Another group with two halves. The chair-based businesses live and die on their booking system. The professional services live and die on whether a nervous first-timer trusts you enough to make contact at all.
Both are decided in under a minute, and both are mostly decided on the phone.
Built for: Barbers, Hairdressers, Beauty salons, Dog groomers, Pet sitters, Accountants, Mortgage brokers, Therapists and counsellors.
For anyone selling appointments, the website exists to get someone into the booking system. One obvious button, on every screen, going straight to the calendar. Whatever you already use for bookings, the site should hand people to it cleanly rather than making them hunt.
Hair, beauty and grooming get judged on the pictures and abandoned over hidden prices. A current gallery of your own work and a plain price list are worth more than anything clever. If prices vary, give the range and say what moves it.
Nobody rings an accountant, a broker or a therapist casually. They have put it off for weeks. What gets them over the line is knowing who they will be talking to, what happens in the first appointment, how long it takes and what it costs. A photo and a straight paragraph beat a page of credentials.
The moment a form asks about someone's money or their health, it stops being a normal form. Ask only what you need before the first conversation, say where it goes, and keep the sensitive detail out of the website entirely. Practising what I preach here: I do not put client records in the systems I build.
Usually yes, and it works with the booking platform rather than replacing it. Booking pages are built for people who have already decided on you. They are poor at showing your work, your prices, your team and where you are, and they rarely rank in a Google search on their own. The site does the convincing, then hands over to the booker.
Yes. Health practitioners in particular have real rules about what a website can say, including no testimonials about clinical services, and practitioner details that have to be presented properly. I build around those rules rather than pretending they do not exist, and I will not talk you into copy that puts your registration at risk.
$199 to set up, then $59 a month. The monthly covers hosting, the domain, security, backups, content updates when you need them, and me picking up the phone. There is no separate bill for small changes. The monthly runs on a 12-month minimum term, then month to month: $199 does not come close to covering a bespoke build, so the rest of it is spread across the first year rather than charged up front.
12 Bar Digital, Largs North, Adelaide, South Australia. (08) 7077 0985. hello@12bardigital.com.au