Top 5 Reasons Your Hair Salon Needs a Website

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Maybe you’ve had a successful hair salon for years and your flow of clients is in and out like a Manhattan revolving door. Or perhaps, you just started one and are struggling to pack the chairs and fill the appointment book.  Regardless, both need a website.  It would seem that the latter would be more in need.  But here are the top 5 reasons why both do and how it benefits the one with the successful streaks AND the one that’s a little green at the roots.  Because the goals of a hair salon  aren’t to create just great client impressions when they walk out the door, but even before they get there or perhaps know that you exist.  How so?  Read on….

1st Show that You Are a Cut above the Rest ~ Perhaps you can highlight with the talent of Picasso or have the most stylish stylists in a 50 mile radius- if you don’t advertise it, word of mouth is probably not enough to keep your book of business on the incline despite a declining economy.  Grooming is one of the “extras” that many people can’t justify when the light bill is due and groceries are in need. In today’s tough economy improving the growth and profitability of your hair salon needs to be a high-priority and this is one tool you’ll want to have in the kit.  Having a website shows potential and repeat customers that you really mean business about your business.  It reflects another level of professionalism for clients and to the industry.  Remember, the goal is to create a great impression on a client both before they come to the salon AND after they see their reflection in the mirror.

2nd   Add Social Media Presence to Your Menu ~ Running a hair salon requires interaction with a lot of people and why not let that network work for you. What do I mean by that?  I mean getting people to Like You on Facebook, connect with you via Linked-In and chat about you on Twitter. With constantly changing styles, promotions, and products you shouldn’t have a problem finding topics to talk or Tweet about.  This is an ever-evolving industry and you can take advantage of that using the free resource of Social Media. Use it to show others that you are tapped into the most current trends in hairstyling, makeup, products or whatever your salon may specialize in.  And speaking of specialties, if you have one in particular-like you wax as smooth as a baby’s bottom or have a stylist who coifs with the precision of Edward Scissorhands-then Social Media is the perfect place to create hype about the talents in your establishment.

3rd Great Referencing Tool for the Trade ~ A website is a great place to let your work shine and the words of your clients work for you.  Often, word of mouth helps as much as it can hurt.  Letting others “hear” from current/past clients does influence decisions…especially in service-providing industries.  Most repeat customers would love say how Thomas keeps their true roots invisible or Shelly is a Shear-tress like no other AND see it in print!  No to mention that playing to a client’s ego in this manner, is also another way to keep their business at your business.  I mean this is an industry of vanity after all…

4th  Stylistas, the Cutting Floor to Web Design ~ A great look and feel website should engage visitors and compel them to spend time there.  You are in luck in this particular industry because the variety of website designs available can vary as much as shades of blond.  But you also have to know which to choose based on your demographics, clientele and other such factors.  Don’t forget that when selecting one, it should reflect both your vision for your business and the clientele walking through its doors. Keeping this in mind, don’t fail to have fun with it. I mean it isn’t a law firm for goodness sake-so you can push the envelope of creativity without seeming over-the-top.

5th  Picture Perfect Coiffing & Selling ~ Photo Galleries aren’t fabulous only in SoHo but can be just as spellbinding on the www while exhibiting your stylists’ work.  There are various choices to do so…like a slide show, a flip/style online book or even a Virtual Tour of your Salon while talent’s in motion.  It will be engaging and be a non-traditional way of showing off your talented team.

                               
Decide Who Will Make the Cut ~ If don’t have a salon website already but are now convinced you need one, here are some considerations when choosing a website designer and/or company:

Find one that you feel understands your salons demographics and how to reflect it on the website.

Know that imagery will be crucial for your website.  So make sure that you have “web-worthy” photographs to showcase the talents of your team and use stock photography where needed to beautify the site.

Make sure they will write your content with commonly used keywords that are frequently used when searching for hair salons, especially in your geographic region.

At Design Theory, we’d love to help you take your business to the next level of design and success. As such, we now have great packages specifically designed for hair salons that will help you blow away your competition.

