Somebody who has been going to the same salon for six years and is thinking about switching is taking a real risk, and they will look you up properly before they ring. Three things settle it: what it costs, whether you do their hair, and what your work looks like.
Instagram covers the third one already. It is hopeless at the first two, it disappears if the account ever goes, and it will not turn up when somebody searches for a colourist in your town at nine on a Sunday night. That is the gap the website fills, and it does not need to be a big one.
The Build
Designed and built by me from scratch, five pages as standard and more if you need themYour price list as readable text, because nobody rings to ask what a cut costsBuilt to load fast on a phone, which is where every one of these visits comes fromPage titles, structure and sitemap set up for Google from day one
And Then
Instagram pulled in properly, so the site stays current without you touching itBooking in one tap, whichever system you already useBuilt on WordPress, so you can change your own prices in about a minuteUsually live inside a week of starting
Say what you actually specialise in, too. Colour correction, curly and afro hair, extensions, barbering, nails, brows. People search for the specific thing far more often than they search for a salon, and a site that only says hairdresser competes with every other one in town.
The Design
What Website Design Actually Involves
At this price the fair question is whether you are getting a template with your logo dropped on the top. You are not, and it is worth explaining what you are getting instead.
Structure First
I work out what the site has to say and in what order before anything gets designed. Which pages exist, what sits at the top of each one, and what somebody thinking about switching needs to see before they will book.
Most salon websites go wrong here rather than in the design. They open with a full-screen photograph and put the price list four taps away.
It is also what decides how Google reads the site. Page titles, headings and the way it is put together are structural decisions, not something added at the end.
Then the Design
Type, colour and spacing chosen to suit your salon rather than whatever a theme arrived with. A barbershop and a bridal hair specialist should not end up with the same website in different colours, and they will not.
Designed for a phone first, since that is where effectively all of this happens, then built upwards from there.
Speed is a design decision too. Salon sites are usually heavy with photographs, and getting the image sizes right during the build is why it comes out fast rather than needing a plugin to rescue it later.
You see it on a private link before anybody else does, and I keep going until you are happy rather than stopping at a set number of rounds. Already have a site that needs replacing rather than building? That is a redesign and it costs the same.
Mobile Hairdresser · Surrey
DOT Hair by Gemma
A mobile hairdresser who needed somewhere proper to send people from social media, rather than relying on a profile page to do all the work. Quick to load, clear about the areas covered, and easy to book from.
“Nothing is ever too big or small and he does it with complete professionalism and explains things that even I understand. Would highly recommend to anyone that asks.”
A website designed and built by me, five pages as standard and more if you need them, often live inside a week. Anything beyond that I quote as a fixed price before we start.
Then hosting, business email, weekly updates and backups twice a day for £35 a month. My prices are on the page for the same reason yours should be.
Instagram shows your work brilliantly and does almost nothing else. It will not display a price list, it will not turn up when somebody searches for a colourist in your town, and it is not yours. The website handles those, and you keep it whatever happens to the account.
I would. People will not ring to ask, they will go to whoever has published theirs. It also saves you the awkward conversation at the chair, and filters out anyone who was never going to book anyway.
Usually, yes. Whatever you already use, the aim is to get somebody from landing on the site to booked in one tap rather than three. If you take bookings by message instead, that works too.
Yes, and for a salon it is worth doing. The gallery stays current without you having to upload anything twice, which is the only way these things ever stay up to date.
Slightly. The important thing becomes exactly which areas you cover, said plainly, because that is the first question anyone has. Everything else is much the same. One of the sites above is a mobile hairdresser.
Same thing, same price. A barbershop, a nail bar and a beauty room all have the same three questions to answer: what it costs, what you specialise in, and how to book.