Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen?
Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success, but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.
Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit, just working in your business and start working on it, join us here, where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up, my loves and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and if you’ve been hanging with me for a while, you’ll know I like websites and I cannot lie.
I am really obsessed with the power of an effective website for salons and stylists, and I know that when we talk about marketing, what do we mostly want to focus on? Social media. It’s our favorite thing to focus on. It’s our Achilles heel. It’s the most work, and for some reason we obsess over it, which is absolutely crazy because my business, we spend a lot more annual hours obsessing over our websites than we do over social media because we know the power of the website is when looky loos actually turn into clients. That’s actually the most important piece of your marketing funnel yet, it’s the most overlooked.
Why? It’s really hard. It’s very hard.
None of us got into the industry to be a web designer. When we think about hiring a web designer, it sounds expensive. It feels like a big project. It feels heavy. So it’s very easy to put on the back burner.
The problem is while you’re putting your website on the back burner, effective salons are putting it foremost because they know it is the most important piece of the external marketing funnel. And if you’re a salon owner hoping to attract new stylists to work for you, website is crucial. If you are a stylist hoping to get new butts in your chair, right? New clients into your business, website is crucial.
You could spin your wheels on social media all day long, but if the website is not set up properly, you will still lose clients to the stylist down the street.
I want you to make sure that you tighten up your marketing funnel by having that website right in tight today and I want to share with you some of the biggest mistakes I see stylists and salons making on their websites so we can just start correcting them.
I want to start by talking about why the website is so important. I want you to imagine your consumer experience. Don’t even think about your clients for a minute or how it relates to your business. You as a consumer, if you see a business you like, a clothing store that you like on social media, where do you ultimately end up? Their website to make a purchase or not.
Have you ever seen either a social media ad or a cute sweater or something on the explore page of Instagram, and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I feel like I would love that,” and you click the image of the photo and you’re like, “Wow, I love this”? And then you click to the website or to the purchase link and the website looks sketchy and you back out slowly never to return? That is the exact experience some clients are having with you and your business.
So let me tell you some of the things that do not count as a website: your online booking page, not a website. Even if your online platform, like whoever you do online booking through, and even if you don’t allow your clients to online book, like let’s say, you’re just using a digital booking tool to manage your appointments, giving them the link to that.
Even if your photo is on there and there’s some testimonials on there, that is not a website. If I was to pull up your booking page compared to one of my Thrivers websites or a Website Academy student’s website, or just a great salon website, it’s not going to compare.
We can argue and say, “Well, my clients aren’t comparing.” Yes, they are. That’s consumer behavior. Absolutely, they’re comparing. We live life. This is normal and natural. This has been a part of us since the caveman days a long, long time ago. We are looking to survive in the best way possible. We are wired to look for better opportunity and we are on a constant quest for more. It’s just the way that we are wired in our DNA. We can’t help it.
And why in the world would a client go to the stylist that’s pretty good versus the one who’s phenomenal? We say, “Well, you know, the one that’s phenomenal charges more.” Yeah, clients are willing to pay more for phenomenal. It’s a funny thing because the perceived value is there and they think, “Well, I might have to pay 20% more, but the outcome will be 20% better.”
Even if it’s not. Even if you, as the stylist can be like “No way, they do the same quality of work as I do,” the way the client looks at quality, the way that clients are evaluating a marketing experience, the way that clients are choosing their next service provider is not the same as the way you evaluate yourself and you have to know that the website is a very important part of the process.
Here’s a really good way to start: pull up your existing website and if you don’t have one, wow, you are definitely tuning into the right episode because I’m going to show you where you can go to learn more about starting one yourself at very low cost. It’s actually completely free to start, and you can do this yourself. It doesn’t have to be overly expensive or overly difficult. It just needs to be strategic.
So we’ll get to that, but do this: pull up your website and then pull up six other websites of stylists in your area. And don’t cherry pick; just look up the websites that are closest to you or of your competitors—who are your perceived competitors? Look at their website.
How does yours hold up? Would you choose you? That’s a really good place to start. Would you choose you by an inch or would you choose you by a mile, right?
Here’s another good thing to do: Look at your website compared to your social media. Is it the same conversation? Is your social media clean, polished, modern, very accessible? I can get to know you? And then I go on your website and it’s kind of vapid, or do you have a very well-branded social media profile, but your salon’s website is kind of not good?
How do you think that is for the consumer experience? When they’re clicking from your social media to the website, that’s kind of a mediocre experience, and that is the journey that your clients are taking. So having that website be branded and effective is very important. And I’m going to talk about what that means on this episode here, so tune in. This is one of those episodes you’re going to want to take some notes on, so get ready.
