A hair salon website that shows the work and fills the chair
Someone looking at a hair salon website wants three answers: can you do the cut or colour I have in mind, roughly what will it cost and how long will it take, and when can I come in. Show real work, publish a price guide with durations, state your policies and let people book without ringing. This page covers each, and how Anticode handles appointments for a salon.
The service menu: prices, durations and the word "from"
Hair pricing is hard to pin down online because length, thickness and history change the job. That's why so many salons publish nothing, and why clients phone three places instead. A price guide solves it: list each service with a starting price and a typical duration, and explain what moves it up.
| Service | What to show | Why it helps |
|---|---|---|
| Cut and finish | Starting price by stylist level, typical time | Clients choose between a senior stylist and a newer one with eyes open |
| Colour (roots, full head, balayage) | "From" price, time range, consultation needed or not | Long colour appointments are where surprises upset people |
| Treatments and add-ons | Price and minutes added | Stops add-ons being a shock at the till |
| Bridal and events | Enquiry only, with a trial mentioned | These are quoted, not booked off a list |
In Anticode a services CMS collection with fields for name, category, starting price, duration and notes keeps this list editable from the dashboard. When your prices change in January, you change the entries; the pages follow. Our guide to showing service prices has more on wording "from" prices fairly.
Real work, not mood boards
Clients book on photos, and they can tell a stock image from a salon chair. Show your own work, ideally the same head before and after, in natural light, with the service named ("lived-in blonde, three hours"). Group it by the services people search for: colour, curly cuts, short hair, men's cuts, bridal. Ask clients' permission before posting their photos, and keep a note of it.
On a designed salon site, your own work appears in a CMS collection (colour work, say) whose image field holds the address of a photo you host, in that collection's own section and pages; uploaded photos are placed by the model only in app builds. The design gate won't publish images without alt text, so describe each one ("copper balayage on shoulder-length wavy hair"). Generic generated salon sites tend to miss this and fill the gallery with interchangeable stock models, which tells a visitor nothing about your skill.
Stylists, policies and the patch test
- Stylist profiles: a photo, their specialisms, and their level if you price by level. Returning clients often book a person, not a salon.
- Cancellation and lateness: how much notice you need and what happens if someone misses an appointment. Put it on the booking page, not just the terms.
- Patch tests for colour: if you require a skin test before colour, say how far ahead and that it's a separate short visit. The salon is responsible for its own safety rules and wording.
- Accessibility: stairs, a basin that suits wheelchair users, quiet appointments for anyone who finds a busy salon hard.
Online booking without phone tag
Anticode's booking calendar shows the coming days and takes one booking per slot; past dates and anything more than 120 days out are refused, and two people can't take the same time. For a one-chair studio or a stylist working alone, that can be enough, with one catch: the times are fixed (six a day from 09:00 to 17:30, Mondays skipped), so you can't set your own slots, and you confirm each booking yourself.
Be clear about what it isn't. It doesn't take deposits, doesn't sync with another calendar, and has no staff rota, so it won't assign a cut to whichever stylist is free or block out a three-hour colour automatically. A salon with several stylists and long, varied services is usually better served by a dedicated salon booking tool, linked from the site's Book button, with Anticode handling everything around it. A middle option is a short booking request as a custom form (service, preferred stylist, preferred days) that you confirm by message.
Choosing a look
The design system sets the mood before anyone reads a word. Luxury (Jost) with plenty of space suits a high-end colour studio; Brutalist (Archivo) with a black action colour can carry an edgy barber-salon hybrid; Playful (Fredoka) works for a family salon; Editorial (Geist) suits a salon that writes about hair care. Clients who come back every six weeks can install the site on their phone's home screen, which makes rebooking a tap away.
What a salon still needs elsewhere
- Deposits and no-show fees: not handled by the booking calendar. Take them through your salon software or a payment link sent by hand.
- Retail: there's no cart or stock for selling shampoo and styling products; the site's one payment link can point at a product list at your provider.
- Gift vouchers: sell them through the same payment link (there's one per account) or your salon software, and track redemptions yourself.
- Reviews from other sites: nothing is pulled in automatically. Quote real clients with permission.
Questions people ask
Can each stylist have their own booking calendar?
Anticode's calendar doesn't do staff rotas or assign bookings to a stylist. A request form with a preferred stylist field, or a dedicated salon booking tool, handles that better.
Should a hair salon website list exact prices?
Starting prices with typical durations work well, plus a line on what changes the price. Exact prices suit fixed services like a fringe trim or a blow-dry.
Can I add new photos of my work myself?
Yes. Add an entry with the photo's hosted address to your CMS collection from the dashboard, or, if the site is an app build, upload the photos and ask for a change in a sentence such as "add these three balayage photos to the colour gallery".