair extensions, hot towel shave, kids haircuts. And your specialisms written out, because a specialism is a search. Somebody looking for a salon that knows what to do with afro or textured hair searches that exact phrase, and they search it because most sites never say it.

Then the two facts checked more than anything else on a salon site: are you open, and can I park. Hours on every page, Sunday and late nights called out if you do them. Where to park, what it costs, and which door to come to if you are above a shop or down a side street. Unglamorous, and the last thing standing between a new client and your chair.

• The town, and the two or three neighbouring places people travel from.
• Services named the way clients say them, each with its own section and its own photographs.
• Specialisms spelled out: textured hair, curly cutting, bridal, hair loss, barbering for children.
• Opening hours on every page, and holiday closures kept current.
• Parking, the nearest stop, and how to find the door.
• A short line about what a first visit is like, for anyone nervous about walking in.

Common questions

Do I need a website if my booking system already gives me a page?

The booking page handles the diary and nothing else. It will not carry your price list, your stylists, your photographs or your policy, and if you change systems the link and everything attached to it disappears. Keep the diary, own the address.

Will publishing prices lose me the higher-paying clients?

It loses the people who were going to be surprised at the till, which is a good trade. Clients paying two hundred pounds for a balayage want to know what they are committing to before they sit down, and a published range reads as confidence rather than cheapness.

How do I handle stylists who rent a chair and set their own prices?

Give each one their own profile with their own prices and their own booking link, and say plainly on the page that they are self-employed. It is clearer for clients, and it gives the stylist a reason to keep their own section current.

What deposit should I take?

Enough to hurt slightly, not enough to insult. A fixed amount on cuts and a percentage on long colour appointments is the common shape, always taken at booking and always coming off the final bill.

Should I show my Instagram feed on the site?

Yes, but do not stop there. An embedded feed keeps the site looking current, while the individual photographs work harder placed on the service page they belong to with a caption saying what was done and what it cost.