The situation
Salons lose bookings in the gaps: the phone rings during a color, a message comes in after hours, a regular wants to move Thursday to Friday and nobody answers until morning. Each service has its own length, each stylist has their own days, and a cut followed by a color needs a buffer.
Online booking only helps if it shows real open times, respects those rules, and lets clients handle their own changes without calling. It also helps when the booking page looks like the salon, not like a generic form.
The aiKit tools for this job
- Booking: The booking page on your site plus the Bookings tool: calendar, clients, statuses, blocked time and your rules.
- Your websites: Your salon's aiKit website, where the booking page lives in your look.
- Reviews & customer photos: When a visit is marked Completed, your review ask is queued, a couple of hours later by default.
Step by step
Add Booking to your site
Add Booking to your aiKit website; the page is built with your services, prices, descriptions and extras.
Booking →Set your rules
In Tools → Bookings → Settings set hours with breaks, closed days, notice, how far ahead, buffers, daily limits and each stylist's days. The page follows them right away.
Booking →Make it look like your salon
Add your logo, a cover photo, your colors, and a photo for each stylist and service.
Booking →Share the link everywhere
Put the booking link in your social profiles, print the QR code at the front desk, or embed the page on any site.
Booking →Run the day
Work from the day calendar per stylist, add bookings by hand, block time, and mark visits completed or no-show. Completed visits queue your review ask.
Booking →
Examples
Color appointments with built-in processing time
Velvet Fern Salon, an invented salon, sets a 30-minute buffer after color services, so the next client always lands after the toner, and the booking page never shows a time that would overlap.
Clients who move their own appointments
A regular at Lumen Hair Studio gets a reminder email, taps the link inside it, and moves her cut to Saturday from the open times shown, inside the salon's 24-hour change policy.
A Sunday class with seats
A salon runs a monthly styling class with ten seats. Once it is full, a waitlist takes names for the next date.
Tips
- Set buffers per service rather than padding every appointment; clients see more open times.
- Choose confirm-each-one if you vet new clients, and instant confirmation for regular services.
- Use the calendar feed to see bookings in your Google, Apple or Outlook calendar.
- Until email is set up for your account, each booking still shows its change-or-cancel link to copy.