A new client is not choosing a salon. They are choosing a person, a service and a price, and your website is where they check all three before they tap Book.
Your regulars do not need your website. They text you, or they open the booking app out of habit. The site exists for the person who has never sat in your chair, found you on a map or through a friend's post, and wants to know whether you can do what they want, for what money, and when. Here is what that person looks for, page by page, and what quietly sends them somewhere else.
Who is actually on your salon's website?
Picture a stranger on a phone, comparing you with two or three other places nearby.
They found you through Google Maps, an Instagram tag, a friend saying "go to my stylist" without remembering the name, or a search like "balayage near me". They are not reading. They are scanning for four things: what you do, what it costs, who does it, and how to book. If those four are on the first screen or one tap away, they stay. If they have to hunt, the next salon in the map results is one tap away too.
What does the first screen need to say?
What you are, where you are, and a Book button.
"Hair salon in Leslieville, colour and curly cuts" is a first line. "Where beauty meets artistry" is not, because the client learns nothing they can act on. Under that line, one button that opens your booking page, visible on a phone without scrolling. Next to it, or just below, your address and the street it is on, so the client knows in a second whether you are a ten-minute walk or a forty-minute drive.
Then a photo of the actual space with people in it. Not a stock photo of a woman laughing at a hair dryer. The client is about to spend an hour in your room, and they want to see it.
Is your website mobile-friendly covers the phone side in more detail.
Should your website show service prices?
Yes. A service menu with prices is the page a new client wants most.
The usual objection is that prices vary. A cut for short hair is not a cut for hair to the waist. True, but the answer is not to hide the number. It is to show a starting price and say what moves it.
- A starting price for every service, written as "Women's cut from" and your number, with a line underneath: "Longer or thicker hair may take more time. We confirm the price before we start."
- Prices by stylist level, if that is how you charge. "Senior stylist" and "Stylist" with two columns is clear. A client on a budget can choose, and a client who wants your most experienced person knows what that costs.
- Duration next to each service. A client booking on a lunch break needs to know whether a colour takes ninety minutes or three hours.
The services where you truly cannot price without seeing the hair, such as colour correction or a big change from dark to light, should say so plainly and point to a consultation. "Colour correction: by consultation, booked separately" is honest and still useful. A blank space is not.
If the client cannot find a number on your site, they will find one on a competitor's site, and that becomes the number they compare you against. Should you show prices on your website makes the case for any business.
Do you need a page for each stylist?
If clients book a person, yes. Ask your front desk how many first-time callers ask for someone by name, and you have your answer.
A first-time client choosing a stylist wants to know three things: what that person is good at, what their work looks like, and when they are free. A team page with a single group photo and first names answers none of them.
Give each stylist, barber or esthetician a short section or their own page:
- A photo of the person, recent, looking like they look at work.
- What they focus on, in plain words. "Curly hair and dry cutting." "Fades and beard work." "Gel nails and nail art." One line beats a paragraph of adjectives.
- Their work. Six to twelve photos of real results, with the client's permission.
- Their level and price tier, if your menu uses one.
- A Book button that opens their calendar directly, not the general booking page where the client has to find them again.
When a stylist leaves, their page comes down the same week.
Where do the photos come from, and is Instagram enough?
Instagram is where your work lives day to day. The website is where a stranger checks it in one place.
Your Instagram mixes the latest work with stories, reels and reposts, and a new client has to dig for the result they want. Your website can do that sorting for them: a gallery grouped by service, such as blonding, cuts, curls, barbering, nails, so the person who wants a copper colour sees copper.
Pull a dozen of your best photos for each service onto the site, shot in good light against a plain background. Before and after, side by side, reads at a glance. Ask clients for permission before you post their photo, and keep a note of who said yes. Then link to Instagram for everything else.
Skip embedding the whole feed: it loads slowly and shows whatever you posted last, including the staff party. Do you need a website if you have Instagram and the photos your website needs go further.
Can clients book from Google without visiting your site?
Yes, if your booking software supports it, and it is worth setting up.
Google Business Profile has a bookings setting. Its help page says that when you work with a booking provider, you can turn on bookings from your profile, and "your booking providers will show up on your Business Profile within a week." It also warns: "When you book through Google, your provider might charge you." If your provider is not one of Google's partners, Google says you can still add your own link to your Business Profile, which sends the client straight to your booking page.
The practical step is one email to your booking software: ask whether they support booking through Google in Canada, and what it costs on your plan. If they do not, add your booking link to the profile by hand.
The client who wants to check prices or photos first will still tap through to your site. Showing up in local search covers the rest of your Google presence.
How should the booking itself work?
Fast, on a phone, with the same names and prices the client just read.
Salons tend to use a booking app rather than a calendar built into the site, and that is fine. What matters is the handoff. The client reads "Senior stylist, women's cut, 60 minutes" and a starting price on your site, taps Book, and should see the same service, the same name and the same starting price in the booking app. If your site says "Signature cut" and the app says "Cut and style (long)", the client stops and wonders which one they want. Some of them close the tab.
Check the details a first-time client trips on:
- New client services. If first-time colour clients need a consultation or a longer slot, make that its own bookable service, so they cannot book a normal colour by mistake.
- Deposits and cancellations. If you take a deposit or charge for no-shows, say so on the service menu and on the booking page, in the same words. The client should not learn about the fee from the confirmation email.
- What to bring or do before. Come with dry hair, bring photos of what you want, arrive ten minutes early for a first visit. One short paragraph saves a lot of chair time.
The trade-offs between embedding a booking widget and linking out to the booking app are in online booking on your website.
What else does a first-time client check?
The practical things that decide whether the visit will be easy.
- Hours, the same on your site, your Google profile and your booking app.
- Parking or transit, in one line. "Street parking on Queen, Green P behind the building" saves a stressful first arrival.
- Accessibility. Whether there are stairs at the door, whether the washroom is on the main floor, whether the chairs and basins suit someone using a wheelchair. Say what is true.
- Kids, walk-ins, gift cards. Whether you cut children's hair, whether you take walk-ins, and how to buy a gift card online.
- Products you sell. A short list of the lines you carry is enough. A full online shop is a separate decision.
If you serve French-speaking clients, a French version of the menu and booking path helps more than a translated home page alone.
What quietly sends a new client somewhere else?
A short list, and most of it is fixable in a week.
- The Book button opens a phone number during hours when nobody answers the phone because everyone is with a client.
- The site has no prices at all, or a PDF menu from three years ago.
- The team page shows people who have left.
- The gallery is one long scroll of mixed work with no way to find the service the client wants.
- The names of services differ between the site and the booking app.
- The site says you are open on a day the booking app shows no slots, or the other way around.
What does a salon website cost?
What a site costs depends on what is in it, and the current figures for your country are on the pricing page. A single-location salon with a service menu, stylist pages, a sorted gallery and a booking link sits low in that range. A spa with many treatment categories, a bilingual version, gift cards and a retail shop sits higher. What sits inside each scope is on web design, and the ranges are on pricing.
Your booking software is a separate subscription with its own provider. The website should be built around the one you already use, not force you to change it.
The test to run today
Hand your phone to a friend who has never been to your salon. Ask them to open your website and book a women's cut with your most senior stylist next Thursday, and find out roughly what it will cost before they confirm.
Watch, and do not help. Every time they pause, scroll back or ask you a question, that is a place where a stranger would have closed the tab.
If you want a second pair of eyes on your site, send it to me and I will tell you what I would fix first and what it would cost, the same working day.