The Best Mobile Apps For Salons

Are you considering a mobile app for your salon?

The best hair and beauty salons have a branded mobile app unique to their salon and have earned the right to some real estate on their client's mobile phones. Your clients look at their phones on average 55 times per day and each time they do there is a good chance that they are going to see your logo.  Besides this immediate advantage that you’ll have over your competition, a Salon app will also:-

• Deliver convenience to your clients:  A salon app allows customers to easily book appointments and make purchases from your Salon’s onlineshop using their phone at a time that suits them.
• Increased Salon efficiency: A Salon app will streamline the booking, rescheduling and payment process removing the need for a member of staff to be involved. This creates more time where they can be productive and eliminates mistakes. 
• Reduce No shows: A Salon mobile app can process a payment deposit, send SMS appointment reminders and enforce payment policy for no-shows.
• Improve the Client Retention Strategy of Your Salon:  A salon app can enhance the client experience by enabling features such as loyalty rewards programs, providing detailed information on the treatments the Salon can offer and communicating personalised recommendations. 
• Enhance your Salon Marketing capabilities:  by using general and tailored messages directly to your client’s phone via notifications and SMS detailing offers and promotions.

When you are choosing a mobile app for your hair or beauty salon it should provide enhanced capabilities to your client's needs and add to the overall productivity of your salon. The best Salon apps have the following features;

1. Appointment booking: A key function of a salon app is that it provides the ability for your clients to book appointments. Your app should connect seamlessly with your salon appointment booking software to make it easy and convenient for customers to choose a time slot, pick the service they need and choose their favourite Salon staff member to provide the service or treatment.  
2. Access to your online shop: Another important capability is to enable direct access to your salon’s online shop so that your clients can purchase products when it suits them. Many salons believe it is sufficient to upsell products when the client is in the salon but are missing out on a great opportunity to increase salon retail sales via marketing and promotion initiatives. The best salon apps can provide an e-commerce platform if you do not have an online shop or link directly to your existing online shop if you have one.
3. Service and Product Information: A salon mobile app should connect directly with specific pages on your website so that general salon information like address and directions to your salon are easily accessible as well as more specific details of the services your salon offers.  If the salon does not have a website then the app should have the ability to present this information within the app itself. For many small salons, a mobile app can replace the need for a website altogether. The individual circumstances of each salon impact heavily on the type of app you choose for your salon.
4. Appointment reminders: A salon mobile app should provide SMS appointment reminders to customers to ensure that appointments are not missed and to help reduce no-shows. Generally, this is a service provided by the salon appointment booking software.
5. App Customisation: While there are a number of Free salon apps provided by some of the Salon Booking software companies these generally cannot be customised to reflect the salon branding and are limited in scope. Later in this article, we discuss why a custom app may be the better option.
6. App Analytics: Your Salon app should be able to provide data on key metrics such as the number of app downloads and how many times the app is opened by your clients as well as reporting on what areas in the app get the most engagement.
7. Loyalty rewards: A salon mobile app can also include a loyalty rewards program to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.
8. Marketing and promotional tools:  The best salon apps can provide sophisticated marketing and promotional tools. They allow you to identify similar characteristics from your user base like age, and service preferences and create groups. These groups can then facilitate very precise targeted marketing via SMS and app notifications for personalised recommendations and offers.
9. Social Media: Your app should link directly to all your social media accounts.
10. Create engagement: The best salon apps will enable you to either link directly to a blog page or allow you to post articles of interest to your clients directly in the app. Creating a reason for your client to open the app on their phones will increase the chance of increasing sales via new bookings or product sales from your shop. At the very least it will reinforce your brand and help improve salon client retention.

Getting Your Clients to Use Your Salon Mobile App

Getting your clients to download and use your salon app can be challenging and frustrating. Just because your salon now has an app does not mean that everyone will immediately see its benefits. If you build it they will not necessarily come. At the very minimum, you need to continually inform people that it exists by incorporating it as part of your everyday marketing.

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Here are some ways you can drive adoption for your app:

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• Use social media and online advertising to promote the app and its benefits.
• Promote the app on your website and ensure that the link to download it is clearly visible
• Offer exclusive content or features in the app that are not available anywhere else such as treatment and product demos via video.
• Offer incentives for users to install the app, such as discounts or by using competition bonuses.
• Create a demo video or tutorial to showcase the features and benefits of the app and post it to youtube and your website
• Place posters in strategic positions in your salon with a barcode link to the download URL. Clients can simply use their phone cameras to capture the barcode and be taken straight to the instal page while they are in your salon.

