Why Should A Salon Go Digital in 2024?

Are you looking for information on: why should a salon go digital? Every salon manager can benefit from using high-quality salon software. This software is designed to aid owners of salon businesses with countless day to day responsibilities, optimizing their workflows, maintaining accurate client and business records, automating daily tasks, and more. But why is salon software so important? This guide will help you find out.

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1. What Is Salon Software?
2. Why Should A Salon Go Digital?
3. 15 Benefits of Using Hair Salon Software
4. How Much Is Salon Software?
5. Conclusion

What Is Salon Software?

Before we look at the benefits of salon management software and how it can help with everything from appointment scheduling to inventory management, it’s important to begin with a simple definition.

In simple terms, salon software is a system that has been designed for use in hair salons. It's a digital tool that hair salon owners can use to manage and grow their business operations.

Salon management software can come in many forms and offer lots of different features and functions, from helping with payment processing to optimizing your online marketing suite, assisting with your point of sale system (POS), and so on.

Why Should A Salon Go Digital?

So why do hair salons business owners need salon management software in the first place? Well, countless advantages can be seen and experienced when using this kind of technology.

It can assist with many different aspects of your business, helping your POS system, managing appointments, raising client retention, improving the client experience, and so much more. In the next section, we’ll look at 15 unique advantages of salon management software.

15 Benefits of Using Hair Salon Software

• 1. Increase Salon Efficiency

  With the right salon software set up at your salon, your business can become infinitely more efficient. The software can take a lot of pressure off your shoulders, automating tasks and taking care of various aspects of salon management "behind the scenes", freeing up you and your staff to focus your efforts on other areas. From simplifying payments to optimizing your appointment scheduling, salon operating systems can help you make more of your business time, every day, saving precious minutes and hours that you would usually spend managing invoices, checking your calendar, and so on.

• 2. Salon Management On The Go

  Many of the best salon software solutions are compatible with mobile devices or come with some sort of compatible mobile app. This can completely transform life for any salon owner, making it easy for you to manage different aspects of your business while on the move. You can check up on your appointment booking system from the comfort of your own home, for example, or consult sales records while traveling from place to place.

• 3. Reduce No Shows and Late Appointments

  Another great feature of this software is that it can reduce no-shows by up to 70%. How? Well, the salon programs automatically send out SMS appointment confirmations seconds after booking online, also send SMS appointment reminders to your clients, giving them a heads-up when their next appointment is due, as well as taking deposits in the form of credit card payments, giving customers another incentive to make sure they turn up for their bookings.

• 4. Reduce Phone Calls

  With the best salon software set up and ready to go, you won't have to take nearly as many calls at your business, either. This is because the software will make it easy for your clients to place bookings and make client appointments online via your salon’s website or social media. This can help to reduce the load on your staff and help them focus on other areas of your wellness business such as upselling and improving the customer experience.

• 5. Increase Online Reviews

  Online reviews are vital for brand building, and it's important to ensure that you get as many good reviews as possible on your own website and review sites, and a few bad reviews as possible. Salon software can assist with this. It can send out surveys and follow-up emails after a visit, encouraging clients to leave positive reviews on Google, Yelp, and another review sites. It also lets you know when new negative reviews are posted so you can respond to them quickly and correctly.

• 6. Improve Profits Through Business Insights

  Software for your salon business can also be of assistance when it comes to boosting profits and revenue. It can store huge amounts of in-depth information in the cloud, while also automatically creating reports and generating statistics on things like sales, margins, staff performance, and so on that you can use to analyze your business performance and look for areas in which you can make improvements.

• 7. Enhanced Productivity

  There are always periods of downtime at the average salon business. Appointment scheduling software can help you make the most of those periods. With the right software in place, you’ll be able to optimize your online booking: encourage clients to book appointments in the less popular time slots and after filling them up, the more popular time slots will automatically be made available for booking.

