5 point health check for your salon website

Hello, Phil here from Build Your Salon, bringing you the tools you need to master to build the salon business you deserve. And today, I've got a five-point health check for your salon website. Hello and welcome. I hope you are well, salon builders. I'm a little bit cross. In fact, I'm very cross. And in fact, if I had the ability to frown anymore, I'd be frowning right now. And that's because last weekend, my salon website was hacked. Now, I don't really understand hacking as a concept. I mean, I kind of get it if you're trying to break into a government computer and steal lots of secrets and reveal things on the internet. I kind of get it if you're hacking into people's bank accounts or trying to commit some kind of financial fraud. Why on earth you would want to hack into a salon website is completely beyond me. But anyway, this is what happened. And I'm a kind of positive sort of guy. And I tried to make sure that the glass always appears half full. And there was some learning, definitely. In fact, what replaced my salon website was very eye-opening indeed. And my goodness, those girls are flexible. So at least I did get a bit of education out of the whole process. And maybe it was time for my salon website to have a little bit of a revamp and a refurb anyway. So that's what I'm going to be doing over the next couple of months. It will take me a couple of months because I will be building the website myself. Now, I'm not necessarily suggesting that that's something that you should be doing as a salon owner or manager because it does take an awful lot of time if you don't know what you're doing. But I would say that you do need to be involved in the creation process as much as possible. You need to have your artistic input wherever you can. And also, I would recommend that you at least have the understanding to be able to update your website on a regular basis. So that if you do change your prices for your services, you don't necessarily have to go back to your web designer and have the whole site revisited and pay an awful lot of money to do it. So have an understanding of how your website's put together. Certainly make sure you've got access for the future. You do not want to be beholden to your web guys. Now, I see an awful lot of people, and I've spoken to you about this before, salon builders. I see an awful lot of people out there not putting any effort at all into their salon websites.

They are obsessed with online marketing through social media, and they are putting lots and lots of effort into their Facebook pages, their Twitter feeds, their Instagram accounts, their Pinterest boards, and they are neglecting their websites. And I think that's a mistake. And the reason that I've touched on before is I think that everything, in fact I know, everything has its time. Everything eventually will come to an end. Even Facebook, as we know it, will come to an end one day. And I think that it leaves you vulnerable if you put all of your eggs in one basket. So if you put all of your effort into building your salon Facebook page, getting likes and shares, lots of engagement, a beautiful library of photos and videos, and then all of a sudden Facebook falls out of favour, and I'm not pretending that this is going to happen overnight. But over time, let's say Facebook falls out of favour, or your target market no longer starts using Facebook, then unfortunately you've got to start from scratch on another platform. So by all means, use these different platforms for social media. They are incredibly useful and powerful for driving people towards your website as well. But also make sure you're putting effort into your website. Kind of see it as the hub, as the centre of everything, and then the different social media platforms are the spokes that come away. Anyway, let's get on with this five point plan, shall we? And first up, I want you to make sure that it is really easy for customers to use your website for what they want. Now, I have seen lots and lots of salon websites over the years. I've seen some very ineffective salon websites, because I think it's kind of an extension of the salon owner's ego. So they look very beautiful, and they have lots and lots of effects and very dramatic things going on. In fact, the days of flash websites, we used to see all sorts of weird and wonderful things happening on homepages. That's started to tail off now. But do bear in mind the reason why people would be coming to your website in the first place. And normally, if they found you through organic search engine traffic, they'll be looking for one of three things. They're either going to be looking for your prices, or they're going to be looking for your location, or they're going to be looking for your contact details. Other than that, really, anything else is just kind of fluff around the edges. By all means, supplement your website with a blog. By all means, put a gallery of your work and a little biography for every member of your team there if you feel the need to. But make sure it's easy for those customers to find those three really important things. And I would have links to those things on every single page of your website. Next up, I want us to talk about your branding. It's really important that your branding is consistent across your website and all of the other marketing platforms that you're using.

