7 Ways To Maximise Your Profit On Your Website

From offering an option of online booking to upsells and cross sells, you can use a variety of practices and strategies to boost your earnings. Our list of top tips will help you get started or improve your salon's online performance drastically.

1. Attractive Website

Across the UK, 18 per cent of customers buy their cosmetics and body care products online, according to the 2022 data from Statista.com. As a beauty salon owner, the very first thing you need to do is create an informative and visually attractive website. The website should allow uploading high-resolution pictures demonstrating all the products and services you offer in an attractive way, including multiple photos per product so that your skincare jars and balsam bottles are shown in great detail.

High-resolution, short videos showing a customer with a beautiful outcome from the facial and skin care treatments or a stylist colouring a customer's hair would engage people far better than a lengthy verbal description. Or alternatively, a short video clip could give a glimpse into a nice customer experience, showing your salon's attractive interior - positive colours, stylish decorations and wall art related to beauty products or recent trends.

Most importantly, update products, information, and demonstrative materials regularly. Those who buy hair and skin care products in salons rather than in cheaper supermarkets are more demanding customers. They will want you to be among the first to offer whatever product is trending recently among high-end users. So, become a leader in your industry and trendsetter by always looking for something new and innovative for your digital shelves.

2. Concentrate on Explaining Benefits

Many online marketers make the fatal mistake of putting all efforts into describing a product alone, not mentioning any expected benefit well enough. As you try to convince potential customers to buy a new haircare line, they will be curious to find out not only the list of ingredients but would love to know what each ingredient is good for.

How will their hair look as a result of using this new product? How long will it take to achieve that desired outcome? How can the product be used? - these are the main questions you will have to reply to when describing each listing.

Obviously, you will need to come up with a convincing argument why your product is better than any other similar product on the market: it could be a unique balance of ingredients, ease of use, discounted price, or a very special formula. Remember, the top tip is to describe impact and benefits, not just product.

3. Create Online Bookings

Having a website without allowing online booking is a big mistake. When you add that option, make sure people can find it easily and then go through the process smoothly. If your online booking function is not well-supported technically, it's better to remove it completely until it is fixed. In the meantime, rely on providing detailed contact information for bookings.

Having a contact page is essential for any business, anyways. While some salons provide only email and social media information, telephone numbers are still favoured by many people as the fastest means of communication.

Generally, offer as many communication options to your loyal and potential customers as possible, including adding an online chat option if you do not have one already.

4. Make Experience Interactive

One good way to gain the trust of customers and become a source of reference for them is to allow reviews and recommendations and run this function honestly. Customers may not trust your photos and lengthy descriptions of a new product but somebody giving a genuine shout-out about it might persuade even the most conservative customers.

Allowing customer inquiries and questions is equally important. But do not forget to answer the questions. Also, do engage with those users who post negative comments or complaints with a sense of tact and professionalism, showing them that you care.

People always trust recommendations and sometimes scroll through question and answer sections just to make their final decision about a planned purchase. You can also collect testimonials from customers who have been most satisfied with your products and services and place them in a catchy frame.

5. Use Upsell Tactics

Upselling is about approaching existing customers and trying to persuade them to buy comparable additional products or services. The idea is to sell a more high-end advanced product to your customers than they had wanted by convincing them of the added benefits.

For example, a regular customer coming to the salon for their colour treatment culd be offered to purchase relevant products for aftercare.

In e-marketing, you can upsell your products by adding popups to your product pages. In the popup, you would offer a related product, a new product, or a discount for a bundle of some premium products in the same category.

6. Do Cross Sell But Carefully

Cross-selling is a marketing practice where customers are invited to buy related or complementary items as they are already making one purchase. If you sell a hairbrush set, you could cross-sell by recommending your customer to purchase a blow dryer or a pack of hair clips.

Typically, cross-selling points to products that customers are likely to be looking for anyways. The goal here is to suggest things to them at the most appropriate time.

However, cross-selling might also be about making customers aware of products or services they did not know about before. This practice is mutually beneficial as suggestions are made based on a customer's interests or previous experience. Just be careful about what to offer in cross sell options. As soon as things get too annoying, customers' experience will suffer which is not in your best interests.

7. Advertising and Analysing

Invest in advertising your salon to raise awareness and build its reputation as a successful brand. Think about what sets it apart from the competitors and create your main messages accordingly, taking into account what kind of customers you are looking for primarily. For example, is their style casual or formal? Are they choosing their products for price or quality? Then, it will be easier to select the tone, vocabulary, and accompanying photos for the promotional material.

A very successful tactic is to advertise certain events, rather than your salon generally, for example, if you are running a giveaway, or you have introduced a new service or product - talk specifically about those details in your promotional social media post or leaflet.

Last but not least, it's essential to analyse customer traffic to understand their behaviour. Google Analytics or other analytics platforms, such as Leedfeeder or Smartlook will give you a good insight into the performance of your e-commerce. You should concentrate on the areas that are important for your salon, for example, figure out which efforts produced the most profitable cross-sales.

Remember that everything you do serves one single purpose - to understand and please your customers, to make sure they return and want to spread the word of gratitude and praise about your business.