• 8. Improve Cash Flow

  Cash flow management can also be improved with the help of software to use in your salon. It can provide you with accurate, accessible information about your cash flow at all times, helping you plan for the future more efficiently, avoid cash deficiencies, and so on. This is far better than traditional Excel spreadsheet cash management, which can be much more confusing and complex to keep track of.

• 9. Remember Client History

  Salon software can also manage your client database, keeping records of all your clients, tracking things like name, address, phone number, email address, other contact details, service history, retail and gift card purchase records, price details, and more. It gives you all you need to know about customers, and more, with the best programs even able to track the products your clients purchased and let you know when those products might be running out so you can upsell during the next appointment.

• 10. Improve Customer Experience

  The best salons always need to find ways to improve the customer experience and ensure that all clients have the best possible time at the salon. Salon software can help with this too. It can offer insights into clients’ likes and dislikes, saving client notes, and sending out newsletters and surveys to help gather extra info to help you improve your salon environment, point of sale experiences for clients, price lists, and so on. It can basically give you tips on how to make your clients happier.

• 11. Reduce Cash Tied up in Stock

  Many salons struggle with stock management and tend to have a lot of their capital tied up in stock that simply sits around and doesn't get used or sold. This is often down to poor handling of inventory. Salon inventory management software can make it much easier to keep track of what you have, what you need, and what you don't need, issuing reminders and alerts when you need to re-stock and helping you keep aware of price changes to get the best value on your stock too.

• 12. Staff Management Based on Performance

  A salon operating system and similar digital tools aren't just for helping out with clients; they can assist with staff management too. Your software can build individual profiles of your various stylists and team members, with their own unique appointments calendars and work progress tracking. This lets you see exactly how well your staff are performing, allowing you to make more accurate individual assessments and evaluations of the members of your team, as well as deciding on rewards and feedback based on results.

• 13. Effective Salon Marketing

  The right salon marketing software can be a massive boost for your marketing efforts too, helping you make more sales and providing indispensable tips and assistance to build your brand both online and offline. It can help you with strengthening your site design, improving social media marketing, email marketing, SMS marketing, and more. It can help you set up newsletters and follow-up booking emails, and so much more.

• 14. Have More Loyal Clients

  Ultimately, salons need as many loyal clients as possible, because these are the people that are going to return to you, again and again, offer referral links to their friends to help your brand grow, spend the most money on products and services, and so on. Salon software can increase loyalty in various ways, such as helping you set up a loyalty program with ease via an easy column menu user interface, or offer booking discounts to your most loyal people.

• 15. Make Payments Easy

  Last but not least, salon point of sale software can also assist with making and receiving payments too. It can handle online payments really easily, tracking all the data you need and providing secure, speedy payment processing for you and your customers too. It can also be used to make or manage online payment apps, take deposits, and even collect late fees or cancellation fees too.

How Much Is Salon Software?

With all these benefits, you might assume that this sort of software is going to be very expensive. However, costs for salon programs and tools can vary quite a lot. There are some free salon software options out there programs that are totally free or have free trials you can test out first before paying, while others have monthly, annual, or one-off payments with varying prices.

It's important to consider various factors when choosing the right software for your business, including budget. You need to find a program that can meet the needs of your hair salon, offering a wide range of functionalities and processes while also fitting in with your existing budget. For more information and advice, take a look at our other post on how to choose the best salon management software for your business.

Conclusion

It's clear to see that salon software can offer a lot benefits to your business, helping with everything from payments to staff management to cash flow, client history, customer experiences, and more. It can be that X factor that your salon needs to grow to the next level, and it can take a big weight off your shoulders in terms of daily tasks and duties at the salon.

So if you'd been wondering why salon software is so important, then we hope that this guide has provided some definitive answers. But don’t forget that in order to get the best benefits, it's important to choose the right program for you and your business. There are lots of salon software options out there, and we encourage you to choose carefully to get the best results.

Citations

Software tools
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1010726.1010728

Optimization software guide
https://epubs.siam.org/doi/pdf/10.1137/1.9781611970951.fm

Software takes command
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=RarTbJ84EnMC&oi=fnd&pg