How often do you exhaust yourself waiting for your turn in salons? A lot? We relate. Today, technology is leveraged across industries and beauty and wellness is one of them. Between 2016 and 2020, there was a 55% jump in terms of people using mobile applications. Given that it has become one of the basic needs for almost everyone, the demand for a salon appointment app is quite high and has become one of the sought-after services when it comes to beauty services.
Apart from this, what paves the way for a rise in demand for a salon appointment app is the waiting time of the salon. It can be a time-intensive affair as everyone has errands to run. A handy app will simplify the typical salon booking, saving a great deal of energy and time. With these applications, one can make their reservation online at the salon without having to go through the waiting time and line.
So what is it you need to take care of while building a beauty appointment app? Let us first check the benefits a salon booking application offers:
Benefits of Salon Appointment App for Various Stakeholders
Basically, there will be four users in the salon booking app:
- Main suppliers
- Managers
- Customers
- Administrators
Here, we will focus on customers and admins.
For The Customer
- Convenience of In-built Calendar
When an app has an inbuilt calendar for managing all the appointments, the customers can open the application, check reservations directly linked to the in-house calendar and book their appointments accordingly.
- Ease of payments
A payment system makes it convenient for the customers to make the payments, especially when people avoid going out. The payment system will also allow the business owner to manage all the customer’s transactions and payment details.
- Benefits of Loyalty Program
A loyalty program gives the customers a sense that you care about them. Incorporating a loyalty program will offer the customers incentives. Giving them a free manicure for every ten is a wonderful example of it. Apart from this, you can also include various perks and rewards for your loyal customers. It will help you stand a chance against customers to stay loyal to you.
- Style Library for Customers
Adding a style library will prove to be an amazing benefit. When your photo gallery has photos, it will serve as an aid to the customers to choose a definite idea of what they want.
For The Admin
- Client Management
For managing clients efficiently, there should be three arrangements:
– An arrangement for viewing, adding, and deleting users
– The provision to view client audits of beauticians
– View and track client profiles
- Appointment Management
This feature will allow the admin to monitor all the past and upcoming appointments.
- Beautician Management
The admin can use this feature for adding, removing, or updating the beautician management.
- Service Management
With this feature, the admin views adds, removes, and edits data. Data can include bank details, ID cards, beautician records, and appointments.
Now that you know the various benefits of a salon appointment app, your next question must be what should the team structure look like?
Features of a Good Salon Scheduling Software
If you are planning to set up a salon booking app, it would be of great help to know what features will keep the users interested in the app. Here are some of the primary features you can incorporate while building a salon booking app.
- Time-efficiency
As salon scheduling apps make it convenient for users to browse and offer real-time details, so your customers can save a lot of time when they book their salon appointment. With this feature, more customers get invested in your app. Also, it will leave a positive first impression because scheduling an appointment is the first contact a customer has with your salon.
- Convenient Browsing
When you have a user-friendly interface with easy browsing in the application, it will make sure the customers encounter no hassle while going through the salon details such as working hours, prices, packages, policies, offers, and so on.
- Push Notifications
Regardless of the business, reminding your customers that you exist will make all the difference. As you all know, cold-calling has become an outdated technique, you can use push notifications to keep the customers informed about the latest offers and promos while reminding them about your existence.
- Online Payments
Today, online payments are a norm and if you are planning to make a salon booking application, having a reliable payment gateway is of utmost importance. It will make it easy for the customers to pay online without encountering any issues.
- Personalization
While building salon booking software, it is important to offer the personalization feature. Given people’s current obsession with personalized content, it only makes sense to develop a salon booking system that is personalized to your brand. Your app will stand out among others when you do this, thereby boosting brand recognition.
- Discounts and Offers
The brands with customers-first, like you, can announce regular offers, discounts, and the latest updates by developing an appointment booking app for your salon. This will surely do the trick for you.
Now that you have an idea of what features you should include in the app, let us check how it will benefit the various stakeholders of your business.
What Should Your Team Structure Look Like?
The entire structure of your team will be based on the kind of mobile application you are planning to build. As you are considering building an app that can efficiently manage all salon booking appointments, it is important to have the following members on board.
