Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen?
Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.
Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and today we’re going to do something a little bit different. This is totally by request. We are going to talk about salon software systems and features.
It’s funny, this in a way feels like a throwback moment for me, even though I’ve never done a podcast on this before. Going back to I think it was 2015, did you know I was the very first ever digital educator for our industry? The very first, before the brands, before any other independents, I had Thrivers Society.
And when I was looking to build up and bring awareness for digital education, which was revolutionary at the time, people had no idea what I was even attempting to do. Other industries had had it in a similar format to what I do for some time, and I was emulating what they were doing, but our industry had never seen it.
One of the things I did to create awareness of my brand and what I was up to is I created these free PDFs. It’s not something I do very much of at all anymore, but one of them was called the Going Gray Guide. Some of you might remember this. This was at the time when it was really popular for people to color their hair gray to be trendy, not like Jack Martin-style, like, “Oh, going back to natural gray,” but like women in their twenties wanted to have silver hair, right? That’s when that was trending. I created this whole guide and I worked with brands to do it. It was a massive success.
The other thing I created way back in 2015 was called the Salon Software Guide for Beauty Professionals and it was a free download. I spent weeks, I tested like 21 online booking systems, and I went through all the features and I made this guidebook of what I felt were the best options.
When I created it in 2015, I had reached out to all these software companies and nobody would even take my email. Nobody would take my call. I was trying to just get in touch with people. Nobody would listen and so I had to do all the research myself, which was fine. It was very authentic and it was just my true opinion of things.
That PDF was downloaded something like over 10,000 times, and we’ve updated it, whether you know this or not, every year since because we realized it was this huge needed resource for our industry.
In 2015 when I would tell people, “Get off your paper books and book online,” even that was still shocking. I think now, flash forward to where we are today, way more than half of beauty professionals are using a digital booking system because they’ve come around to realize, “Wow, my record keeping is easier. It’s easier to schedule.” The idea that you’re out of control or mistakes are going to happen, it’s actually much more likely to be out of control and to make mistakes with the paper book. Once you realize how to use online booking correctly, it’s like you get your whole life back.
When that became normalized, online booking became much more the standard, but back seven years ago, it wasn’t. And so, as I was telling everybody, “Listen, you’ve got to ditch the paper books, you got to get online,” this resource was a huge piece of that and a component.
If you’ve never downloaded this PDF, that’s been updated as of 2022. The latest version is there. You can head to thrivingstylist.com/resources and get your hands on this year’s copy.
What we do now, flash forward, brands are willing to take my call if I ask for feedback. Most of them do, some of them haven’t, a lot of them will listen to this podcast or might change their mind. Yes, my team would love to talk to you. Our emails are probably sitting in your inbox somewhere, but we go through every year and we review probably now 40 digital booking software systems. We do free trials. Some online booking systems will hop on a call with us, which is amazing, but we go through and we have a really specific set of criteria of what we’re looking for. We go through with the fine tooth comb on everything, and we rate basically every online booking system we can get our hands on. If you go to thrivingstylist.com/resources, you can see those ratings.
What I’m going to do here is talk about things to think about when you are picking, reviewing your online booking system, and I’m going to go over a few that get a strong recommendation from me, but please know if you go download that PDF, there is way more information in there than what I’m going to be able to share on this podcast episode.
Okay, so based on what I’m going to share, you might say, “Oh, well, you left this out,” or “You didn’t talk about this thing or the other thing,” okay, I got it. But I only have so much time on this podcast. So if you head there, I cover a lot more.
If you are the owner of a booking system and you’d like to get more information to my team, you can email support@brittseva.com. They’re there hanging out, ready and waiting for you.
Let me just talk about three key points whenever we’re looking at an online booking system.
Number one, if an online booking system of any type offers a free website, to me, that’s like white noise. I don’t care. Your online booking system—I’m doing air quotes. I know you can’t see me, but website is not a real website. It’s an online booking landing page. And the reason why it really is nails on a chalkboard to me when these online booking systems say “custom webpage” or “build your own website”. No, because you have to think about business through the eyes of a consumer, not through the eyes of you as the beauty professional.
Yes, it’s so much easier when you don’t have to build your own website. I got it. I get that part. But the challenges to the consumer—they’re comparing your half-assed, not-fully-built booking webpage to a beautiful, well-designed inviting website. When they’re comparing you to the stylist who works three stations down from you and that other person’s going to win, even if their skillset is not as sharp as yours, even if they’re more expensive, their digital presentation is so much higher, and so they’re going to win.
And we’re naive to think that clients aren’t playing that comparison game. Even if somebody gets referred to you, when they look you up, if your online website, if your digital footprint is not good, you’re not going to win the person over.
