How Customers Book Online
What a customer sees and does when booking an appointment on your salon's website, and what happens right after they book
Customers book appointments directly on your salon's public website or booking page — no phone call needed. Here's what that experience looks like, and what happens behind the scenes on your end once a booking comes in.
How a customer finds and picks a time
After choosing a service, the customer is offered a few different ways to find a time that works for them:
- Soonest available — shows up to 12 of the earliest open appointment times over the next few days, which is the fastest option for someone who just wants "the next available slot." They can optionally narrow this down to a specific stylist.
- Pick a date — a month calendar where the customer picks a day and sees that day's open times.
- By stylist — browse your team as cards, each showing their next opening this week. The customer can open a stylist's profile to see more about them, then choose that stylist to see a full week of their available times, with buttons to move to the previous or next week. Closed days (salon closures or days beyond how far ahead you allow bookings) are shown as disabled.
- Week view — a simple weekly date strip with the times available on the selected day.
Once the customer picks a time, that date, time, and staff member are held while they move on to enter their contact details.
Already-booked times are shown but greyed out so customers can see how busy a day is, rather than being hidden entirely. Times that have already passed (including anything earlier today) are never shown as bookable.
What information the customer provides
Before confirming, the customer fills in:
- Their name
- An email address or a phone number (at least one is required so you can reach them)
- Any notes they'd like to add for your team (for example, a preference or a request)
If your salon has online payment turned on for bookings, the customer is also taken through a secure checkout to pay for the service (or a deposit, if that's how you've configured it) before the appointment is confirmed.
What happens after the customer books
- The appointment is created on your calendar with a Pending status, ready for your team to review.
- If payment was required, the booking only completes once the payment goes through.
- The customer receives a confirmation. From here, your team can review it on the Bookings page and move it through its lifecycle — see Managing Bookings for how to confirm, reschedule, cancel, complete, or mark a booking as a no-show.
Customers can only select times that haven't started yet — if someone tries to book a time that's already passed, they'll see an error asking them to choose a later time. Your front-desk team isn't bound by that same rule, so staff can still log a walk-in appointment for a time earlier today if needed.
Staff Availability, Holidays & Closures
How to set each staff member's weekly working hours, add salon-wide holidays, and block off one-off closures so customers only ever book open slots
Managing Bookings
How to view your appointment calendar, move a booking through confirm, reschedule, cancel, complete, and no-show, record a walk-in, and control booking confirmation and the advance booking window