Now, I will say right now, if you are a stylist who knows they need help with their website or does not have one yet, you can head to brittseva.com/website and I have a free class all about how to set up an effective website.
Totally free to digital class. I’m hosting it every single day on replay so you can listen to it at any time, but I walk you through step-by-step what to include and what to leave off your website. So that’s going to be a really, really good place to start.
Let’s now, though, dive into the biggest website building mistakes I see.
For me, number one is when the stylist or salon owner makes the site all about them. That is absolutely incorrect. The same rule applies for your social media. Your social media and your website should not be about you. It should not be showcasing you at all. Your website should be about your target market client.
I want you to do this if you haven’t already done: go to thriverssociety.com. That is my branded business website. If you look at the photos on there, they’re photos of students. It’s not about me. It’s about what I provide and you can see the students’ transformations on there because my website is about them.
When you are looking at thriverssociety.com and trying to decide if it’s a good fit for you or not, you want to see if you belong there. If you fit in there, if what I’m offering is a good fit for you. Now, you’ll see some photos of me on the bio, on the part where it’s about your coach.
When I go to your website, I should be able to click on about you page and get to know you. But the cover page, the homepage, should not be about you. It should not be a rag book. It should be speaking to the target market client, right?
It shouldn’t even necessarily be a giant team photo. Again, that’s about you. This should be, okay, about your target market clients and what they should be resonating with, right?
So you lead with who you’re trying to attract and then who you are is a secondary or tertiary part of the conversation.
Now, website building mistake number two: hiring a professional web designer. And let me tell you, “professional web designer” includes your techie best friend, your brother who knows WordPress, your Facebook friend who runs a blog.
Why? Because if you use somebody who’s going to hook you up, they’re willing to build it for free, it’s slow. It’s going to be painfully slow. How many of you have relied on a friend or family member to build your website and it is like building a 40-story building? Like it’s never going to be done. They’re not prioritizing it. They have their own life to prioritize. Building your website for free is very, very, very low priority for them.
The other thing is when you hire any level of professional, whether it be free, paid, hookup, whatever, they have their own specific style. They’re like an artist.
It’s like if you were commissioning a painting from a cartoonist and then when they deliver the result, it looks like a cartoon of you and your family, and you were like, “Wait a minute. I wanted this to be in the impressionist style.” And they’re like, “Well then why did you hire me? I’m a cartoonist.”
That’s what happens when you hire a professional web designer. I know you and your brain have an idea of how you want the website to turn out. It doesn’t matter. You can try to express that to the person however you want to. But because they’re an artist, they’re going to design it in their own style. They can’t help it. It’s what they know.
Just like you, if you are a blonding specialist and I was like, “You know what, tomorrow you’re going to do vivids rainbow melt on somebody,” you’re going to be like, “I don’t know how to do that.” And if I said, “But that’s what I want. That’s the vision in my mind,” it doesn’t matter that that’s the vision in my mind. That’s not the work that you do.
And that’s often what happens when you hire a professional web designer. You know what you want them to achieve, but if it’s not their specialty, they may even commit to doing it. However, the result is not going to be what you want and you’re going to pay a lot of money and waste a lot of time to be disappointed in the result.
The other trick is professional web designers don’t understand what our industry needs and believe you me, I’ve been coaching to websites for a long time. There’s been probably 20 web designers who reached out to me and they’re like, “Oh, I’ve heard you say that, Britt, but I think I’m the exception,” and I look at their portfolio and I’m like, “Nope, you’re just proving me right. I know you think you know what a salon site needs. You do not and I can see it by the examples you’re showing me. These websites are pretty, but they’re not functional. They don’t offer that concierge level experience that clients really need and you’re missing the mark.”
The other trick when you work with a professional web designer is they’re not available for free or quick site updates. When you hire somebody, when somebody leaves, when you have a price change, it can take them sometimes weeks to make those updates and you have to pay for it every single time.
I want you to keep this in mind when you’re working with a professional web designer or you’re building a website in general: you can have a website that is good and cheap, but it won’t be fast.
So if your geeky best friend says they’ll do it for you, it might be good and it’ll for sure be cheap, but it won’t be fast. You might have to wait a year and a half for that website, ‘cause it’s not a priority for them. Or it might be good and fast, but it will not be cheap. It will be expensive.
For you to hire somebody to do a website properly for you will be very expensive if you want it done within a reasonable timeframe. And then it can be cheap and fast, but it will not be good. It will be a prefabbed site. It will be a templated site. Somebody will be running you through their machine and it’s not going to be the kind of build that you want.