So when online booking systems tout, “Oh, and you get a free webpage,” I don’t care. You take it, leave it, it doesn’t matter. It’s not useful to me. So long as there is a link that you can put into your Instagram bio and link to your appropriate website, we’re good to go.
So that’s not a feature you need to worry about. You also can’t rely on that to build your business. It’s just not going to be as effective as a fully built website.
Number two, reviews on your digital booking platform aren’t in the right place of your marketing funnel. It’s another feature I really couldn’t care less about. So a lot of these online booking systems will say, “Oh, and we feature reviews on your online booking page.” Okay? So to me, the only benefit of that is that if they—let’s say some booking systems send out an automatic email to your client Grace after her appointment. The email is like, “Did you enjoy your visit with Britt? Let us know what you thought.” Grace fills out a review. Cool. So that now lives on your booking page. Fine.
That’s not going to do anything to build your business and I’ll tell you why in just a second. But the thing that you could do with that review is take her words and feedback and turn it into some kind of social post or feature it as a testimonial on your website. That would work, but having it live on your online booking page? It actually is not effective.
Do you know why? My Thrivers Society members know why. Because online reviews live at the Interest level of your marketing funnel. So actually if you head to this resources URL shared a moment ago, you can get a download that shows the marketing funnel too, if you’re not familiar with it. But when we look at the marketing funnel, it’s multi-layered, and it basically describes a client’s journey to your chair. It’s not something that I think is cool. It’s literally describing consumer behavior across any business, not even in our industry, in all industries.
So the very top layer is called Awareness. It’s when somebody becomes aware that you even exist. Hi, I’m Britt Seva, I’m a business coach for hair stylists. At some point, before you listen to the show, you became aware of me, right? Somebody told you about my show, a Facebook ad that I was running hit your social account. You took a class for me in person. You saw me speak somewhere, somebody in your salon is part of my Thrivers Society program, right? At some point, my name hit your brain. That’s called awareness.
Then below that level is Interest. So at some point you decided, “Huh, interesting. There’s this chick named Britt Seva and she does this business coaching thing. I think I will check her out.” And when you made that conscious decision, maybe you looked at my Instagram. Maybe you started listening to this podcast. Maybe you went to my website, which is next in a moment here. But when we look at the Interest level, when somebody is just curious about a business or a person, generally speaking, they check out their social media, their online reviews, their digital reputation, right? This podcast that I’m offering right now is a part of social media, it’s an Interest tool. It’s free for anybody, come on down. You can leave me a rating and review here on this podcast, right? So this is an Interest level tool.
Online reviews belong here at Interest level. The problem when you’re getting them on your booking site is that it’s not just one, it’s two levels lower than it needs to be. That’s a problem because below the Interest level, we have the Desire level, and the only thing that lives on your Desire level is the website.
People go to your website when they already truly desire to work with you. They want to make an investment. They want to book an appointment. They’re curious about how to take the next step. It’s a big moment of trust when somebody gets there.
Okay, then you get the opportunity to work with somebody. So the challenge with having the reviews on your booking page are that the ideal client will have to have become aware of you, been interested, felt the desire, and then clicked to book to give you the opportunity before they even see the reviews.
Well, unfortunately for the consumer, reviews need to live on the Interest level and you have yours living on the Opportunity level two levels too low. So they’re not doing anything to build your business or reputation. They’re fine. They’re not hurting you, but they’re also not helping you as much as they can.
So long drawn out story to explain that reviews on your digital booking platform, they don’t sway me one way or another. If somebody’s trying to say like, “Oh, and here’s why you should use our system,” it’s whatever. Take it or leave it. We can get reviews anywhere.
Number three, features aren’t any good if you’re not going to use them. So I’m going to talk about quite a few very robust platforms here on this podcast and some of you are going to get the FOMO. Watch yourself because sometimes—if you’ve ever gone into anything, like how many of you know all the features on your smartphone? I know probably 10% of the features on my iPhone, like I watch all those people on TikTok who are showing iPhone hacks and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know how to use my phone at all.” I’m an infant. I just know nothing. I feel like a phone dummy, right? Because we don’t know all the features. We have these fancy pants phones, and we don’t really even know the full capability.
A lot of you are sitting on fancy pants booking systems, and you got them with the best of intentions, but you’re not even using them in full. The tool only works if you’re going to use it. You can buy a $400 hammer, but if you’re never going to swing it, it’s not going to help you, right?
So I want you to make sure as I’m going through these booking systems, I want you to ask yourself, “Do I have a system that’s doing enough for me? Is there potentially a better option? And or am I overpaying for something I’m not even using?” ‘Cause we’re going to talk about high end, low end, and everything in between.
