Building a Beauty Salon Finder Mobile App – What to Expect
Mobile apps offer valuable marketing opportunities for small businesses and are proved to increase customer retention rates. They are also the easiest way to connect with clients and allow the opening of new marketing channels.
This marketing instrument is particularly useful for beauty salons because these businesses need to concentrate on customer retention in order to achieve growth in the context of a strong local competition.
There are two ways beauty salons can use the power of mobile app – businesses having their own app or being contained by a beauty salon finder app. The latter is preferred by many salons as this solution is more cost-effective compared to investing in your own beauty salon app, and it also provides salons with access to a wider audience.
This article focuses on beauty salon finder mobile apps, on what it takes to build such an app and the main features that shouldn’t miss from your final product. As an entrepreneur interested in creating an app of this type, you’ll need to be aware of the main components of a beauty salon finder and on the features that you should include in order to make it advantageous for both salons and customers.
What features do most users expect?
A beauty salon finder app will be successful only if customers like it and find it convenient. So the first step is to make sure you add those features that make the app attractive to salon customers:
- Click to call – being able to call the salon using the app’s interface
- Search feature – finding salon based on your selection criteria like proximity, cost, type of services provided, etc.
- Salon information – users should be able to see the salon name and its description, offered services, prices, location, discounts, and images. Users shouldn’t feel the need to look for further information on Google; they should find everything they need in your app.
- Follow/unfollow a particular salon to get the best offers and services in real-time.
- Booking salon services – the app should display salon availability.
- Customer reviews – this form of referral marketing beings benefits both salons, which attract new prospects when they get positive reviews, and customers, who can choose a business that is proved to offer reliable services.
- Reminders – users get reminder notifications for various events, such as a salon appointment approaching or an appointment being cancelled.
Features for salons
As an entrepreneur, you surely are aware there is another side of a small business app and that a beauty salon finder should also be built with salon users in mind. A salon finder needs to include a large number of beauty salons that prospects can choose from, and you can attract salon owners and managers by including the following features:
- Sending push notifications to followers – containing information about new services added, discounts, etc.
- Being notified of new bookings – via email or app notifications.
- Accepting or rejecting bookings from the panel – usually a prewritten text like “Fully booked” or “Not Available Today” is provided.
- Access to booking history – upcoming, completed, and cancelled.
- Adding discounts
- Checking ratings and reviews created by customers – the salon user should also be able to message back on review.
- Checking total earnings – per week, month, and year.
- Adding, modifying, and removing – clients, products, and services
- Managing employee online accounts
- Calling or text clients right from their phone
The Admin panel
Since you will be the owner and runner of this beauty salon finder, as probably a lot of other development agencies would tell you, you should know you also have control of the data included and will be able to perform actions such as: managing users and salon information, change user status (active/deactivated/rejected/deleted), accepting or rejecting any booking, and checking total earnings and bookings per salon.
Including features that will help your app stand out from the crowd
These features depend on your location and audience; however, some special features that you could add to your salon finder app are comparing prices in salons and spas in your area and browsing trending styles – e.g. Haircut of the Week or Updo of the Week.
What features are the most difficult to develop?
From our experience, search and GPS location are two of the most difficult to develop features. At first view, search may not look like a very complex feature, but this is far from the truth. Search will be at the center of your beauty salon finder app and the app should be able to differentiate between two situations:
- When the user intend to search for a specific salon or location, the way they would do it in Google Maps;
- When the user has an intention behind performing the search, but can supply vague information about the thing they’re looking for – maybe they are thinking about a specific haircut, but are not completely certain of how it’s spelled.
Another crucial feature of a salon finder is geolocation. Users’ mobile devices allow apps to use their whereabouts in a variety of ways – in this case, finding a specific salon nearby is the main reason why you need to include GPS location in your app. Difficulty arises from the following facts: there are different geolocation technologies to choose from, privacy concerns are increased when using geolocation, and about half of people feel comfortable with sharing their location via location-based apps. You will need to choose the right geolocation solution, gain your users’ trust and assure them that their private information is safe.
How much does it cost to build a beauty salon finder mobile app?
The cost to develop a beauty salon mobile app can be anywhere in the four-figure range. The relatively high costs are explained by the fact that a beauty salon finder is quite an extensive app with multiple categories, as you have noticed from this article. If you are interested in building such an app, you can book a free consultation in 30 seconds and we will offer an estimate quote and advice on what should go into your beauty salon finder.
