Your salon website is often the first experience a customer has with your brand. If they find you on a search engine, then your website will provide the first impression. A good salon website can help to reduce work for your staff by ensuring that all questions customers might have can be answered online. Another key sign that your salon website is doing its job is whether or not it’s turning website visitors into customers.
This is known as a conversion, and you might also see marketers refer to something called a “conversion rate”. This is the percentage of website visitors that take the next step to become paying customers. This typically means booking an appointment, but there are other routes to conversion. This could include following you on social media or signing up for your email marketing list.
To optimise your website conversion rate, there are simple steps you can take to ensure the journey from search engine to booking is a smooth one. By removing obstacles that might prevent visitors from booking an appointment, you can increase the chances that they will land on your website and take action.
Here are just some of the ways you can make your website work harder for you.
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Think about any time you land on a website looking for information. If you have to wait for ages for the site to load, or there are elements that won’t load on your phone, you’ll immediately give up. Most people aren’t very patient when it comes to websites, particularly on a mobile phone.
Make sure your website loads quickly and that everything works as it should (even on mobile) to help limit the number of potential customers you could be losing as a result of a sluggish site.
You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to learn more about how quickly your website loads and what might be slowing it down.
The branding on your website needs to make the branding of your salon. Working with a designer can help you to make sure that things like fonts, colours and image styles are carried across your website, salon and social media channels.
A lot of salons fall victim to the temptation to spruce up their branding too frequently. You might think refreshing your website will help to update your brand, but this will only be effective if these changes are reflected across the board.
Once you have settled on a brand style, stick with it for a while so that your customers have the opportunity to get to know your style.
If you want people to sign up to your salon mailing list, you need to give them a reason to do so. One of the easiest ways to do this is by offering something for free in return.
This could be a discount code, a free guide to the latest hair trends, or a treatment upgrade during their next visit. This is far more likely to deliver results than simply asking individuals to sign up for your mailing list. Remember that an email address has value, so you need to offer something of value in return to make it a fair exchange.
And once they sign up to your mailing list, make sure you send them an automated message to let them know what they can expect from your mailing list and how to book an appointment when they are ready.
You would be surprised how often salons forget to link to their social media on their websites and vice versa. Some people might land on your website but will feel more comfortable checking out your social media channels before they make a decision. After all, this is often more up to date and will offer a snapshot of your recent work. Don’t stand in their way by forcing them to go looking for your social media channels.
Online booking makes it simple for individuals to book an appointment any time from anywhere. They don’t have to call during your opening hours (and take up a receptionist’s time) or wait for your response to a booking request. Online booking is one of the best ways to optimise your availability and remove all of the barriers to booking.
Using Salon Iris will allow you to offer online booking on your website and social media channels so that customers can use the platform they are most comfortable with.
Your website isn’t something you build when you start your business and then leave untouched. You need to keep it updated with fresh content so that customers know that you’re open for business.
The portfolio on your website needs to reflect the current trends so that customers know they can rely on you to give them an on-trend style. You should also make sure seasonal opening hours are updated on your website.
Adding a blog function to your site is the easiest way to update your site without having to change any of the core designs. You can publish updates when you need to and your customers will get to enjoy a window into the background operations of your salon.
The sitemap determines the structure of your website and will help customers to find their way around. The homepage should always be at the top of the hierarchy, and then category pages will sit below this. For example, you might have men’s styling, women’s styling and beauty services below this. Beneath these category pages, you might have individual treatments.
You also need to include core pages such as “about us”, “contact”, “testimonials” and “FAQs”. By structuring your website in a logical way, you’ll make it easier for visitors to find the information they need. It will also be much easier for search engines to make sense of your website and ensure that it appears on the search engine results page for the most relevant search terms.
