Making salon websites work for your business

Philip Evans, managing director of Salon Guru  has built and managed websites for more than 50 salons in the UK and America. Here is his advice for making salon websites work for you. Make Google your friend If you are still one of the few salons that doesn’t have a website, get one quickly. It takes a long time (up to a year) to build a reputation on Google so the quicker you get started the better. Once you are up and running you need to make sure that you create lots of content that really tells Google who you are and what services you offer. I had one client who was adamant that he only wanted ‘Colour’ on the top of his Hair Colour page. That's fine if he wanted to appear on searches for paint colours or generic colours, but wouldn’t help him appear above his competitors in searches for hair colour in that particular town. Image isn’t everything Of course hairdressing is a visual, creative industry, but people don’t come to your site because they love the colour scheme or the font! Too many salon owners put all the emphasis on making it look fantastic, but really it's all about making money and that means having a busy site. Be an attention seeker You have about three seconds to grab people's attention before they start to look elsewhere so you need to make the key information stand out. That will vary from salon to salon and at different times of year, but is likely to include any current offers, new products or services and staff members you want to promote. It's important to change this regularly - you wouldn't promote the same things in your salon in January as you would in December and that goes for your site too. Keep them wanting more Give people a reason to keep coming back, by including engaging content on your site to give people a reason to return. Polls, competitions and surveys are all great ways to encourage engagement. We also make sure all of our sites have topical hairdressing news such as celebrity hairstyles. Not only do your clients love this sort of content, but Google does too! Think about what you could do better You might love the way your site looks, but could it be working better for you? There are loads of companies out there, ourselves included, who will give you a free audit of your website and make recommendations for how it could be improved. Take advantage of it. At best they will tell you that you are already doing a fantastic job, at worst you will learn how you could improve. Don't stand still Whatever you do, don't build your new website and forget all about it. The digital space is moving so fast that you always need to be thinking about the next thing. We are currently planning sites that deliver personalised content and offers to clients by asking them to sign in with Facebook. Philip Evans is managing director of the Salon Guru who provide web design and on-going website management services to hair salons - www.salonguru.net