How to Choose the Right Mobile App for Your Salon

Free Salon Booking Apps

Many leading Salon Booking Software companies also provide free mobile apps for salons to access their booking systems. While these are free and provide some great functionality they are lacking in several key areas and as a consequence, most salons only use the URL issued by the salon booking software to link from their website into their booking software. 

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Benefits 

• The best salon booking apps are free to your clients and will enable them to book, reschedule, pay and receive reminders via SMS on their mobile phones.  

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Disadvantages

• The style and structure are fixed and you cannot add your own Salon branding. 
• Very often your Salon will be listed as just one option in a portfolio of Salons located in your area. While this can be a useful tool to get new clients it exposes your existing clients to the services and capabilities of your competition.
• While some apps will offer you real estate within the portfolio in which you can add detailed information about the salon services and add a website address most will be limited to only accessing the Salon Booking System technology. 
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Custom Apps

Apple & Google

Most people associate phone apps with either the Apple store for iPhones or Google Play for Android phones. These are custom apps built by developers for their clients that after following the listing process for each operating system are made available in the respective store for the phone operating system.  When considering the requirements of a hair or beauty salon there are several potential disadvantages to publishing an app on the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store for these types of businesses:

1. The Approval Process: Both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store have an approval process for apps, which can take time and may result in apps being rejected. This can be frustrating for developers and can delay the launch of an app. In addition, both companies constantly change their policy and requirements for apps leading to notifications out of the blue requiring the change within a certain period of time or the app will be deactivated. This means additional ongoing costs and does not lead to peace of mind.
2. The Build Cost: It can cost significant amounts of money to create a bespoke app for your salon for both Apple and Google although this can be greatly reduced if your supplier uses one of the modular platforms that exist today and just publishes the app to both stores.
3. The Publishing Cost: There is a cost associated with publishing an app on the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. For the Google Play Store, developers must pay a one-time fee of $25 to register as a developer, and for the Apple App Store, developers must pay an annual fee of $99.
4. Limited customisation: Both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store have strict guidelines for app design and functionality, which can limit the level of customisation that developers can implement in their apps.
5. Space: Apps from Apple and Google are increasingly taking up more and more memory on our phones while at the same time, the memory that comes with new phones is decreasing as Apple and Google try to get us to purchase their cloud storage services. This has led to people experiencing restrictions and limitations to the number of apps they can keep on their phones and forces them to reduce these from time to time to make space. Your app might be one of those sacrificed. 

PWA  Apps

Progressive web applications (PWAs) are web-based apps that use modern web capabilities to provide a native app-like experience to users. They are indistinguishable from the apps from Apple and Google and have the same look and feel. This technology is perfect for the average salon with a low-cost entry point, low annual running costs and no administration requirements. 

Some key advantages of using a PWA are

1. No need to download from an app store: PWAs can be accessed directly from the web, eliminating the need for users to download them from an app store. This makes it easier for users to access the app and can increase the number of users who try the app.
2. Improved performance: PWAs can have faster loading times and better performance than traditional web apps, as they are designed to work offline and can be designed to load content faster.
3. Compatibility with all devices: PWAs are compatible with all devices that have a modern web browser, making them more accessible to users.
4. Improved engagement: PWAs can provide a more immersive and engaging experience for users, with features such as push notifications and offline access. This can lead to increased user retention and engagement.
5. Cost-effective: Developing and maintaining a PWA is more cost-effective than building and maintaining a native app for multiple platforms.
6. Speed: PWA,s can be produced very quickly
7. Easier updates: PWAs can be updated directly from the web, eliminating the need for users to download updates from an app store. This can make it easier to roll out updates and ensure that users have the latest version of the app.
8. Space: PWAs use no space on the phone

Overall, PWAs provide many advantages over traditional web apps and native apps, and can be a great solution for businesses looking to provide a native app-like experience to their users. 

Cost 

How much will a mobile app for your salon cost will depend on the solution you finally choose.  You should expect to pay between €650 and €2500 for a PWA app depending on how many treatment pages and features you need. A similar app published on Apple and Google stores can cost from €3000 upwards. All apps incur a monthly hosting and maintenance subscription. There are also other outlays for the Apple Store and Google Play as outlined earlier. For more information on our salon app solutions click here.

Conclusion 

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The best mobile apps for salons will bring enormous benefits to your business and greatly enhance your client's experience. They can deliver productivity benefits, and increase your salon's revenue by generating appointments and sales from your online shop that will provide a return on your investment many times over. 

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