An Online Presence For Your Hair Salon - Getting The Perfect Website

Getting your hair salon online is a big step that takes you towards your goal of a well-rounded marketing strategy. Many salon owners are guilty of the traditional approach that involves local directories, maybe newspaper ads and not much else. Two technologies have come along at once and have practically blown these out of the water. The first is the internet, and the second are mobile phones.

It’s a well known fact that people enjoy researching their activities or purchases beforehand. With information about products and services online, everyone can gain quick access to whatever it is they want to know. In this situation it is the businesses that have their information available that benefit the most. If two businesses are online then the information they provide on the website will be the aspect that distinguishes them. The website with the better content, the better layout, and the easiest user experience will trump the one that hasn’t paid as much attention to these aspects. Given two websites that are exactly alike in all the aspects just mentioned, then it boils down to the way they handle queries. Customer service then becomes the distinguishing factor, that decides whether potential customers are going to actually become customers.

Do you see the pattern? If at any point these things aren’t in place, then you lose customers to your competitors. If you aren’t using Facebook, and your competitors are, then you will be losing out on a lot of potential customers. Likewise, if you have a Facebook page but no website to drive traffic to, then you will still be losing customers. This pattern continues, until finally it is your customer service that distinguishes you. Getting people into your salon is important. Getting them to come back a second time is even more so.

Building your website is an important part of your online presence because it acts as a hub for your online marketing efforts, and also acts as an easy point of reference where people can look you up. Imagine they want a map at the last minute. If someone checks your website but can’t find a map, then they might miss their appointment, or worse you might lose that customer. Having information like this on the website will help a great deal. Maps, addresses, phone numbers, contact details, opening hours should all make an appearance.

The secret to your successful website is content. Giving customers a reason to come back to your website should also be a focus of your marketing effort. Even a weekly styling article will help to create fresh content to bring people back. While they’re visiting your website you can encourage them to sign up to your newsletter, or promote promotions that will bring them back in.

Content isn’t hard to write, just pick something you know about and try to teach people about it. If one of your staff members is a talented writer, then leverage their skills and have them do it. If neither you or anyone you know is comfortable writing then you can hire a professional writer for anywhere between $5 to $15 dollars depending on where your writer lives, what the currency exchange rates are, and their skill levels. The lower the price, the more likely it will need the attention of an editor prior to using it. You may want to pay the premium for quality work. If you are on a budget, note that there are many pro writers who are starting out in the world of freelancing for the first time, but have no ratings or testimonials. They will offer competitive rates until they have the testimonials to command the full rates their service demands. Even cheap articles will give you a good starting point if you’re prepared to put in the effort to cleaning it up yourself.

Once you have your initial content in place, building your website is the next challenge. If you’re on a budget then hiring a web designer may be a formidable challenge, given the high costs and number of things that can go wrong. Fortunately you can get your website up very quickly. Many hosts use a back end setup based on cPanel. On these hosts you have a tool called fantastico which gives one click (almost) install of WordPress. With WordPress installed, you will be able to log in and manage your website just in the same way as you would your blog, or Facebook page. Not only does Wordpress greatly simplify the task of updating your website, but it also give you access to thousands upon thousands of themes so you can easily pick a look you like.

Once your website it up and you have added content, all you have to do is promote it. For this your Facebook page should be pointed at your website. You should tell your customers about your website, put it on your business cards, your fliers, and even paint it on your company vehicles, if you have any.

To drive people to your website, get links from similar websites, and websites within the same niche. You can do this by blog commenting or by becoming a guest author on a similar website or blog. Webmasters are always looking for content, so if you approach them with the suggestion of writing an article on a specific topic in exchange for a link back to your website, then many will say yes. The worst that can happen is, they say no.

Following with these suggestions will get you started, all you have to do is look into each idea in a little more, and follow through with your plans. Soon you’ll have a great website, and it will be helping to generate many more new customers than you ever thought possible.

By: Claude Clubbs

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Gregory S. Irvine is an internet marketer who enjoys helping others market their businesses effectively. Learn more by visiting his website and signing up for his free email mini-course at www.styleyourwaytosuccess.com/ and learn more about getting your hair salon online.