Websites · 5 min read
Online booking for barbers and salons: is it worth it?
Online booking is worth it for most Huddersfield barbers and salons, because a large share of bookings happen outside opening hours when nobody can answer the phone. The two things that decide whether it works are how few taps it takes to book, and whether you use deposits or reminders to control no-shows.
By Raja Wahab, Co-founder, Fixby Studios · Updated
The real argument for it
People book haircuts late at night, on the sofa, on their phone. If your only route is a phone call during working hours, those bookings go to whoever accepts them there and then.
What good booking looks like
- Three taps maximum: service, barber or stylist, time.
- Prices shown while choosing, not after.
- Automatic confirmation and a reminder the day before.
- A deposit option for longer or higher-value appointments.
- Syncs with the calendar you already use.
No-shows
Reminders cut most of them. Small deposits on longer appointments cut nearly all of them. If you're worried deposits will put people off, apply them only to the services where a no-show genuinely hurts.
Booking tool or built into your site?
An off-the-shelf booking tool is fine and quick to start with. Building it into your own site makes sense once booking volume is high enough that fees and clunky flows start costing you real money.
Booking and admin systems built around how you actually work.
Raja Wahab is co-founder of Fixby Studios, a Huddersfield studio building websites, SEO, social media and business software for small, owner-managed businesses across West Yorkshire.
Want this handled for you?
Fixby Studios builds websites, runs SEO and manages social media for small businesses across Huddersfield and West Yorkshire.