Choosing the right salon software – Top 5 considerations

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Posted September 1, 2022

Choosing the software that is going to underpin your salon is key to ensuring that your salon operates at peak efficiency. Long gone are the days of the big paper appointment book (or at least they should be!) with most customers expecting to be able interact with a salon digitally. A salon not managing their salon digitally may be a salon missing potential customers, but not all salon software is created equal. When choosing the right salon software system, these are HABA’s top 5 considerations you need to take into account.

 

1. Price

The price of different software systems varies greatly. While some offer completely free subscriptions, they also have limited features available. While some come with big price tickets, they might not have the most relevant features for your salon. It’s important to consider the fit of a software system to your business external of price, select a top 3 contenders list and consider pricing from that point. That allows you to ensure that a) you can afford your salon software and b) that you will get all the features you want from the system.

2. Scheduling

Salon owners know this is key to running a successful and happy salon. Scheduling appointments, both virtual consultations and physical in person appointments, is key to offering the modern salon experience. Particularly for beauty salon owners who often do Zoom or online consultations with clients, being able to schedule both is integral to offering a holistic view of your staffing on any given day. Consider the ability to have multiple locations, multiple user profiles and the ability to create recurring appointments quickly and easily. But your salon software system needs to be more than just scheduling – so consider the next 3 points carefully and ensure that they are all available in your system.

3. Integrations
   Integrations simply make life easier for salon owners. Whether its integrating online bookings from your website into your salon software, creating dedicated landing pages for promotional offers, integrating into your accounting software or payroll software, knowing what your salon software will and won’t play nice with is key. Rather than running and managing multiple systems, look for a salon system that has robust integrations that allow you to sit back and know that the manual task of coordinating and organising each system is handled for you.

 

4. Marketing
   Marketing functions, from text message and email to membership programs and review widgets, allow you to expand your salon software system across all aspects of your business. They can help you increase revenue, engage your customers and drive new business through the doors – and having them sync’d to your salon system also makes life easier and more cost effective than running multiple systems. Ask whether or not a salon system either has its own in-built marketing functions or integrates with popular marketing platforms (like Mailchimp) to give you best bang for your buck.
5. Ease of use
   The final piece to the puzzle, and possibly the most important, is all about how easy it is for you and your team to use your salon software. Is the dashboard intuitive and easy to understand? Can you make changes both on site and away from the salon as needed? Is there an app for your staff to log their time sheets in? Can your clients quickly and easily book an appointment online? OR are you managing multiple programs (disguised as an “integrated system”) and plugins to your salon software which can break and cause serious headaches for you, your team and your clients? How easy your salon system is to use will tell you how long it will last – because if it’s too hard, your staff just won’t use it (or use it well) and neither will you as the salon owner, or your clients.

 

You will notice that we don’t recommend a particular piece of salon software in this article. That’s because what we recommend really has no bearing on whether or not that software is the right fit for you and your salon – it’s about what features you will use, what price point you can support and the different integrations that matter to your business.

With this said whatever solution you choose the most important step is the first. Make sure that while you are signing up to any new system, you take advantage of the support that all providers will give to set your salon up properly. Do not be a child at Christmas and just unwrap the new toy and cast it aside, make sure you and your staff read the operating manuals and take advantage of the resources available. There will always be teething pains, but spending a bit of time at the beginning will mean a much smoother transition and a much more successful, and less frustrated staff and customers.

 

In this series, we will go into depth on each of these key considerations to explain more about choosing the right salon software for your business – but ultimately, the decision is up to YOU and what is right for YOUR business.

 

Looking forward to sharing more soon…