- Project Manager
Hire a project manager who has substantial years of experience and skills.
- Application Developer
The designation Application Developer consists of back-end application developer, front-end application developer, android application developer, iOS application developer, etc. You can hire developers based on your application requirements.
- App Designers
App graphic designers are a must when you are building a salon app. It also includes professional UI / UX designers.
- Application Tester
It is important to include an application tester. They will be required to conduct a holistic evaluation and feedback, thereby improving your application’s quality.
After you are ready with your team, the next step is to determine the amount of time it will take for them to build an efficient app. Let us see the quick steps to build a salon building app:
Quick Steps to Build a Salon Application
After you have decided on a salon app business model, follow the steps outlined below.
- Hire the best mobile app developers to create your platform.
- Choose which platforms on which you plan to build your hair salon app.
- Select the technology stack of your app.
- Check the team structure for the salon appointment booking app’s development. Primarily, it includes project managers, Android and iOS dedicated app developers, app designers, and app testers.
- Provide users with some appealing features.
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How Long Does It Take To Build A Salon Booking App?
To ensure success in the salon business, the primary factor to consider is whether or not you have a solid customer base in the market. Thus, many skilled salon experts fear taking that leap of faith as they are skeptical about building a customer base in a shorter time frame.
So, how long does it take to make a fully functioning salon app? Building a profitable customer base at the store can take about eleven to twelve months. However, to make it a successfully running business, you might need twenty-four months as it takes time to build an ideal customer base. Having said that, when you put forward the best marketing strategy, the time can get reduced to four to six months.
Now that we know this let us talk about the real thing! Yes, you guessed it right. The costing aspect of a salon booking application.
What Is the Cost of Building a Salon Booking App?
When we talk about the availability of salon or beauty services in the last three to five years, user behavior has changed to a great extent. Today, people search for a reliable solution or service by reserving in a salon with the help of a hair salon app for various beauty services. Given the dramatic transformation in user behavior, it has resulted in triggering a trend for creating a mobile salon applications in the beauty industry.
Various beauty service providers are quite quick to opt for applications for scaling their business. Regardless of which scale you operate your business, owning an application has the power to directly impact business growth. Every important task, like handling multiple clients, managing beauticians, scheduling appointments, and keeping track of work profiles, can be achieved with an app.
Beauty professionals have understood people’s inclination towards mobile devices and primarily focus on creating mobile apps for spas and beauty salons. The only concern is the determination of the cost to create a booking app.
When we talk about the cost of a salon appointment app, several aspects must be considered. It is because the prices are dependent on some factors like:
- Mobile app designing
- Mobile app complexity
- Primary function
- Advanced functionality
- Technology environment (Android, IOS, or both)
- Developer’s skills and experience
So while building an app, it is important to consider the factors mentioned above, and you are good to go for building an app. Apart from this, hiring a development team that encompasses a programmer, tester, developer, or designer will also impact the entire application cost. However, it will depend on the respective countries in which you reside and their hourly rates. Therefore, the costs might vary. Apart from this, application platforms can raise the whole application development costs.
We have listed an approximate value of each aspect:
| Category | Native | Cross-platform |
| User App | $10,000 – $12,000 | $7,000 – $10,000 |
| App for beauty specialists | $10,000 – $12,000 | $7,000 – $10,000 |
| Admin Panel | $3,000 – $6,000 | $3,000 – $6,000 |
| Total | $23,000 – $30,000 | $17,000 – $26,000 |
Conclusion
There you have it – all you must know when you want to build a salon booking app from scratch. As you know, today, applications or software will dictate your growth and survival in the business world. It means the bare minimum is an app with primary features.
Running a salon demands you to have patience and technique, which is why it is tough to maintain your salon properly. In an era where technology can solve almost any problem, companies have started considering high-tech solutions to keep up with the new world. One of the most popular ways of running a salon is to employ a salon system. So, where do you start building your business?
aPurple is a technology partner that aids individual startups and enterprises in launching their business in a short time span. If you are worried about losing the charm of your original idea in a clone application, we have you covered! We offer market-ready advanced apps with personalized features and designs, catering to the wide requirements of your business needs. Our team takes your mobile app ideas and reshapes them into your business product branding within a few weeks.