I personally wasted over $8,000 on our salon site only to be disappointed over and over and over. It was a beautiful website. If I showed it to you, you’d be like, “Oh, what are you talking about? This looks great.”
It was not effective, not effective at all and it didn’t do anything to build and grow our business. You can’t have that.
Website building mistake number three: creating a website that is beautiful but not functional. So often that happens. We look at the website and it looks great, like easy on the eyes, but it’s not building your business.
Some of the common mistakes there are going to be: too much text, not enough information, the wrong information, the wrong photos, ineffective layout, poorly-optimized mobile site experience, right? If we know that over 80% of users are experiencing our site on mobile, mobile has to be slick. There’s no option there.
And then lack of branding. So pretty photos won’t do it. Small photos, no good. Social media photos on your website, absolutely not. So choosing the right photos, formatting them properly, and then having the right balance of text plus photo is incredibly essential.
Then we have website building mistake number four: not offering online booking for all guests. You guys, literally I’ve been preaching to online booking for years. My entire career as a coach. Has to happen. Consumers today want an online booking experience.
I do not know why, but it is painful for us to pick up our phones and have to call to book anything. We want to do as much online as possible whenever it’s possible. There is a small segment of the market that would prefer to do it by phone and that’s fine so as long as you only want to reach that very small segment of the market—it’s generally going to be clients that are a bit older.
The younger generations are not a fan of having to pick up a phone and call anybody. So it’s going to be an older market and just know that at some point, that market will likely stop coming in for professional services and then what do you do? How are you going to change your business model to attract that younger demographic? It’s going to be challenging.
Your method is going to expire likely in the next five to 10 years so you’re going to need to have some other strategy. When online booking is the only thing that clients do, how are you going to morph to that? I encourage you to do it now and not wait until it’s too late. So online booking is essential.
Forbes did a survey. 68% of consumers demand an online booking option, which means 68% of the people who check you out on social media will not book with you if you do not offer online booking. Even if they want to see you, if they can’t book online, you’ll lose him to the lady down the street who does. It’s just how consumers today are wired, so that’s very important.
Now I know that we are scared of online booking because we think clients will mess it up, you’ll lose control, and new guests will book for the wrong services. All of that is preventable. I can coach you through all of those issues and once you have the system in place, none of that becomes a problem.
The reason why those things happen is because your website is not set up properly. I promise you that’s why it happens. So again, that comes back to functionality and making sure that your website is set up correctly.
Now, number five is not realizing that your website is the number one referral generating tool. Number one way more than social media, way more than your referral program. It’s also your business’s best friend. If your website is set up properly, it’s going to save you time. It’s going to save you money. It’s going to save you effort and it is going to be the number one driver of new business for you.
And so I know there’s a lot of misconceptions about, well building the website is too time consuming or it’s low priority, or I wish there were other things that I could focus on. And I understand that, but the cool thing about the website is once it’s built out in full and we know it’s built properly and we can see that it’s generating the kind of business that we want it to, it’s much more set-it-and-forget-it then social media.
Social media has to be nurtured every single day, and if not every single day, several times a week versus the website. You have to build out the initial structure—and I can totally coach you through how to do that—so you build out the initial structure and then you’re just updating it when your prices change, something really shifts in your business.
And then once or twice a year maybe going in and just making sure everything is still accurate, shifting things if your business has grown and evolved, and that’s it.
Does it take some time to set up in the beginning? Yeah. About a week for you to go in and do it properly. So seven days, I mean, we’re not talking this is going to take you months or this has to be this major overhaul project.
If it’s taking a month or more to do your website, one of three things is happening. One, you’re trying to build a website with no plan. You’re just like, “Hey, I need a website,” and so you’re going in and building on the fly, like ideas are coming or not coming. And then you’re building in reaction to whether those ideas come or not., so it’s a dysfunctional build.
Okay, so that’s one reason.
Number two, you don’t understand the tech. You’re building your own website, you don’t understand the tech or how to do it. So the tech is destroying you, like maybe you have a good plan, but you don’t have the skills to make it happen.
Or three, you’ve hired a web designer or a techie friend to do it and they’re not prioritizing.
Those are the only three reasons why a website would take longer than a month to build and I want to help you through that. So if you head to brittseva.com/website, I have a totally free 40-minute workshop. It’s totally online. It’s a replay. You can watch it several times a day, seven days a week. Go and check that out and I will walk you through what needs to be done to build an effective website, how you can totally do it yourself. It doesn’t have to be a nightmare.
I show you what needs to be included, what you should be leaving off your site, and how to make sure that your time spent building your website is well-spent. So you guys, if you need a little website, help and love, make sure you head to brittseva.com/website and until then so much love happy business building and I’ll see you on the next one.