Particularly if you are driving traffic to your website from other online sources. So if you're placing a Facebook ad, it's really important that the tone and the format and the feel of that ad is consistent with the website where people are eventually going to end up. Because if there's a disconnect between the ad and the destination, your conversion rate will be much, much lower when people finally hit that website. It doesn't feel the same. Some people call this ad scent or ad fragrance. It's really important that you've got that similar flavour across the board. Next up, copy. I want to talk about the words that you put on the page for your website. Now, as far as copy goes, I want you to go all the way back, if you haven't seen it already, to episode 18. And in episode 18, I talk about something called your customer avatar. So this is a person who embodies all of the ideal characteristics for your target market. And I want you to make sure that your website is speaking to that customer avatar in a really meaningful way. So please make sure your website sounds like you. Make sure you're talking to individuals. This is not time to pretend that your salon is bigger than it is and start making it look very corporate. Because there'll be a disconnect between the experience people are getting on your website and the experience they're getting in the salon. So make sure your copy speaks to people in a language and a tone which is appropriate and that they can relate to. Next up, opt-ins. Now, this is something that I see very, very rarely on salon websites. And when I do see it, I see it done extremely badly. So what I want you to do is recognize how difficult it is these days to get people to visit your website. It is really tough. We're either spending a lot on search engine optimization or we're paying lots for clicks on Google adverts or we're paying Facebook for adverts to drive traffic towards our websites. The amount of people that will land there just coincidentally is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. So when they're there, let's make the absolute most out of them. And part of that picture is to get people to opt in to leave their details with you so that you can then market to them in the future. There are a couple of ways that you can do it. The first way that I see a lot of salons that are getting opt-ins, what they're doing is they are collecting newsletter based.

They're collecting addresses so that people can receive their newsletter. So there's a little box that says subscribe to our newsletter and I am going to put a dollar out there and say that I reckon they get probably one or two opt-ins a year that way. The amount of people that will sign up for a newsletter is incredibly low. So we need to give people something a bit more exciting. And you could get a bit more bang for your buck if you said to people sign up for our discount club or sign up for something exclusive that they can't get any other way. You'll see the number of people increase. Again, you won't get very many, I'll be really honest with you. But it's definitely worth having them on there because those few people are going to be very interested to hear from you. The other way you can do it is by using something called a lead magnet. And a lead magnet is usually a free download or e-book or a PDF or a video that people can watch and get really useful information. It's usually very, very targeted. And I don't see these used by salons nearly enough. And I've used them in my salon very successfully. So for example, we had, because mine's a hair salon, we had a PDF that you could download and it was 10 ways you could increase volume in your hair. And it went really, really well. So people would swap their email address for that free download. And then I start to build up a library, not only of people that are interested in my content, but also I can start to segment them then and send them particular offers that are relevant to people who might want more volume in their hair. So it's a very powerful tool when it's used correctly. Either path that you go down though, make sure it is achingly clear what people are going to receive from you. And I would also make sure that you're following up with those contacts extremely quickly because the day that they sign up is the one day that they're really keen and really enthused to hear from you. So make sure you have something set up so that when people submit their email address, they're getting a follow up straight away with some kind of promotion or information or something that makes them want to pick up the phone and make that appointment now. Usually that's done by something called an autoresponder. If you have a look on your email service, there will be some kind of autoresponder that you can set up. So as soon as somebody lands on your list, they get an email from you straight away. And my final point today is testimonials. Testimonials are extremely powerful in marketing terms. And that's because it doesn't matter how compelling your message is, your customer will always believe someone who is not related to your company more than they will trust you as a salon owner or manager.

So if somebody tells us that a store down the road is worth visiting, we absolutely take their advice on board much more than we do the billboard for the same store that we saw two or three days ago. So what I would do is start collecting testimonials from your customers. The best time to collect testimonials is as soon as they finish the service and they're saying wonderful things about what you've done. So if they're swishing their hair a little bit at reception, that's the time to ask for a testimonial. If you've done a massage and they're saying things like, I'm so blissed out and I feel so much better, now's the time to ask for a testimonial. Make it really easy for your customers. You can even offer to write the testimonial yourself if you want to. So what I do is say, would you mind giving me a testimonial to make it really easy? I'll email something over to you. You can edit it and send it back to me and then I can start using it straight away. Most of the time people are more than happy to let you use testimonials. Most of the time they don't change the testimonial that I send at all. And when they do change it, they tend to make it more effervescent. They tend to go even more overboard about how brilliant my business is. Target your testimonials to what you think your customer avatar might need. So let's say your customer avatar is coming from two or three miles away from your salon and they're also in a hurry. Well, it might be that parking is a prime concern for her. She needs to make sure that she can get from her car to your salon and back again in double quick time. So why not collect a testimonial that says, I particularly love coming to Phil's salon because the parking is so easy. Touch those pain points through your testimonials for your customer avatar and I think you're going to make your website a lot more powerful in marketing terms. So there we go in double quick time, five points that I want you to raise next time you're having a look at your website. None of it to do with design. You are creative, wonderful people and I know that you can nail that side of things without my help at all. I hope that's been useful to you. If it has, don't forget to subscribe. I do a broadcast like this every single week and I would hate you to miss out on the content that I'm sharing. If you've already subscribed, I will see you next week. Take care.