How do we get more online bookings?

Have you recently taken your salon online? Are you currently wondering why your online booking rate is lower than you’d expected?

Don’t worry. If you’re struggling to get online sales, there are plenty of rectifiable reasons for this and we can help you find a solution (or 10).

Oh, and rest assured, it’s nothing to do with your salon team’s talent or your business itself.

Part 1: The Problem

The key to online booking success lies in effectively guiding your potential clients to the ‘book now’ button.

Let’s put it a different way:

A supermarket introduces a fantastic new product to their dessert line. They decide not to advertise it, they display it on the bottom shelf of their dessert aisle and it’s hidden behind another product. They haven’t sold a single pud. Can you identify the reasons this might be the case?

Ensuring customers buy a product means informing them of its existence, and making it really easy for them to purchase it.

Now let’s apply this to salons.

Two reasons salon owners don’t get many online sales:

1. They don’t get enough traffic to their site.
2. The ‘book now’ button is hidden!

The first difficulty salon owners face is getting enough traffic to their site.

Did you know that on average, only around 5% of website visitors click on CTA buttons.

This means that to get 1 person to click on your ‘book now’ button, you would need to get 20 visitors to your website.

This leads us to the second difficulty, because if your ‘book now’ button is hidden, or it doesn’t stand out, your click-through rate will fall below the average statistic.

Part 2: Increasing online bookings

Addressing the first difficulty: increasing traffic to your website.

Make the most of your website URL or booking link by displaying it in all the right places:

• On all your social media profile bios
• In all digital appointment reminders
• On customised till receipts
• If you have a Google profile make sure there is a booking link there too
• Display signs around your salon highlighting your social media tags and website URL
• On your salon’s open/closed sign
• In all your advertising
• On your business cards or other branded collateral

Check all of these key places are highlighting your salon’s URL or booking link to maximise traffic to your site.

Not only will this increase traffic to your website, it will also encourage potential clients to browse your other services, and potentially ‘up’ their booking rate.

Now to address the second difficulty: Pushing client’s to hit the ‘book now’ button.

Increasing site traffic doesn’t always equate to increased bookings.

Our advice is to always put the CTA in the most visible place it can be. Salons with a prominent booking button above the fold get roughly 7 times the bookings over a salon without one. The bottom line is this: put the booking link above the fold.

We also suggest using a floating widget to ensure the button is always present and on every page, regardless of your visitor’s website journey.

Whether they’re just ‘window shopping’ and checking out what you offer, or they’re definitely there to book an appointment, make sure the CTA is always calling out to website visitors and your online bookings will increase.

How Salon App can help

Don’t lose faith in online bookings. We’ve already laid out the benefits of online bookings, in a previous blog post.

Salon App makes online bookings simple, seamless, and optimised in every aspect. If you’d like to arrange a demo with one of our friendly experts, head over to our watch-a-demo page and click "Book a demo".