Salons and spas

Clients tend to book on a phone, often outside opening hours, so booking has to work without a call. The service menu should say how long each appointment takes and what it costs with each stylist, since a full color and a trim are very different bookings.

A med spa in Los Angeles adds a step before some treatments: a consultation, and intake and consent forms the practice writes. The site carries those forms; what they ask is the practice's call.

The deposit policy is yours to set: how much to take, and when it is kept or returned. The build applies it the same way to every booking and puts it in front of the client before any card is charged, so nobody at the front desk has to decide it on the spot.

Client cards keep color formulas and past visits, and the day's book shows every chair and treatment room side by side. Gift cards and packages are tracked in the same place, next to the staff schedule.

Most salons and spas already book through a salon software subscription, and many sell retail products through its point of sale. The site can work alongside that system where it lets outside tools in, or replace only the parts you want replaced. These are familiar names in the trade, listed because you may recognize them, not because we favor one.

Marketplace apps can bring new clients, and while they do it they list you beside other salons nearby. Booking on your own site keeps the client's attention on you, and the deposit and cancellation rules are yours rather than the app's. Some salons keep a profile there for new faces and send regulars to their own page.

Picture a hair salon with four chairs and a back room for facials. It takes most bookings through a marketplace app, and its deposit policy is a line in its social media bio that few clients read before a long color appointment.

With a Growth site at $11,900, the salon would get a service menu with real appointment lengths and a page for each stylist, and each booking request would reach the tool it already runs on.

Booking on its own site, with deposits taken under its written policy and client cards behind it, would be a custom app; because it takes card payments, it sits nearer the tier at $34,000 than the floor of $15,300. The salon could launch the site while it keeps the marketplace, then move its own bookings over once deposits work the way the owner wants.

The Book, below, is a concept we drew for this page; its name comes from the paper appointment book that once sat at every front desk. It shows a salon's bookings and checkout running on one system, and it is only a drawing: not a product, and not the book of any real salon or spa.