Building and operating a salon website sounds like trying to take over the world but it’s 2019 and creating your own website is a goal that is well within reach. I want to explain why the success of your salon studio rests on learning how to build your own salon website!
I opened my salon studio in February of 2014 and immediately just went with all the easy options. Basic towels, the color and retail line I already used before, the booking system that was recommended and oh good it comes with a free (or low cost) website that is all ready to go!
I figured I would find a crack in this foundation as time went on and to be honest, I didn’t!
All of my easy choices worked out but at the end of the day, I would ask myself why I wasn’t seeing as much growth as I expected. I’m not saying I expected to have a six-figure salon in my first year but after a few years, I realized my growth was going from a steady incline to tapering off.
Time after time clients would sit in my chair and I would ask myself what I could do better to make their experience even better. So, I brought wine into the salon and switched up my product line to refresh my excitement. Still, I was making my current clients happier but I wasn’t seeing new guests from yelp, as many referrals as I once had or new customers in general.
I was listening to an audiobook for entrepreneurs on my way to work one day and I remember the author saying something like… “your biggest area of weakness in your business will be the thing you don’t want to talk about.”
Suddenly a light bulb had come on. There was one particular part of my business that made me cringe every time I thought about it. My website!
I mean, it should have been more obvious because I would literally change the subject as quickly as I could when people brought up that they had visited my website. I even had a client tell me once she showed her coworker that she was trying to refer me to my website to “show off my great work” and was disappointed by the lack of quality. O
I remember at the time I told her it was best to either show her my social media accounts or even yelp. Which also wasn’t even that great but anything was better than my website!
I unfortunately , didn’t ended up seeing that client in my chair.
I knew my website was awful but I was SO intimidated by the chore of trying to make it any better. Ya know that, sick to your stomach feeling.
I had always heard horror stories about people trying to create their own salon website and then been caught off guard by high rates to publish or messing something up so bad they couldn’t fix without hiring a high ticketed professional to do it for them.
I have great news though….IT’S NOT TRUE!
I have learned how to use WORDPRESS the most intimidating and highest google rated website builder on the internet and I have used it to grow my salon studio business to everything I ever wanted and dreamed it could be and I’m now trying to pass the lessons I’ve learned along.
The salon websites our booking systems give us are really not even websites. They are more like landing pages with little to no flexibility on design.
You can’t customize them beyond the colors and even your images are limited. Mine, in particular, didn’t allow me to change my website tab names even or create a new page. Leaving no option to create pages like my favorite tools and products or a custom page to start a blog for digital marketing.
When I really looked myself in the mirror one day and said I need to change this I turned to my favorite search engine, Pinterest! Want to know more about why I love Pinterest and use it daily? Read my post about it here!
That’s where I found the courses that taught me everything I needed to know to get going on my journey to creating my own website and confidently still operating it today on almost autopilot.
I want to talk to you today about why you should take the time to learn how to build your own salon website and operate in a way that is low maintenance so you can focus on creating meaningful relationships with your clients!
There are a few big reasons to build and operate your own salon website and I have already touched on a few of them.
Why to build your own website?
- Stronger overall branding
- Custom Domain Name Opportunities
- Higher recognition from Google
- Freedom to do more with your Website
- It’s actually cheaper
These 5 reasons are part 1 of my salon website
Let’s go over the 5 reasons to build your own salon website…
Stronger branding
When you build your own website you can use your own images, text, colors and overall theme for the home page giving every single viewer that comes onto your website the ultimate branding experience that YOU craft for them. If branding your salon studio is something that intimidates you, check out my online course Attracting Your Ideal Salon Clients to help you out in that category!
Another qualm that hairstylists mention when I talk to them about branding their website is that they don’t feel like they have the creativity or know how to design their own pages or blog posts. My tip here is to check out some websites that you like. Pull up 3-5 of them and try and the characteristics of those websites that you are drawn to or like and the ones they all have in common. You also have tons and tons of template pages if you really don’t feel confident in creating your own custom page. These are easily changed once published as often as you want. Which is definitely NOT an option if you are paying someone else to build your website for you!
Domain Name
When you are using a website that is provided through a third party your domain name often converts into a general name of theirs.
For example: thirdpartydomainname.com/yoursalonname
When you build your website yourself and own your own domain name you can use it exactly as is. this gives your website a much more professional and clean look.
I aim to be as transparent as possible and want to add here that I personally screwed this one up when I built my salon studio website. I used a gimmicky domain name for multiple reasons with the intention of switching it to mine when I launched it. Life got busy after I launched and I never did it. I have now found out that because I have so many successful blog posts circulating on Pinterest I can’t change it because I don’t want to lose the links.
I can explain this story in more detail if you are interested. All of this to say, your domain name needs to be clean and clear and easy to say and type but it won’t make or break your success. Although I do believe it helps!
Higher recognition from Google
When you are trying to represent a business on the internet your relationship with Google will become one you care about! Trust me.
When I first started down this journey of building a website the people I learned 80% of what I know from, didn’t put any emphasis on google. Like me, they relied on the traffic they got from Pinterest and their Google traffic didn’t reflect the need to pay much attention to Google.
I am with them on so many levels BUT after a while, I realized that although most of my blog traffic comes from Pinterest and that traffic is what monetizes my website. The main way my salon makes money is through actual clients in the salon getting services.
Those clients found me in one of two ways:
Google and Yelp
Yelp is important and you should definitely put some time and energy into that platform but it is one I find most people use in its entirety. Compared to google which people use and then click over to your website.
Google also has its own platform for sharing blog posts. Something called INDEXING your website, emailing your guests, getting directions to your salon…the possibilities are endless!
What I want to talk about is indexing your website and SEO.
Indexing your website is when someone types your salon name into google and not only do the results pop up but a little box that very professionally lists all of the information about your website including reviews!
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. The way Google recognizes your website as a possible match for a search that someone is making. The more you are recognized by google the higher up in the searches you appear.
Imagine if you are in a big city with 1,000 competing salons being able to pop up on page 1 with your little salon studio?!
I hope you saw what I just saw. If you can crack this code, you can dominate your market and get new guests to visit your website where you will have the opportunity to wow them with your own user experience!
Freedom to do more with your website
Having the freedom to do whatever you want with your website means that you can literally take your salon studio business in absolutely any direction you want.
Want to start a Blog? (DUH!)
Want to start an education program?
What about an online shop to sell retail online?
Literally, anything you can dream up you will have the opportunity to add to your website when you build it yourself. More specifically when you build it on WordPress. I have never used any other website building software personally but there isn’t a single other one I have heard of that truly has unlimited possibility quite like WordPress does!
It’s actually cheaper
This one may surprise you as it did me. When you break down the cost of your domain name and hosting your WordPress website it comes to about half price!
I use a hosting company called Bluehost. This was the hosting company recommended to me when I first started and have been over the moon happy. The customer service help I have gotten throughout the past 2 years while running 3 websites!
Hosting comes to about $4/month compared to most add on websites with your booking system that runs an additional $10/month with their other services. After your first year, you are also charged yearly for your domain name which is $20 annually.
Prices may vary as the year’s pass but as of July 2019, this is accurate!
Use this link to purchase your hosting through Bluehost. I do get a small commission if you purchase through my link which is no additional cost to you. This helps keep this website running so I can continue to bringing quality content to you!
I hope this post has been super useful for you. As I mentioned I am coming out with a follow-up post to this one called How to set your salon’s website on Autopilot! I will update this post after it is posted with the links but if you are reading this now, keep an eye out or sign up for my email list to be the first to know when a post goes live!
Thank you for reading!