Hairdresser website design: four ways to get yours built

The short answer first. Having a website built for you in the literal sense means a web design agency or a freelancer, either as a one-off project or on a monthly subscription. With a website builder you are the one who builds. With a booking system that includes a website nobody builds anything: the page is generated from the services, prices and opening hours you enter for the calendar anyway.

Which route fits depends less on taste than on three questions. Who changes the price list and the opening hours once the site is live? Where does the online booking come from: the calendar you actually work in, or a second system beside it? How are you billed: once, monthly, or monthly with a minimum term?

All four routes end in a salon website. They differ in who does the work at the start and who does it afterwards.

• Website builder. You pick a template and fill it yourself: texts, photos, price list, menu. Nobody else is involved, which makes it the route with the most control and the most evenings of your own.
• Agency or freelancer, one-off project. A web designer plans, designs and builds the site to your brief. You supply the brief, the texts and the photos, or pay extra to have them produced, and you approve the drafts. The result can look exactly the way you picture it.
• Website subscription from an agency. The agency builds the site from its own templates and runs it for a monthly fee. You supply content and wishes; later changes go through the agency.
• Booking system with a website included. You set up the software you take appointments with, and the public page is generated from the same data. There is no build phase and no designer, and the layout is the one the system provides.

The table describes types of offer, not individual providers. Within each type the details differ, so put the questions in the left-hand column to every provider before you sign.

This guide names no market prices. Quotes for the same job lie far apart depending on region, scope and provider, and a figure printed here would be out of date before you read it. What can be compared reliably is the billing model, because it decides when you pay and what for.

• Website builder: a plan billed monthly or yearly. Check from which plan level your own domain and the booking function are included.
• Agency project: a one-off price for concept, design and build, quoted after a briefing. Hosting, domain and later changes come on top, as an upkeep agreement or at an hourly rate. Ask what a changed price list costs.
• Agency subscription: a monthly fee that spreads the build over the term, sometimes with a set-up fee at the start. The total is the monthly fee times the minimum term, so ask for both numbers.
• Booking system with a website: a software plan billed monthly or yearly. The website is not an item of its own but part of the plan, sometimes only from a certain plan level. Check whether a fee per booking comes on top.

With Salon Wizard the model looks like this: a plan at a fixed price, payable monthly or yearly, with no fee per booking. The website is part of the Solo Plus plan and above; the smallest plan, Solo, has a booking page instead of a website. For the website, the only extra is a domain of your own, which is charged per year. The amounts are on the price page. This article states none, so that it cannot go out of date.

Whatever the model, compare the same period. Add up what each route costs over three years, with domain, hosting and the changes you expect. Put your own hours beside it, valued at what you earn at the chair in that time. A route that costs little money and many evenings is not the cheaper one.

For a salon the website is above all a way to an appointment, so the booking deserves a closer look than the design. It reaches the page in one of three ways.

An embedded window or a link to a separate booking service is a common arrangement on agency-built sites and on many builder sites. It works, and it creates a seam: services and prices then exist in two places, once as text on the page and once as bookable entries in the calendar, and both have to be kept identical by hand. The embedded window often brings its own cookies and a further provider with it, and both belong in the site's privacy notice. The questions to ask about that are in client data and hosting.

The builder's own booking module saves you the second contract. Ask whether it can be the calendar you work in all day, with several members of staff, working hours, service durations and the appointments you take by phone. If not, you keep a second calendar beside it.

With a booking system that generates the website there is only one set of data. Change a service, and the text on the page and the bookable entry change together, because there is only one entry. This is how Salon Wizard hairdressing software is put together: the calendar that holds your appointments is the one your clients book from. You decide whether an online booking is confirmed at once or reaches you as a request.

The same question settles the upkeep. In a builder you make every change yourself. After an agency project you learn the editing system or pay per change. On a subscription the agency makes the change, at its own pace and within what the contract covers. In a booking system you change the entry you would have changed anyway.

Whichever route you take, the content decides whether a visit becomes an appointment. Four things have to be right before anybody talks about web design. The page works on a phone. It shows opening hours and address without anybody having to scroll. The booking button can be reached with no detour. The service list carries the names clients use: somebody searching for balayage will not find “colour technique level 3”.

Prices belong on the page even when they vary. A range with an explanation answers the question better than no figure at all: depending on hair length and effort, confirmed after a short consultation.

Texts and photos are the part no route takes off your hands completely. Real pictures from your own salon do more than stock photographs, and only you know what sets your salon apart. An agency can write and photograph for you at extra cost. A builder and a booking system give you the frame and leave the words and pictures to you. With Salon Wizard that is meant literally: nobody writes, imports or uploads anything on your behalf, and the content of an old website is not carried over.

Then come the legal pages. Which ones you need depends on the country you trade in: a privacy notice is required almost everywhere, cookie consent in many countries as soon as the site uses cookies that are not strictly necessary, and several countries additionally require formal business details to be shown, Germany's Impressum being the best-known example. Ask every provider which of these pages they supply and which remain your job. A Salon Wizard website shows the business details you enter as its imprint. It does not write a privacy notice for your salon: on a domain of your own you link the one you have.

Choose an agency project if the site has to look exactly the way you picture it, or if it needs something no template offers: a shop, a blog, several languages or an unusual layout. The agency is also right if you want somebody to take the whole job off your desk, texts and photos included. Plan the upkeep together with the build.

Choose an agency subscription if you want the site built for you without a large payment at the start and the agency's templates are enough for you. Read the minimum term and what counts as an included change.

Choose a website builder if you enjoy designing things yourself, want to decide every detail and have the evenings for it. Settle the booking question before you pick the builder.

Choose a booking system with a website if the page is mainly meant to bring appointments and you do not want to maintain anything twice. The price you pay is design freedom. For the Salon Wizard salon website that means in concrete terms:

• There is one layout, in the colours of your salon. You do not move blocks around, and there is no blog, no shop and no second template.
• Nobody builds the site for you, and there is no set-up service: you enter your data and the page shows it.
• The website is part of the Solo Plus plan and above. On Solo you get a booking page, not a website.
• From Solo Plus your free address is set up from your salon name, under plan-it-now.com. A domain of your own can be added on request, as a new registration or as a transfer to us. A domain that stays with another provider cannot be connected at present.
• The 14-day trial needs no payment details, and the site is online during it. After the trial it stays online only with an active plan.
• On the free address, clients can book once you have entered your legal name or company name and the full address of your business.

If one of these points rules the route out for you, an agency or a builder serves you better. That, too, is a good result of a comparison.