From no website to live by closing time: one salon's afternoon

Selin runs a small hair salon on a side street in Eskisehir. Two chairs, one wash basin, herself and a part-time colleague. She had been cutting hair for nine years and had plenty of regulars, but online she barely existed: a phone number on a printed card, an Instagram account she updated when she remembered, and a Google listing someone else had set up years ago with the wrong opening hours.

The problem was not that nobody could find her. It was what happened next. People would message on Instagram at 11pm asking about Saturday, and by the time she replied the next morning they had booked somewhere else. New customers could not see her prices, so they did not know if she was in their budget. And anyone searching for a nearby salon on their phone landed on that old Google listing, saw the wrong hours, and assumed she was closed.

Why she had put it off for two years

Selin is not against technology. She just thought a website was a big project: something you pay a designer for, wait three weeks to see, and then cannot change yourself. A friend had quoted her a few thousand lira and a long list of things to decide first. So she kept saying she would sort it out later, and later kept not arriving. What finally pushed her was a quiet Tuesday: two cancellations, no walk-ins, and an afternoon with nothing to fill it. She decided that if it took longer than the afternoon, she would give up and pay someone.

What she actually did, step by step

She started by picking a salon template, then swapped the example text for her own. It came together faster than she expected because she was not designing anything from scratch, just replacing words and photos that were already in the right place. The part that took longest was not the building. It was choosing photos and writing the prices, because those were real decisions about her business. The website itself mostly got out of the way.

• Wrote a one-line description at the top: the name, the neighbourhood, and the words women's and men's cuts, colour, and balayage, so people knew what she offered straight away.
• Added her real opening hours, including the fact that she is closed on Mondays, so nobody turns up to a locked door.
• Put up a short, honest price list: cut from 350 lira, colour from 900, balayage from 1500. Real numbers, with from so she had room for longer hair.
• Uploaded eight photos from her phone, mostly before-and-after colour work she was proud of, plus one clear photo of the shopfront so people could find it.
• Added a Book button that opened WhatsApp with a pre-filled message, because that is where her customers already talk to her.
• Pinned the salon on the map so the address was a tap away from directions.

Live before she locked up

By around half past four she had a web address she could read out over the phone. She added it to her Instagram bio, fixed the hours on her Google listing to match, and texted the link to a handful of regulars to check it looked right on their phones. One of them booked a colour appointment within the hour, which felt like a good sign.

I kept waiting for the catch. There wasn't one. I just wrote down what I already tell people every day, and now it tells them for me.

The first three weeks

Nothing dramatic happened overnight, and that is worth being honest about. But small things added up. The late-night Instagram messages turned into WhatsApp bookings she could answer in the morning without losing people, because the prices and hours were already there and folks had decided before they messaged.

• Six new bookings in the first three weeks came from people who said they had seen the prices online and knew what to expect.
• Fewer time-wasting messages: she stopped getting the how much is a cut and are you open today questions, because the answers were on the page.
• Two regulars shared the link in a local mums' group, which she could not have done with an Instagram profile alone.

None of this required her to become technical or spend money she did not have. The biggest change, in her words, was that people now arrive already knowing her prices, so the conversation starts at do you have space rather than how much and are you any good.

What you can take from this

If you have been putting off a website because it feels like a project, try treating it like one afternoon instead. You do not need clever words or professional photos. You need your real hours, your real prices, a few honest pictures of your work, and an easy way for people to reach you. Write down what you already say to customers every day, and let the page say it for you while you are busy cutting hair. Selin still updates her site herself, usually from her phone between appointments, and that is the bit she did not believe at the start: that it would stay hers, and stay easy, after the afternoon was over.