Do you feel the world has gone just mobile out of nowhere lately? And Google has gone crazy? Because it suggests making an app like Salon Iris, on your search about scaling or setting up your salon business? Well, Google is particular for showing only the relevant content. Thus, it displays the optimum solution to your query.
Business applications are a set of computer programs designed to perform business functions, measure, and increase productivity seamlessly. By developing a salon & spa management app, you become the dominator of your spa business. From online appointments to automated reminders, you can regulate everything at your fingertips with a custom app.
Now, if you think Google is right, you should have chosen the salon & spa management app development like Salon Iris; it’s not late yet. Yes, the game has just begun! In the recent reports, Statista reveals the popularity ratio of business apps on giant platforms like the App Store and Play Store, 10.11% and 6.91%, respectively. With such impressive ratios, business apps became second of iOS and third of Android app’s most popular category globally.
Who is it for?
The blog post understands crucial aspects to build a business app like Salon Iris, i.e., Features and Development process. To be more specific with the blog’s target audience, then it targets; professionals who want to groom their beauty salon business to a person who wants to revolutionize the industry with a beauty marketplace like Salon Iris.
However, a salon app offers benefits for everybody, clients, stylists, and the business itself. It was presumed, you must be curious to know such advantages, so let’s look into the already curated list of benefits.
Benefits for customers
- It makes appointment scheduling for customers a piece of a cake;
- Customers can check vacant slots, working hours, and manage their time for appointments;
- They can browse through the beauty services catalog, galleries, packages, and make up their mind undoubtedly;
- If they have visited before and like any stylists service, they can simply appoint the stylist;
- Online payment, cashback & promo code offers are like a cherry on the pie for enhancing a customer experience.
Benefits for professionals and business owners
- Manage booking system effectively from anywhere 24/7;
- Control bookings, see who pay online for their bookings at a glance;
- Automate SMS and Email Booking reminders and diminish no-shows;
- Retain customers with push notifications about services and offers;
- Gain insights into customers to make your services more customer-friendly;
- Streamline every transaction with a track record;
- Manage staff, sales inventory, incentives, performance quickly.
Plus, multiple ways to make money with your Salon & Spa Management App
Hair salons’ primary income source is service revenue. This accounts for around 92% of the total income for the average US hair salon. Besides, a minute portion of income (about 8%) is generated from retail sales. Salon management software opens several gateways for your to make additional revenue by offering various services such as:
- Premium membership subscription: Sell premium membership with additional benefits like drop-in anytime for a waxing service or make-up consultation.
- Advertising model: Manufacturers and brands always seek shared-audience platforms to endorse their products. You can offer them an opportunity to sell their products to your audience and earn on every sale.
- Salon eCommerce model: You can leverage the booming eCommerce trend and sell beauty-related high-quality products of brands. And the same as Amazon earns, you can generate immense revenue.
What features you should have in the Salon & Spa Management App Development
Try to be in the app user’s shoes to list out the features to develop a salon management software more precisely. This way, you emphasize the user’s journey and can pave it intuitively. The user could be a consumer, stylist, or even your admin. So, let’s contemplate some of the features you should have in your salon management software solution.
Features from a customer perspective:
Create an account:- To book an appointment on Salon Irish app, a customer must create a profile first. By entering a mobile number, they sign up and update their profile with personal details.
Quick appointment booking:- Salon Irish has an ahead of the curve and customer-loved feature to book appointments more quickly. It integrates Instagram and Facebook and lets customers directly book appointments from there.
Online Payment:- Cards are also becoming corny nowadays, but smartphones are omnipresent. People pay bills through payment gateways like PayPal, GPay, Apple, and now Amazon Pay, too. Hence, you must integrate multiple payment getaways.
Review & Ratings:- Feedback from customers is invaluable. It is a way to get the best out of your mobile app. You should keep an auto rating pop-up feature and never forget to ask about the experience a customer had.
From a Professional perspective:
Account set up:- If it is a marketplace app and aggregates barbers, makeup artists, booth renters, beauty spa & massage therapists on a platform, they should be allowed to manage their own accounts and services.
Appointment management:- The salon management software should be streamlining the appointment management and accepting online bookings 24/7. So, even if a customer tries to book an appointment after business hours, stylists could know and respond on time.
