November Thrivers Digest

Here are the main things to consider to successfully rid your website of forms:

1. Have clear service descriptions and names
And I mean extremely clear! Stop speaking stylist and start speaking customer. Our guests don't know what the term "lived-in color" means. They also don't know what a full head of fulls or a partial means. And what's a root touch-up? 1/4 inch of growth, 5 inches? It's still my roots, right?

If it's confusing to guests, they will likely book the salon down the street that made things clear instead of cute.

Write your service descriptions and names like you are speaking to your 5-year-old nephew. Make them concise but explicit in detail. This will put your guests' mind at ease and give them the confidence to book exactly the right service.  

Remember, our guests want to feel confident not just in the work we do, but in our booking process. So help them to do that!

2. Be so branded, it's almost over the top
When a potential new guest lands on your website, it should 100% clear in three seconds what you do. We want to attract and repel. Photos are going to be your best friend to achieve this.

If you're a curly hair specialist, we should see only photos of curly hair. Nothing else! If you are a blonding specialist, every photo should be blonde. No exceptions! Exceptions leave room for non-target market guests to book with you.

If you feel like you are getting non-target market guests, it's likely that your website is not clearly branded to your specialty.

3. Don't be afraid to say "NO
Even with implementing all of the above, occasionally a guest may book for the wrong service. (By "occasionally," I mean one or two times annually. Any more than this and something is off in your funnel). If this happens, it's okay to say, "I'm so sorry but you booked for X service instead of Y. We don't have quite enough time to do that today, but here is what we can do. Does that sound good? We can get you booked next week for the rest of the service."

Always underpromise and overdeliver. This will set you up for success in your business and keep guests coming back again and again.

When it comes to your guest experience (pre-, during, post-visit), always keep in mind what your target market craves and what you can do to make booking with you seem like a no-brainer. So many students I have coached have gotten rid of booking forms, followed the above steps, and have doubled or even tripled their new guest requests! You can too!

Want to keep your booking forms? You can, but you need to build your nurture elements up big time in your forms and email sequence follow ups to create that streamlined experience.



*Q&A Note from Britt:

Question: "Britt talks about having a new client consultation form on our website. However, in the digest, it talks about getting rid of forms?"

Answer: If you go back and watch the training, I give the forms as an option, but do much prefer direct online booking. Listen to this weeks episode of Thriving Stylist podcast where I broke down the shift in consumer behavior and why I'm pushing for direct online booking now more than ever. If you don't want to allow that, totally fine but then you need to build WAY more nurture into your forms and email sequence follow up process.