Your Go-To Guide of Must-Haves for Your Beauty Biz Website
You’re a beauty pro. You have the skill, the training, and the reputation to back up that title. You may even have a team supporting you, a profitable salon, and a beautiful space to call your own.
Amongst those in the beauty industry, you are living the dream.
You have it all and then some. Scan down your list of accomplishments and successes, and you’ll see checked box after checked box.
And yet, there still might be something missing. As a modern beauty biz, you need a stunning website that not only dazzles but also drives business to your salon.
Whether you’re a technology wiz who is simply too busy to build a site or someone who would rather walk through fire than attempt to craft a web presence, you’ve come to the right place.
We’ve compiled the most pertinent tips and tricks to make your website design process as streamlined and effective as possible.
How to Build a Beauty Biz Website
You run a killer beauty biz; now, you need a killer website to match. Thankfully, it’s easier than you might think to put together a polished, professional, and effective site for your salon.
Take the concepts below, sprinkle in a touch of your brand voice, and watch your website (and business) grow!
Make it Easy and Intuitive
There are few things more frustrating than trying to navigate an unintuitive website. Your current and prospective customers want a streamlined website interaction that makes finding your services, your scheduling form, and other essentials easy to find, access, and use.
The easier you make things for website visitors, the more likely they are to interact with your site and become loyal customers. The opposite is also true—if your website is clunky and frustrating, you are going to lose business.
When designing a site for your beauty business, aesthetics and branding are important, but they are inconsequential if people can’t navigate it with ease. Try to remove as many barriers between visiting your website and booking you as possible.
Don’t Forgo SEO
Driving traffic to your site is imperative if you want to generate leads and build a larger client base. While you don’t necessarily need to be (or hire) a search engine optimization (SEO) expert, the better your SEO, the more exposure your beauty biz will experience.
An SEO pro can implement a strategy specifically tailored to your salon and your goals, factoring in things like market and keyword research to ensure your website receives the most attention from your target audience as possible.
Make it Mobile Friendly
A huge chunk of your audience is going to be accessing your website with their phones (like, a majority).
Don't make the "mobile-friendly" aspect a side quest–it's the main character in your website journey. Make sure everything you design and write on your site is optimized for mobile!
Flex Your Reviews and Testimonials
Word-of-mouth marketing is still among the most effective ways to generate new business in the beauty industry. If you’ve been in the game for long, you know how powerful this tool can be.
Think of online reviews and testimonials as an extension of this organic marketing opportunity but with the potential to reach far more potential customers. These reviews act as proof of your professionalism and reinforce your positive reputation—both of which are more powerful when they come from a third party (your clients).
Not only does putting reviews on your website provide valuable information to future clients, but it also boosts your SEO, can be used in marketing materials, can inspire social media content, and more!
Offer Valuable Information and Insights
A pretty website has its place, but you want to imbue your beauty biz site with relevant content that is engaging and informative. Be sure to include value in every aspect of your site.
From meaningful about pages (including employee bios and photos of your work) to lists of your services and free blog content, you can give your current and future clients compelling reasons to visit your site (and your shop).
One of the keys to offering value is ensuring that everything stays current. Committing to consistent updates and regular blog posts helps keep your clients in the know and your website a true reflection of where your beauty biz is and where it’s headed.
Give Your Brand a Voice
Your website is integral in building your digital brand identity. It is an outlet for your brand’s personality to shine, connect with like-minded people, and create something truly special.
Of course, it takes intentionality to ensure your brand voice remains consistent across all your digital content. Keep your ideal audience in mind while you craft your website. Everything you include on your site should be an extension of your brand and reflect your values and vibes!
Killer Content
By this, we mean relevant pages that tell your clients who you are, what your brand is all about, and why you’re a badass beauty pro. This can include a variety of pages and features—bios, stunning photos, links to your social media accounts (this is a super important one, guys), a consistently updated blog, eBooks, a list of services, guides, etc.
Here’s the thing, what you add to your website is totally up to you. The specific pages and posts, well, that ball is totally in your court. What matters most is that whatever you choose to upload, you’re offering clients (and potential clients) a glimpse into who you are, why you matter, and why your business is better than the rest.
It needs to be current; it needs to be consistently evolving, and it needs to be more than just fluffy words and photos.
Remember, your website isn’t a formality, it’s a client-winning resource that can work wonders for your business—so treat it as such!
Streamlined Service List
Don’t make people guess about what you’re offering—show off your services loud and proud and make it readily available for anyone who visits your site.
People are probably checking out your site in the first place to see if you’re a good fit, right? Well, how can they know if you’re the right fit for them if they don’t even know what you offer at your salon, shop, or spa?
Hint: they can’t.
Make sure you designate a clear-cut section on your site that’s solely devoted to explaining your services. Whether or not you want to list prices on there, well, that’s up to you—but no doubt, you need to make sure your clients—and future clients—know what you offer.
Professional, Cohesive Layout
Brand cohesion, people—it’s a must for our websites. And most of the time, that starts with having a solid aesthetic for your site and a clear, brand-appropriate layout. If you’re not sure what your brand is, how to go about branding, or aren’t super-clear on the difference between the two, we recommend you check out our article here all about brand vs branding (and understanding the differences). That’s the best first start we can advise!
Go ahead, get to reading—we’ll be right here when you get back.
Ready to dive back in? Good! Now that you’ve got a clear grasp on your brand, you know that how you design your website fits into the branding category.
Your website is a huge part of your brand identity and should be treated as such. That means you need to think long and hard about the look of your site!
Spoiler alert, we can help with this part.
Did you know when you partner with Elite Beauty Society for your professional liability insurance needs, we actually provide you with a free, professional website that’s totally customizable and totally yours? Yeah, we do that.
P.S., we’ve got a lot of useful members-only benefits that come hand-in-hand with our insurance. Have we piqued your interest? (Yeah, we thought we might have). Check out our long list of benefits here!
A Clear Way to Contact You
Don’t make this harder than it has to be—if you do, it’s unlikely anyone is going to connect with you. The fact of the matter is that it doesn’t matter how talented you are, how in-demand you are, or how hot AF you are right now. If you’re making it harder than it needs to be for a customer to contact you, book you, or reach out, you’re going to lose business.
This is the part of the process that should be the absolute easiest. Why? Because you don’t want any roadblocks in your way.
Make sure you have a clear-cut guide for getting in touch and make sure that no one is ever confused or lost on how to contact you.
Do you have a killer example of a badass beauty pro website that you admire (and is it lowkey your own website)? We don’t care whose site it is—drop it in the comment section and let’s get this convo buzzin’ in the community.
If you have tips to share, please do! If you have questions to ask, drop those down below as well. Above all, these resources are for learning and sharing, so we encourage you to do both right here.
Looking for even more info on how to boost your business, get tech-savvy, and grow your salon’s potential? Keep up with our regularly updated blog for inspiration, advice, insight, and more!