Online booking for beauty salons: treatments, rooms and courses
· 3 min read
A beauty salon calendar is harder than it looks. A facial takes an hour, a consultation fifteen minutes, a peel needs the room aired and the bed changed afterwards. If online booking does not know all that, clients book slots that do not exist in real life.
Set the real length of each treatment
Start with how long each treatment takes from the moment the client lies down until they get up, not the time on your price list. A hydrating facial may be 60 minutes, a full care program 90. Write down your real times for a week and use those.
Add preparation time as a buffer
The room has to be ready for the next client: fresh linen, clean tools, sometimes airing after a peel. Set this as preparation time after the treatment, not as part of it. The client sees the real length of the treatment, and the calendar still leaves room between clients.
In Termeva every service has a buffer before and after. The free times on the booking page take both into account automatically.
Consultations as a separate service
For treatments where skin type, allergies or contraindications matter, a new client should come for a short consultation first. Offer it as its own service, for example 15 or 20 minutes, and book the main treatment after it. This saves you from a booked hour that ends with "we cannot do this today".
Courses of treatments
Many treatments work as a course: several visits a few weeks apart. Book the next visit before the client leaves, while they are still at the reception. With a reminder the day before each visit, the course does not fall apart halfway.
Rooms and people
If two cosmetologists share one room, they cannot both have a client at the same time. Plan working hours so that people who share a room do not overlap, or split the day into shifts. A person can have several working intervals in one day, for example a morning and an evening block.
Fewer no-shows
An empty hour in a beauty salon is expensive, because the time cannot be sold twice. Three things help:
- A reminder the day before with a link to cancel, so the client cancels instead of simply not coming. See what to write in a reminder.
- A clear cancellation policy, for example cancel at least 24 hours before. Here is a template you can use.
- A deposit for long or expensive treatments. In Termeva deposits are coming soon.
More ideas are in our guide on how to reduce no-shows.
Setting it up in Termeva
Termeva has a ready setup for beauty salons: typical treatments with lengths and prices are filled in, and you adjust them to your own. Clients book on your site without an account, get an email confirmation and a reminder the day before, and you see new bookings in Telegram. Every new studio gets 3 months of the Salon plan free. See the pricing.
Questions
How long should a booking slot be for a facial?
Use the real length of the treatment, often 60 to 90 minutes, and add preparation time after it as a separate buffer. Then the room is ready and the next client does not wait.
Should new clients book a consultation first?
For treatments where skin type or contraindications matter, yes. Offer a short consultation as its own service and book the treatment after it.
How do I reduce no-shows in a beauty salon?
Send a reminder the day before with a link to cancel, and agree a clear cancellation policy. For long or expensive treatments a deposit helps most.
Made for your kind of work
All articles
-
How a salon gets new clients through recommendations
For most small studios, word of mouth brings more clients than any advert. How to ask for recommendations at the right moment, what reward works, how to make it easy to pass on, and how Google reviews fit in.
-
What a beauty salon website needs, and what it can skip
A salon website has one job: turn a visitor from Instagram or Google into a booking. The blocks that matter, the ones that only slow the page down, and how to get a working site in an evening.
-
Booksy alternative: what you pay per person and how to compare
Booksy charges per person on the team and takes a share of the first visit of clients from its marketplace. What that adds up to for a studio of four, when Booksy is worth it and what to look for in an alternative.