How to Set Up Online Booking for Your Salon in 5 Steps
Part 2 of Booked Solid: the 6-week series on filling your salon’s calendar automatically.
A client books a balayage at 11:47pm. You find out at breakfast.
That is online booking for salons doing exactly what it is supposed to do. No call, no DM sitting unread until closing, no back and forth about Saturday. The client picked a time, and your calendar filled itself while you were asleep.
Last week we counted the five quiet leaks draining your salon’s bookings. This week we plug the biggest one. Your booking page is built into Simple Salon already, waiting to be switched on. Here is the whole setup, start to finish.
The 5-step setup
Set aside twenty minutes. That is genuinely all this takes, and most of it is decisions you have already made in your head.
- Display your operators online. Choose which of your team appear on the booking page, so clients can pick their favourite. Regulars book faster when they can see the person they always see. If you have a new stylist you are trying to build up, this is also where you quietly give them more visibility.
- Choose the services clients can book online. What they see is what they book, so start with your bread and butter: cuts, blow-dries, root touch-ups, the things you could price in your sleep. Leave consultations and colour corrections off the list for now. You can always add them once you trust the flow, and nothing stops a client ringing for the complicated jobs.
- Add a profile pic for each operator. Faces get bookings. A booking page with photos feels like your salon. One without feels like a form. Phone photos in decent window light are completely fine, they do not need to be a shoot.
- Set up your roster. This is the step that makes it live. Once your availability is in, the page only ever offers times you can actually work, which is what stops the 8am Sunday booking you never wanted. Get the roster right and the page will never put anyone somewhere awkward.
- Share it everywhere clients find you. Instagram bio, Facebook Book Now button, embedded on your website, in your email signature, on your voicemail message. It comes with its own Google-friendly URL, so it can be linked from anywhere.
That is it. From the moment step four is done, the page is taking bookings, whether or not you have told anyone about it yet.
Doing this today? Do steps 1 to 4 in one sitting and leave step 5 for tomorrow. Sharing the link is the part worth doing carefully, and it deserves a clear head. Next week’s post is entirely about where to put it.
The pro move: switch deposits on
This is the step most salons skip, and the one that changes the most.
With Stripe connected, you can require a deposit at the moment of booking. Around 50% is the sweet spot. From then on, every online booking is committed the second it is made, rather than being a polite intention that may or may not turn up on the day.
Clients expect this now. They pay deposits for restaurants, physios and dog groomers without blinking. A salon that asks for one reads as professional and in demand, which is exactly what you are.
It also quietly solves a problem we come back to in Part 4: the chair that sits empty because someone forgot they had booked at all.
Prefer the money up front?
You can take full payment online instead of a deposit. Worth knowing: doing that unlocks a Book Online button directly on your Google listing.
Think about what that means. Someone searches “balayage near me”, finds your salon, and books without ever leaving the search results. No website visit, no phone call, no chance to get distracted and go somewhere else. It is the shortest path from stranger to client that exists. Google’s own Business Profile help walks through the listing side.
The three worries everyone has before switching it on
Nearly every owner hesitates at the same three places, so let us deal with them.
“Someone will book the wrong service.” Occasionally, yes. The fix is the naming, not the technology. Call it what a client would call it rather than what the industry calls it, add a line of plain-English description, and the problem largely disappears. When it does happen you adjust the booking the same way you would if they had rung up and asked for the wrong thing.
“My regulars like to ring.” Then they still can. Online booking does not close the phone line, it just stops the phone being the only door. The clients who book at 10pm were never going to ring you, which is the entire point: this is additional business, not the same business rerouted.
“I will lose control of my own calendar.” This is the real one, and it is fair. The answer is that you decide every boundary in advance: which staff, which services, which hours, how much notice, whether a deposit is required. The page can only work inside the lines you draw. Start it tight, loosen it once you see how it behaves. Nobody ever regrets starting conservative.
What online booking for salons changes from day one
The obvious win is the bookings you catch after hours. The bigger win is quieter.
Every “do you have anything Saturday?” answers itself. Nobody double-books the 2pm slot. Your evenings stop being a second shift of replying to messages from the couch. The front desk keeps working when there is nobody standing at it.
And you get the thing that is genuinely hard to buy: the ability to be fully with the client in your chair, because the one on the phone is already sorted.
There is a smaller change that owners tell us about more than any other, and it is not about money at all. It is opening the calendar with a coffee in the morning and finding it fuller than when you locked up. Something happened for your business overnight and you did not have to be awake for it. After years of being the only person who could take a booking, that lands differently than you would expect.
Frequently asked questions
Can clients book a salon appointment after hours?
Yes, and a large share of them will. Booking decisions get made in the evening, at weekends and on public holidays, which is exactly when a salon cannot answer the phone. A booking page takes the appointment whether you are open or not.
Should salons take deposits for online bookings?
It is worth doing. A deposit means the booking is committed the moment it is made, which protects the hour you have set aside. Around 50% works well. Clients are used to paying deposits elsewhere and read it as a sign of a well-run salon.
How do clients book my salon straight from Google?
Take payment online and a Book Online button appears on your Google listing, so someone searching for a salon near them can book without leaving the search results.
How long does it take to set up online booking?
About twenty minutes for the four steps that make it live. Sharing the link everywhere clients find you takes another short session, and it is worth doing properly.
Already with Simple Salon? Your booking page is sitting in your account right now. Switch it on today and it can be taking bookings before you close tonight.
Not with us yet? This is exactly how simple it is once you are.