Client management:- Besides, appointment management professionals need to keep an eye on their customer history to attract and retain more customers. It helps them form effective loyalty programs, track sales, and enhance their service gallery.
Appointment Reminders:- Create a feature that automatically sends reminders to your customers according to their appointment fixed in your system. Use email, text, or push notifications to remind your customers as you want.
Tele-consultation:- To defeat your competitors, you should opt for this advanced feature. You can offer video chat solutions on styling hair or using styling tools and care for skin, etcetera.
From an Admin perspective:
Employee access:- Not all employees are equally reliable. Hence, in your administrative site, you should build a feature to limit your salon app access to each employee when they log in.
All in one Payroll solution:- Calculating wages for staff every month is a headache. You can automate the payroll process integrated with your sales and commission or however, you like to pay them. Mobile salon solution allows you to manage and regulate the payroll even remotely.
Recurring Marketing:- Have a feature that enables you to send customized, pre-made, email, or text campaigns on a scheduled time to chosen customers.
Sturdy Dashboard:- You must make a dashboard where you can get any report in a moment, whether it’s payroll, upcoming appointments, or productivity meter.
Send Invoice:- Create a feature to send digital invoices directly to your customer emails on a tap once you received the payment. It makes them feel valuable and uplifts customer satisfaction.
How should you develop a Salon & Spa Management Application?
The process is classified into a few steps down below to perceive Salon management or Salon Appointment Booking Solution’s development. Without any ado, let’s get right into it.
1. SOW Document:-
When you have a predetermined business model, you draft a work scope manifesting the project’s main objectives. You brainstorm with your team and list out crucial features you want to build in the software/application. You share it with a software company you hired, and the business analyst will turn basic requirements into Software specifications Documents
2. Freeze the Requirements:-
Freezing the project requirements assists in moving towards the end product by reducing the frequency of changes. If you do not freeze them and keep coming up with changes, the development process will get longer than it should be.
3. Project Sprints:-
Hire Mobile App Developers or a company; dividing your projects into sprints is necessary. It’s called an Agile project plan. Each sprint is a predefined task with a specific period to complete. At the end of each sprint, you get milestones to aim at. The number of sprints may vary depending upon the project.
4. Deliverable and Deadline:-
After breaking down your project into sprints, you decide on deliverables and deadlines for achieving set milestones. This way, you track project progress, lacking, test, and iterate the task effortlessly.
5. User Stories & Cases:-
You want to build the salon app for your customers and internal facility. Hence, research and come up with use cases of the software. For example, to book an appointment, a customer will sign up first, browse through services, and send a request. Such cases benefit the mobile app design process to create user-centric UI/UX. Furthermore, developers and QA also contemplate the user stories to understand and work on the project from the user perspective.
6. Wireframe & Prototype:-
Wireframing is an acute stage where the designer puts app features and modules together and creates a fundamental structure. It does not encompass design elements like images and colors, but it helps recognize the perfect software structure.
After wireframing, a clickthrough prototype is created that looks similar to your final salon app. It is tested before back-end development starts, so you can detect and resolve it earlier if anything leaves out.
7. Behind the scenes:-
Behind the scenes is where back-end development takes place in your salon management app development. Developers write code, connect the app to the database, and handle user interfaces. At the end of the back-end development, you get a ready-to-launch salon app.
However, there is a step to go that is quality analysis, an inevitable practice to ensure the app is bug-free. Moreover, at this step, you also test its usability, data security, and performance speed.
Now, the app is finally completed and ready to use. Hence, it should be deployed on the targeted platforms like Play Store or App Store. The last thing, ensure your salon app complies with the standard guidelines of such mobile app platforms.
That’s it;
It’s great to see you coming this far in the post! Mobile applications are for saving time, money and growing small businesses to large brands. Hair salon or therapists spa studio wants to manage their businesses effectively, and there’s nothing handier than a mobile app solution. You must now know why and how to develop a salon & spa management app with a complete feature set.
If you wonder about the salon & spa management app development cost, it’s recommended to give a read to this post; Cost to Make Beauty Salon Application like Glamsquad. Alternatively, you can reach out to our expert for the cost to develop a salon & spa management application. See you there!