After putting in years of work, you’ve grown your hair salon business from a handful of clients to a thriving full-time operation. Now, you’re looking for ways to optimize your operations.
Let’s talk about how you can leverage tech to boost your hair salon business. It’s time to build your own app.
You can now build your very own hair salon app that can do many things without any technical or coding knowledge. But how do you get started?
In this article, we recommend some considerations you should keep in mind when launching your own hairdressing app; we’ll even give you a few suggestions for easy-to-use, no-code app builders that will help you build your own app - we’ve got you covered!
What is a No-Code App Builder?
A no-code, or codeless, app builder lets users harness the power of an intuitive and easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface to create the perfect app interface. Users can decide exactly what their own custom-made app should do. As the name suggests, there is no programming or coding involved.
How to Determine Your App’s Purpose
Before you build your app, you need to know its purpose. You’ll most likely want the app to have the following functions:
- Appointment Availability, Booking, and Payment: Your app should show clients when your stylists are available. Clients should be able to book their appointments directly from the app. Your app should also give clients the ability to make payments straight from the app for convenience.
- Client Review Section: Let each client publish a review of your products, stylists, and services to your app. If you’re a big salon with many stylists, make a profile for each of your stylists and allow your clients to review their work.
- Stylist to Client Chat: On each stylist’s profile, include a chat function. A chat function will allow clients to communicate directly with their stylists. Clients can let stylists know if they’re running late for an appointment or ask general questions about products - like that intriguing shampoo they saw while on vacation in Miami.
- If your app has a chat function, stylists and clients can build a stronger relationship with your own professional chat function, not through texts, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger. When a client has a strong relationship with their stylist, they will continue to come back to that stylist, which is good for your salon.
- Virtual Style Consultations: When a new client books an appointment with you, do some preliminary research by building a function that allows them to send you a photo of themselves. A stylist will see the photo and get some ideas before the client comes in. This can save the time it takes to cut and style a client’s hair.
- Send Push Notifications: When a client has a haircut scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, send them a reminder in the form of a push notification. Why not let all your regular clients know about limited-time offers by sending out push notifications? When they get reminders, chances are they won’t forget about their appointment and they’ll show up on time.
Sketch Out Your App’s Appearance and Functions
With your desired functions in mind, it’s time to get an idea of how you want your app to look. You can do this by checking out your competitors’ apps on the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, or from their website.
If you want to give your competition a run for their money (and clients), you’ll need an app that looks and functions better than theirs.
When looking at your competitor’s apps, determine what the selling points are. Ask yourself the following:
- How intuitive are their booking systems? Can you easily book an appointment, and does the booking show up on your calendar?
- Do the apps have a chat function for direct communication with clients?
- Can you pay for your salon services directly on their app?
- How do the colors and design of the app affect the user experience?
Determine what your competitor’s apps don’t have, and strive to add this to your app. Clients will appreciate the conveniences your app will bring to their lives and they might become your loyal clients.
How To Choose An App for Your Hairdressing Salon
A simple Google search for the term “hairdressing app” reveals several options to choose from. Luckily, we sifted through them and have chosen our three favorite hairdressing apps for your salon:
Adalo is a universal app builder for mobile and web apps, you can use it to tailor-make your app to your exact requirements and taste.
Zolmi is a salon-centric app focused on booking, automated reminders, and marketing functions.
Tapstyle is a comprehensive, all-in-one salon app that aims to assist with all the operations of a hair salon - from booking to financial reporting.
Each app uses a drag-and-drop interface and doesn’t require any code.
Adalo
Adalo is a custom app builder that is ideal for making any type of app. It is one of the easiest app builders to use, boasting the most intuitive user interface, giving you the power to build and publish your app in no time.
It’s very easy to track your progress when building your app: after you finish building a certain feature or part of your app, you can simply click a button to reveal how your app will appear to your users once it’s published.
