A customer in a salon chair spends thirty to sixty minutes with nothing to do. She looks at her phone, then at the mirror, then at her phone again. There is a printed rate card somewhere near the counter that she read once, quickly, on her way in.
That waiting time is the most attentive your customer will ever be. It is when she decides whether to also do the pedicure, whether to book for the wedding next month, and whether to tell her sister about this place. A salon card is really about capturing that window.
The menu is the product, so put the whole menu online
A salon rate card has forty lines on it. Cut, colour, spa, threading, waxing by area, facial by brand, bridal packages, kids cut. No paper visiting card in India has ever held that.
A card page can. Each service gets its own line with its own kind of price, which matters because salon pricing is genuinely varied.
| Fixed price | Threading, cut, basic manicure. The everyday lines that pay the rent. |
|---|---|
| Starting at | Colour and hair spa, which change with length and product. |
| Per hour | Rare, but used by some salons for makeup and grooming sessions. |
| Price on ask | Bridal packages, quoted after a trial and a look at the date. |
| Free | A consultation or a patch test, which is worth listing because it lowers the fear of trying something new. |
The gain from publishing this is not new customers off the street. It is that existing customers upsell themselves. A woman waiting for colour to set reads the menu on her phone and asks for a pedicure she did not walk in planning to buy.
Where the QR code goes in a salon
Salons have better QR placements than almost any other kind of shop, and most of them are wasted.
- 1. Stuck to the bottom corner of each mirror. Your customer stares at it for forty minutes.
- 2. On the waiting bench wall, where people sit with nothing to do on a Saturday.
- 3. On the bill and the appointment card.
- 4. On the shutter, so somebody passing after closing can save you and message about tomorrow.
- 5. On the reception desk, facing outward, so a walk-in who finds you full can still take your details.
The mirror one is the best placement in this whole article. It is a captive view, at close range, on a surface you already own, aimed at somebody already holding a phone.
Every other business has to fight for attention. A salon has a customer sitting still, facing a fixed point, for forty minutes. Use the fixed point.
Bookings and the Sunday rush
The peak in a salon is savage. Saturday evening, Sunday, the week before a festival, and wedding season. During those hours the phone rings while your hands are in somebody hair, and a missed call is a booking gone to the salon down the road.
A page with a WhatsApp button moves those enquiries off the phone line. A message can wait ten minutes without anybody feeling ignored. A ringing phone cannot. You reply between customers with the slot you actually have.
Put your timings and your weekly off on the page too. A surprising share of calls to a salon are somebody checking whether you are open, and that is a question that never needed a human being.
Put your full service menu, your rates and your timings on one page customers can open from the chair.
Put your salon onlinePhotos, and what to photograph
Salon photos are tricky because your best work is on somebody else face and not everybody wants to be online. There are ways around it that still sell.
- • Back of the head shots for colour and cut. No face, all technique.
- • Hands for nail work, which nobody minds.
- • The salon itself, clean and lit. A first time customer is judging hygiene before anything else.
- • Your team at work, with their permission, because people book a person and not a shop.
- • Only ever with the customer clear agreement, asked at the time and not assumed later.
Payments and what it costs
Your UPI QR code can sit on the same page, so a customer can pay from the page she is already reading rather than hunting for the sticker at the counter. Ahoyy takes no commission on that and never sits between you and the money.
The card, the service menu, the photos and the QR code are free. Ahoyy charges only for revealing verified business contacts from the directory in volume, at ₹199 for 25 reveals or ₹299 and ₹799 a month. A salon setting up its page pays nothing.
Start with the mirror sticker and twenty menu lines. Add the rest of the menu on a quiet Tuesday.
The other list worth keeping is your product and staff side. Beauty product distributors, the equipment repair man, the girl who freelances for bridal makeup during season, the eyebrow specialist who covers when yours takes leave. Those numbers arrive as cards at trade shows and get lost in a drawer within a week.
Photograph them into the app and add one line each. Distributor, good rates on colour, delivers Thursdays. Then you can find them in November when the season starts and you need three extra pairs of hands and a bulk order at short notice.
The same goes for your regular customers. A salon that knows a customer last had colour eleven weeks ago has a reason to message her, and a reason is what turns a lapsed customer back into a booking. Keep it to one short note per person and update it when she pays.