I want to start by talking about my top picks for team-based booking systems as we stand today. This has definitely changed over the years. None of the systems I’m about to share are the ones that I used in my salon because in my salon, what, 10 years ago or something, the system we used was innovative. Now I believe the system that we used is extremely dated. I’m going to share the things that I think are brands that are up-and-coming, that are definitely trying to be innovative in the space, and that’s where for me, I would be putting my investment, my time, and my energy.
The first team-based salon booking software I want to talk about is Mangomint and Mangomint hit my radar at the end of last year. What I really like about them is they’ve always been really gracious in both speaking and listening. They’ve given us quite a bit of their time to better understand their system. At Thrivers Live, they were one of our sponsors and they took a whole group of Thrivers out to dinner. What I really get from them is that they’re listening to stylists and they want to create a tool that is useful for them. That’s been my take on how they are as a brand and how they are as a company.
There’s a few features that I think are awesome. One, custom compensation structures. So if you have a more complex compensation structure, Mangomint more than likely can help you with that.
For me, when I was running payroll at my salon, we had what was a fairly complicated compensation structure, partially because we really wanted to incentivize and motivate our stylists, so we had an aggressive payment structure, but also because we’re California-based. And when you’re in California, there’s a lot of complexities to payroll. So even though we have this very robust online booking system, I had to do so much of payroll by pen and paper and calculator. It took me four hours probably to process a payroll for 30 people. I mean, such a long time. Now in my business, it takes me 15 minutes, but it would take me hours because it was so complicated. Mangomint understands that, so they’ve got some features to help with that.
The other thing I think is cool is their express booking custom link. So this is neat. Let’s say you’d had a digital consultation with Nick and you said, “Okay, Nick wants to come in and he wants to get some kind of texture service and a haircut or something like that.” Great. So what you can do is send this custom booking link straight to Nick, and it’s going to say, “Hey Nick, the services that you need to book for are consultation, blah, blah, blah, texture service, haircut.”
If you’ve ever struggled with hoping a new client books the right services, this takes away that pain because you’re sending Nick exactly what they should be booking for. I thought that was really innovative. It’s like a custom booking card for the client. I thought that was super smart.
Another thing that I think is cool is they have a client self-checkout feature. They’re not the only booking system with this, but I really do think it’s slick. So instead of having to have your clients pay to desk or on your iPad, you send them a link. They pay themselves by text message and it’s done.
The thing that I think is pretty awesome is they’ve got a client feed feature, so almost think of it as a custom Facebook wall for all of your clients. What you can be doing is taking a photo of Nick when he comes in to get his hair done, you could do it before photo and after photo. If, in three weeks, he says, “My gosh, I love my hair. Here’s a photo of what I’d like to do next time.” You can save that additional photo that Nick sent to the feed. You can add in notes and comments.
Think of it as a custom Facebook wall feed for every single client and you have a visual history of everything that you’ve talked about and everything you’ve done with them. I just think that’s really innovative and super cool.
Give Mangomint a checkout. I think what they’re up to is pretty awesome.
Next we’ve got Boulevard. Boulevard is another newer-to-the-scene booking system come up in the last couple of years. Again, this is going to be a software that’s more for the team-based salon, not for the solo artist.
Now, one of the things that they offer that I think is super cool are what they call client accommodations. You can save custom pricing or durations to each client’s profile. So if you have one of those clients who’s a Rapunzel and they have just much longer hair and you need more time for them, but you’ve strayed away from online booking because you’re like, “Well, I know Nicolette is never going to remember to add on the extra time that she needs or it’s not in my standard online booking system,” that’s cool. Nicolette can have a custom profile that shows that she needs to book an extra half hour because she has longer hair. That’s one of the things that Boulevard can do.
Another thing I’ve always been a fan of is they have schedule optimization, so that removes any unnecessary downtime or gaps in your schedule. If anybody’s been afraid of online booking, because you’re like, “Well, it annoys me when a client books a 10:00 AM and they’re booked from 10 to 11, and then the next client books an 11:30, ‘cause now I’ve got this 30-minute gap and there’s nothing to do in there.” While Boulevard does smart scheduling optimization so that clients are booked butt to butt or in a way that you’re certain to not have these awkward gaps. I think that’s really smart and then they do have customizable intake or consultation forms that can be emailed to your clients automatically through their system before an appointment. So lots of cool features there too.
Then in our team-based salon systems, I’ve got Phorest. Phorest is another incredible brand that I’ve been talking to quite a bit and they’ve got some really innovative features I think are super fun as well. They also have the digital consultation forms like I talked about just a moment ago.
The other thing I think is cool is they have a salon branded app so clients are able to book services, view their appointment history, rebook services, access their rewards card, which I think is really cool, and view their own photo gallery.
