Consider Kristen, a young professional who's job required an important move to your city. Kristen hasn't had time to develop a circle of friends to show her around or recommend places to go before her hair needs an expert reshaping and color touch-up. Without any recommendations or guidance, how should she go about choosing a salon?
Someone like Kristen would begin investigating salons in her area via the Internet. And, because time is the most precious commodity in everyone's busy life, if Kristen had to choose between two promising salons, she would most likely opt to make an instant booking by doing so online. Why? A full 70% of consumers want to schedule appointments via the Internet. (Source: ConStat custom market research).
Many consumers - new or otherwise - are accustomed to receiving superlative, high-tech care, and often prefer not to be bothered with traditional phone bookings that require calling during salons' regular business hours or leaving a message and having to wait for a return phone call. There's also this to consider: In our wired society, you could be sending the subliminal message that, because you're behind in technology, you could be behind in styling trends as well. Like keeping abreast of fashion, salons must follow social trends in order to truly cater to their marketplace.
It's natural to feel somewhat apprehensive when updating your salon's offerings to include online bookings, but please keep this in mind: Successful businesses adapt to technology and use it to their advantage. This particular technology can help time poor-clients and salon owners by making bookings easier and faster without involving staff members.
Now, back to Kristen. Imagine her browsing online late one evening and coming across your salon's website. Then visualize her reading all of your great reviews and posts from your clients. With a booking application at her fingertips, and her hair in need of a good shaping and color, what do you think the odds are that she would go ahead and book an appointment right there and then? According to valued research, there's a better-than-even chance that you would have a new client on your books when you arrived at work the next morning.
(Shortcuts.net)
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