Getting over the Hump – An Inspiration for Blog Writers Block

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Even those who have great aptitude in writing sometimes find themselves with literally NO WORDS! Unlike our verbal language, writing is actually one of the most difficult activities that we humans use to formalize communication sin la boca (without your mouth if you don’t speak Spanish).  It sounds simple but as Wikipedia has defined it:  writer’s block is “a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand.”  Uh, yeah- I couldn’t have said it better.  But what does one do when the deadline is looming and the children are to bed and it’s man vs. machine and you realize…I’VE GOT NOTHIN’!  Thank God writing pro’s like Mike Rose (famed UCLA Graduate School faculty member and author) even acknowledges that it truly is “an inability to begin or continue writing for reasons other than lack of basic skill or commitment“. Whew…I’m off the hook a little!  But now what do I do about it?

Why do you we do this to ourselves…it‘s supposed to speak back to you right? Like in some gone from a book to the big screen movie—the leading character is some highly paid British actor/actress paid to throw their laptop out the window of their 5th story NYC walk-up in utter despair.  Yeah…in the real world most of us don’t have the kind of money that allows for those despairing moments.  So I have opted not to spend hours wasting good wine or time employing this useless tactic. Instead I think it’s best to stare at something else.  Walk around your house- look at some pictures, clean, cook, do a little laundry or run an errand.  Heck, play with your kid or a game of chess with your spouse.  Do something else besides stewing in the quagmire of I have no clue. You would be amazed how making the best salmon with a lemon dill sauce can jump-start a blog idea.  Personal Example: One day I was frustrated about a concept I dreamt about (and DID NOT GET UP & WRITE IT DOWN.. I know bad, bad, bad) and was about to scream when my daughter asked me to color with her.  As I was taking note of how precise my “staying within the lines” was and how the unbridled charm of a child’s Crayola skills were, yes the cliché lightbulb went off.  And before you knew it, while she was still coloring outside the lines, I was pecking away on my laptop.  Writers cramp over came writers block and I was grateful for it.


You know what they say in real estate…Location, Location Location.  And I agree. After a very busy weekend and stressful morning I found myself not able to color in anybody’s lines or muster up enough energy required to even stare at a blank page.  So what else could I do to get the boost usually relegated to a high-priced cup of Starbucks coffee?  I went outside. Yup in the lovely 70° weather, I listened to the sounds of a almost perfect May day  in Connecticut.  And before I knew it, several titles/concepts came to me which enabled me to write this blog AND  birth 2-3 ideas for some other projects.  Fantastic right!  Sometimes a simple change of location can do wonders for inspiration.  Being jailed at your desk is not worth it when you can get some fresh air and use the objects/sounds/feelings around you to motivate your imagination. Like an artist who can use a host of colors or materials to create their masterpiece, so can writers.  And I’m not talking laptop vs. plume…I mean what you use to connect ideas/concepts/words together to tap into your linguistic intelligence and unlock the door to your next novella. 

1.) Interview a customer about particular concerns/challenges as well as solutions and then blog about it.  I’m sure they will love the attention & it gets their name advertised in social media for free. Or you can opt to share an anecdote about an issue that occurred in your own business, from the problem to the solution.

2.) Dialogue with industry-friends via social media and let the responses shape a blog post or video blog with them weighing in on topics relevant to industry news items.

3.) Consider product or service comparisons, a Consumer Reports of sort but on issues like social media, graphic design, use of WordPress themes vs. traditional HTML websites.

4.) Report on a conference or webinar you attended giving perspective to real issues facing people in your own industry or some great highlights and tricks of the trade that you learned.

5.) Address customer questions you’ve received on the same topic/aspect of service.  This lets them know that you’re listening and are willing to receive feedback once it’s out on the www.

6.) Expand upon a comment you wrote on someone else’s blog & parlay that into your own blog post. Tread lightly here, these are your peers after all.  But bringing in a different angle never hurts.

7.) Correlate what inspires your daily life into the business world and create a blog connection. Hence, look out for my upcoming blog “Coloring In and Out of the Lines in Social Media” – thanks to my daughter’s crayons.