Barber booking app on your own website

What a barber booking app has to do

The booking apps that come up for barbers in Ireland promise much the same five things: online booking, reminders, payments, a diary per barber and a client list. The difference is in the details that matter on a busy Saturday, and a free trial is the time to check them, before you move a single regular across.

Take the list below into the trial, and test each point from a client's phone rather than from the admin screen. A booking page that looks fine to you can still take six taps and a password for a man who only wants a skin fade at five.

• Short services that follow each other with no gap: a 20-minute cut, a 45-minute cut and beard
• A diary per barber, so a client books his own barber or the first free chair
• A minimum notice, so nobody books a slot that starts in two minutes
• Reminders, with a cancellation link that frees the slot for someone else
• Payment online when the client books, the full price or a deposit, service by service
• Hours kept for walk-ins, which the app never fills
• A booking page that shows your shop alone, with your prices
• A reason for regulars to come back, such as points they collect at each visit

Your own booking page or a marketplace

Barber apps come in two families. Some are a tool you pay for each month: the booking page carries your name, and the client books with you. Others are also a marketplace, where people browse every shop nearby and book through the platform. A marketplace can bring you new faces, and barbers who use one say so. It also puts the shop down the road on the same screen, and some charge for each new client they send.

The published prices in Ireland show both models. Booksy Biz lists €44 a month, €5 more for each extra staff member, VAT added, and states that it charges no commission or fees for new clients or bookings. Treatwell lists no monthly fee on its partner pricing page, but takes 35% of the first booking of a new client it brings from its marketplace, and nothing on repeat bookings. Neither is a bad deal; they sell different things.

One question sorts them before you sign: when a regular searches for you on Google and taps ‘Book’, whose page does he land on, and whose list does his number end up in?

Worked example: a shop with three barbers

Three barbers, one diary each, all bookable online. On Booksy Biz in Ireland that is €44 plus two extra staff members at €5, so €54 a month before VAT, on the prices its Irish page lists. On Traxo it is the Pro plan: €100 a month, or €80 a month billed yearly, before VAT, with up to six accounts. On the subscription alone, Traxo costs more.

What the difference pays for is on the pricing page: the website in your shop's name, your Google profile kept up to date and a loyalty programme; only what clients pay online carries 3%. If a diary is all you need, the cheaper tool is the right one. If you have no website yet, price one on its own before you compare.

No-shows: a reminder first, payment at booking where it counts

On a twenty-minute cut, a no-show costs you twenty minutes of a chair. On a longer service, a hot-towel shave or a cut and beard with a design, it costs more, and that is where the tools start to differ. The first line of defence is the reminder: a message before the appointment, with a link to cancel. A client who can cancel in two taps tends to do it, and the slot goes back online for someone else instead of sitting empty.

The second line is payment when the client books: the full price, so there is nothing to settle at the till, or a deposit on the longer services. Choose it service by service, and perhaps for first visits only: a man you've cut for five years may be glad to pay ahead, or may not want to, and it's your call. In Ireland, your own terms decide what happens to money paid in advance. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission's guidance tells consumers that a business generally does not have to refund a deposit when they simply change their mind, and advises them to confirm in writing, before paying, whether it is refundable.

So write your rule once, in plain words: what is paid ahead, on which services, and until when a booking can be moved or refunded. Show it before the client pays, and apply it the same way to everyone, friends included.

Walk-ins and bookings in the same day

‘My shop is walk-in.’ Fair enough, and it rarely has to be one or the other. The booking page takes bookings day and night; you decide which hours of the chair it offers. You might open them on the times people want certainty, weekday evenings and Saturday, and leave the quieter mid-week mornings to the door. Or keep one chair on bookings all day and the others on walk-ins.

Whatever the split, two habits keep it working. A booked client is taken on time, even with three people waiting, otherwise the next one stops booking. And the people waiting can see why: a board or a screen with the next booked times saves you explaining it out loud every twenty minutes.

Switching app without losing your regulars

What you are really moving is the client list. Before you change tools, ask your current app how you get your clients' names, numbers and history out, and in what format; ask the new one the same question about the day you might leave. Then run both for two or three weeks: new bookings go to the new page, existing ones are honoured where they were made.

The step that is easy to forget is the links. Change them all on the same day, or clients keep booking in the old diary. With Traxo, the monthly plan has no minimum term; if you stop, the website and the domain stop with it, and your client file is returned to you on request within 30 days, then deleted.

• Export your client list and check that it opens
• Point the booking button on your Google profile to the new page
• Change the link in your Instagram and Facebook bios
• Replace the QR code at the till or on the mirror
• Tell each regular once, at his next visit