How Adalo Will Boost Your Hair Salon
- Adalo can integrate with thousands of applications, like Square and Stripe for payments, Twilio for sending text messages, and Zapier for connecting to even more applications. This means that you can apply an almost endless number of features to your own hair salon app, allowing you to configure your app to your exact taste and preferences.
- If you’re looking for inspiration to get your design off the ground, check out the Made In Adalo page. You’ll find several examples of stunning apps built by people who have never written a line of code and don’t have any technical knowledge. Adalo users have created over one million apps in the last few years - so why not join the community?
- Create a customized booking system with Adalo, choose the way you want it to appear, and allow your clients to chat directly with their stylists. If you have a client that swears by Google Calendar, Adalo’s Zapier integration will ensure that the booking they made will integrate seamlessly into their Google Calendar. It’s as easy as that.
- Once you release your app, your clients can conveniently find it and download it from the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store, or your website.
Pricing
Adalo’s pricing starts at $36/month.
Zolmi
Zolmi is a user-friendly, salon-specific software designed to speed up your salon’s operational processes. It focuses on managing bookings, but it also features functions that assist with managing your staff and marketing.
Zolmi is a good choice for salon owners wanting to streamline their booking and staff management.
- To save time, Zolmi has a convenient automation feature that can work for both operations and marketing. It allows you to automate operational tasks like sending appointment reminders. You can also use this feature for marketing purposes by sending out newsletters and other promotional emails to prospective clients.
- Do you find it difficult to manage your big team of stylists? Zolmi can organize your human resources management, too. Work schedules, time off, timesheets, payroll, you name it, Zolmi will be able to help. Putting these processes in one place will make organizing your business a whole lot easier.
- Zolmi runs a highly effective booking management system. Clients can easily schedule appointments directly by using your app. When they cancel or reschedule, Zolmi’s software will immediately acknowledge the change to the system and ensure that other clients have access to the newly opened timeslot.
Pricing
Zolmi’s Start Plan costs $15/month, but the Pro Plan, which gives you the payroll and email marketing functions, will set you back $25/month.
TapStyle
Tapstyle is designed to execute all the operational needs of your salon. It can manage your bookings and day-to-day schedule, create custom profiles for clients, and provide analytics reports. It’s got all bases covered!
For salon owners looking to completely streamline all of their business processes into one place, TapStyle is a good choice. Tapstyle also has the lowest cost of all the app builders on our list.
- Do you want to simplify your bookkeeping? Tapstyle comes equipped with a profit and loss calculator, a payment and invoice tracker, and a tax summary tool. Using TapStyle can save you a lot of the stress that comes with calculating finances.
- Tapstyle conveniently connects to messaging apps like WhatsApp and SMS for easy comms. Instead of trudging through different messaging apps and sending each client individual messages, you can navigate through their profiles in your TapStyle CRM and send each client a message with just a few taps.
- Use Tapstyle’s analytical tool to generate detailed reports about products sold, your most popular and profitable hairstyles, and the types of services and styles customers are getting. This analytical tool will enable you to determine how your salon can improve and where future opportunities may lie.
- Tapstyle is also integrated with point of sales, checkout, and payment systems. This feature simplifies customer payment tracking and supply purchasing. You’ll be able to use this data to simplify your bookkeeping purposes.
Pricing
Tapstyle has a free version with limited functions. If you want to access all of Tapstyle’s features, you’ll have to pay $14/month.
Test and Launch Your App
After you finish designing and customizing your app, make sure it works. Let your staff test it out and listen to their feedback. After you tweak it to perfection and make it available to your customers, keep an eye on your app to ensure it functions properly and make upgrades when needed. Do this when you onboard new stylists, receive new customers, or feel like your app’s design and color scheme are due for a makeover.
Next Steps
If you’re ready to get started on building your app, Adalo is the perfect choice and is trusted by hundreds of salons with their own unique app.
With thousands of integrations and templates available, you can design the perfect hairdressing app. Create client profiles, build a booking feature, and accept online payments. Your clients will love the convenience.
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