So if you know, you know, I have a lot of feelings about rewards programs in the salon. I think they’re really effective. The problem is if it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind. So in our salon, we tried custom apps. There was a huge issue with clients not knowing their phone passwords, not having enough memory to have the app. We had a lot of issues with custom apps. We tried physical punch cards, like you got at the froyo store in the nineties. We tried a lot of things with rewards cards, and it’s really hard to get a rewards program that clients really glom onto in a way that’s effective.
A lot of booking systems have rewards programs and what will happen is the client accrues points in the backend of the system. Maybe they’ll get a little email that says like, “Congratulations, you have 2000 points,” but it’s very passive. It’s not active. The neat thing with Phorest is that they’re able to access all of that on their own, see their appointment history, all their photos and stuff. I just think that was a cool way to do it.
And then lastly, they’ve got a feature called Client Reconnect. So if you’re in Thrivers, you know I talk about something called recapturing lost clients. So the clients where they should have been back and they’re not, they have an automatic feature that lists for you all the clients who you’ve potentially lost or at risk of losing, and allows you to market to those people in a really slick way.
Now let’s shift forward and talk about systems that I think are really viable for individuals. One that I’ve talked about for a long time, this probably won’t surprise anybody, is Vagaro. I’ve been a huge fan of their system for a long time for a few different reasons. One, I think it’s a good user experience for the client. It’s pretty simple. It’s not fancy. It’s not like, “Ooh, super sleek and sexy,” like it doesn’t have that, but it wins in the simplicity. It’s a good price point and it does have a lot of great features. It has automatic birthday messages, thank you messages, you’ve been missed emails, the basic things we’d be looking for in a booking system, it checks all the boxes.
Now, what I think is cool about Vagaro is that they have a baseline price and then lots of add-ons. You can add on a consultation form if you want to. It’s 10 bucks a month. You can add on storage for photos. It’s another 10 bucks a month. You can do an online shopping card. It’s 10 bucks a month. You can add on text marketing. It’s 20 bucks a month.
When I was saying at the top of this episode, like sometimes we bite off more than we can chew or we choose a really robust platform when honestly we’re using 10% of it, with Vagaro, you can just start off super basic and then layer on the stuff that you want to. That being said, if you add in everything, your price is going to go up pretty significantly. But if you add in everything because you’re using it, likely your business is growing at a pace where it works for you.
I think it’s just really cool the way they’ve done a lot of customization in their pricing and for ease of use. It is a really good system.
Then we’ve got GlossGenius. I know this is another industry favorite, so I wanted to give it a nod. One of the things I think is cool with GlossGenius is it has something called proactive texting. So if you’ve ever felt like I wish I had somebody to tap me on the shoulder to remind me when I’m forgetting to do things, GlossGenius can be that person for you. They’ll send a text to you, not to your client, but to you, reminding you to check a client out, like if you’ve left a ticket open. Add notes to an appointment, like, “Hey, don’t forget to add in Janet’s formula,” stuff like that, like little reminders. It will send you text reminders so that you don’t allow things to fall through the cracks. I thought that was a pretty cool feature.
Last but not least, I want to give StyleSeat a mention. So StyleSeat was last but not least. I have to mention StyleSeat to the best of my knowledge. I could be wrong on this. So call, check me out if I am. StyleSeat was the first online booking system for independents. They really were like, “No, we’re not really for teams. We are here for the booth renter,” like let’s give them an option because for so long online booking was really expensive, so expensive that an individual was like, “I’m not going to pay 500 bucks a month for this.” It needed to be a reasonable price and StyleSeat was like, “We can do that.” They did a lot of other really great things too, but that was one of their big missions at the beginning was like, “Can we serve the independent?” and I think they were really innovative in pioneering in the way that they did that.
It is a fairly simplistic platform. It gets the job done.
One of the features that they have that I think is really smart is that when you have last-minute gaps or cancellations, StyleSeat will automatically reach out to those who are most likely to want those spots. I think that’s really cool, that kind of AI feature that we’re seeing in some of these systems, I just think is very next level.
To those of you who are like, “Nah, I’m going to stick with my paper books,” or “I’ve got it all figured out with my online booking system already,” I hope that what we talked about today was just enough to pique your curiosity and maybe give you pause to say, “You know what, let me take one more good look at how we book appointments here. Is there a way that I can do this a little bit better?”
Now, admittedly, I said at the top of the episode, I’m saying it now, I shared with you 4% of what I know about online booking systems. There’s so much more. If you head to www.thrivingstylist.com/resources, I break down so many other powerful features from all of the brands that I just mentioned right now, plus 10 or 15 others that didn’t even get a nod on this episode, which is already running long, but I wanted to get to as much as I possibly could.
And please take a look at that resource guide because you’ll see the way I’ve laid it out. I don’t believe there’s any one app that’s perfect for everybody. I think it’s almost like trying on a pair of shoes. You’ve got to find the one that’s perfect for you. Take the time, do your research, and I hope this helped.
So much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
