Nail salon website with online booking, from removal to fill-in

Yazmín runs a nail salon in Tepatitlán with two manicurists, Dulce and Ivonne. One Saturday a client asked her over WhatsApp for acrylics at 11:00 with Dulce, and Yazmín booked the slot. The client showed up with gel from another salon. The removal took half an hour, and the 12:45 client sat waiting until 1:15. That night Yazmín searched “nail salon website” on Google.

The same week, something similar happened with a fill-in. The client booked it with five weeks of growth and two lifted nails, so Dulce had to do a brand-new set instead, and when it came time to pay, the $450 sounded like a price change to her, because she’d been expecting $320.

At a nail salon, how long an appointment takes depends on what the client is bringing to the table (literally, on her hands). A website with built-in booking can reserve that time before she even arrives, if each job is listed separately.

What should a nail salon website include?

A nail salon website is your list of services with their price and duration, your team, and your open hours, all on a link where your client can book herself. In Proyecta, the website and the booking calendar are one and the same: whatever your client books lands in your Schedule, on the calendar of whoever’s going to do her nails.

What’s distinctive about a nail salon is how you break down the services. New set, fill-in, and removal go in separate line items, each with its own price and time, because they’re three different jobs even if the client just says “nails.” Yazmín’s list ended up like this:

• Acrylic nails, new set: 1 h 45 min, $450.
• Acrylic fill-in: 1 h 15 min, $320.
• Acrylic or gel removal: 30 min, $120.
• Gelish on hands: 45 min, $250.
• Spa pedicure: 1 h, $360.

Each service has its own Photo in Schedule, under Services. Your first version comes with sample photos; swap them for sets that Dulce or Ivonne have actually done, because with nails, the client chooses the service by looking at the design.

How do you keep a removal from eating into the next appointment?

List removal as its own service and let your client add it to her set in the same booking. When she picks her service on your website, she’ll see Add another service; when she taps it, the page tells her: “It’s booked right after, in the same visit, with one time for everything.”

A visit groups two to six services back-to-back into one booking. On the page it shows up as “Your visit,” with the total time and price added together, and it only offers times where the whole visit fits. The gel client would have booked 2 h 15 min with Dulce, and the page wouldn’t have offered 12:45 to anyone else.

If more than one person does those services, your client picks who does each one, or answers “Everything with the same person?” And if she later reschedules or cancels, the whole visit moves or gets cancelled together.

To help clients remember to add it, Yazmín wrote in the acrylics’ Description: “Coming in with acrylic or gel from another salon? Add removal when you book.”

When is it a fill-in, and when is it a new set?

It depends on how many weeks have passed and the condition the nails are in, and you set the rule in the fill-in’s description. Yazmín’s reads: “Fill-ins up to 3 weeks after a set done here. If it’s been longer, or your nails are lifted or from another salon, book a new set.”

That way your client chooses correctly before she arrives, and the price is clear before she even sits down. If she’s not sure, she books the new set, which reserves more time; if it turns out a fill-in would do, you just charge her for the fill-in.

Can your client choose her manicurist on the website?

Yes. When two or more people do the same service, your page asks “With whom?”: “Anyone” comes up first, then each person, with her photo and name. The client who always goes to Dulce picks her and sees only her open times. The one who just wants her Saturday gelish leaves it on “Anyone” and sees both of their times combined.

In nails, this matters a lot, because a client sticks with the same manicurist for years: she knows how she files, what length she likes, and how her French tips turn out. If Dulce is booked solid on Saturday, that client would rather wait until Monday for Dulce than go on Saturday with someone else, and the website lets her choose that without having to ask you.

Everyone you add under Team gets her own calendar, and under Schedule, in Hours, you adjust each person’s schedule. Ivonne joined in August and doesn’t do new sets yet, so Yazmín opened her calendar and only checked off, under Services offered, what Ivonne actually does. For new sets, the page doesn’t even ask anymore: it just says “With Dulce.” Ivonne does handle fill-ins, but hers take 1 h 30 min; that goes under Duration per service, and whoever books a fill-in with her reserves that amount of time.

What else comes with your website when you publish it?

It comes with your own domain and a heads-up to Google. Your website publishes under your own domain, and every time you publish, Proyecta lets Google know it’s there. Google decides when to start showing it, usually a few days later.

It helps if your services are named the way people actually search for them, “acrylic nails” or “spa pedicure”, and the cute name you gave them goes in the description instead.

How do I set this up for my salon?

Describe your business to Proyecta in your own words. Something like: “a website for my nail salon in Tepatitlán, with two manicurists, Dulce and Ivonne, each with her own calendar; services: acrylic set $450 (1 h 45 min), fill-in $320 (1 h 15 min, up to 3 weeks), removal $120 (30 min), gelish $250 (45 min), and spa pedicure $360 (1 h); online booking with each of them, photos of our designs, and a WhatsApp button”.

And today, without waiting for the website, message the acrylic clients you have booked this Saturday and ask what they’re currently wearing. Whoever tells you “gel from somewhere else” is bringing 30 minutes of removal that your schedule hasn’t set aside. Get started at proyecta.dev.