A new client has read everything before she pushes the door: your prices, your opening hours, your reviews, and what your balayages look like. A hair salon website is not a business card. It is the answer, in order, to the questions she asks herself before booking.
Saturday, 9 am, a client you have never seen
She pushes the door, she says hello, she has an appointment. You have never seen her, and yet she already knows the price of her cut, the first name of the person who will be looking after her, and that you do the balayage she saw in a photo on Tuesday evening. She read it all. She booked at eleven at night, on her phone, without calling.
Everything she read fitted on a few pages. This guide says which ones, and in what order, because the order is the order of her questions.
The home page answers three questions
What you do, where, and how to book. On the very first screen, before scrolling: the salon’s name, the trade in a word or two, the town or the neighbourhood, and a booking button. Then a photo that shows the salon as it is, not a stock image. The rest of the page runs through the services, the reviews, the team and the opening hours, but those three answers fit on the first screen of a phone.
What the home page must not do: tell the story of your passion over three paragraphs before saying where you are. The client will read your story later, if she wants to. First, she wants to know whether she is in the right place.
Services, in your clients’ words and with prices
The services page reads like a restaurant menu: clear families (cut, colour, treatment, styling, beard), the names your clients use (“balayage”, “toner”, “smoothing”), a duration, and a price. A “from” price when it depends on length, with the range. A missing price does not intrigue, it worries: the client imagines the worst and books elsewhere.
Each service has its own booking button, which opens the diary on that service, with its duration already set. And the most requested ones are pushed to the top of the list, because most clients come for the same three things.
Opening hours, address, phone number, on every page
Exact opening hours, day by day, with one-off closures, and the same as on your Google Business Profile. The address with a link that opens the map. A tappable phone number, for those who would rather call. All of it lives in the footer of every page, because you never know which page the client lands on.
One detail that counts: access. Parking, the tram stop, stairs or lift, pushchairs. Two lines that save a phone call and a late arrival.
Booking within thumb’s reach
Most bookings happen in the evening, on a phone, after closing. So the booking button has to be visible without scrolling, and stay within reach while reading. It opens your diary, not a marketplace: the client chooses the service, the person, the slot, leaves her name and phone number, and receives a confirmation. No account to create, no app to install.
When the slot she wanted is taken, the website offers the next one, or the waiting list. It never offers the salon next door. That is the difference between a website in your name and a page rented on a marketplace, and this page is where that difference plays out.
Photos: your own, recent, and not too many
Photos of your salon, of your work, of your team if they agree. No stock images: a client spots a bought photo in a second, and concludes that everything else is bought too. Photos less than a year old, because a salon changes. And not too many: six good photos beat forty average ones.
If you post on Instagram, your latest photos can appear on the website without you copying them over. The site stays up to date, and the account keeps its role: showing the craft.
Reviews, and what is no use at all
Your Google reviews, the real ones, shown on the website with their date, and the rating that goes with them. Selected, yes, but not invented: a client who sees five perfect reviews with no date gets suspicious. A lukewarm review with a good reply reassures more than a perfect one.
What is no use at all: the “news” page nobody will ever update, the visitor counter, the music, the pop-up asking for an email before you can read, and the keyword paragraph at the bottom of the page. What is useful, and gets forgotten: a second language for clients passing through, a site that loads fast, and a domain name in your own name, so the address on your shopfront stays yours for a long time.