Our ever-popular web booking system has been receiving some very positive praise from salons and spas who are currently enjoying it’s benefits – but as always, we’re always listening to your feedback.

After getting some requests for new features, we’ve set our web team hard to work and got them to include some brilliant new features – check them out below!

Pay By Paypal

Paypal is a well-know, secure way of making payments over the Internet, without the trouble of having to store credit card information yourself.

To enable your clients to easily pay for their appointment in advance, we’ve added an option to pay via Paypal as the appointment is booked.

Maximum Outstanding Amount

For added security, we’ve included a ‘ceiling limit’ for the value of appointments booked by an individual client.  Once the client has reached their limit of unpaid bookings, web booking will no longer allow them to add any further appointments.

First bookable day

Allow people to book appointments for today.. or can they only book appointments from tomorrow, or the day after.. up to 2 weeks

Available staff

In some instances, you may wish to only make specific staff available for booking via the website.  You can now configure this directly in the software, giving you complete control over which members of staff appear to your client.

Search +/-

You can now set the number of minutes that web booking will search for if the exact time your customer wanted isn’t available.

If you haven’t got your web booking set up yet, and you hold a current support contract with us, please feel free to get in touch – our webteam will be happy to help you get up and running!

If you happened to be watching Channel 4′s rather enjoyable ‘The Hotel’ over the Christmas break, you’d have seen a situation occur that you might have come across before.

The hotel owner proudly boasted that the hotel bookings were all made manually in a well-worn book, using “lots of coloured pens and lots of tippex”.  Why was he so proud of his archaic system? Because, in his own words “we never have to say ‘sorry, we can’t book your room because the system is down’ or ‘please wait while we update our system’”.

The reason why he was defending the practice of a scribbled on paper pad?

Because he’d just overbooked one of the guest rooms for a wedding party, much to the anguish of the bride-to-be, and had no clue how to rectify the situation.

If the hotel had a computerised system, they wouldn’t have needed to worry about situations such as overbooked appointments, as their system would have alerted them to their mistake.

We’ve heard a lot of common concerns when computerising your business, and in most instances they’re generally unfounded.

The Main Myths – Busted!

The computer will crash and we’ll lose all of our information!

How easy would it be to take a copy of a thick, heavy paper appointment book? Or worse still, the reams and reams of client files that you have stored away?

There’s a number of simple, quick ways of making a copy of your data these days, whether that be backing up over the internet or onto one of the inexpensive portable USB drives available almost everywhere these days.  It’s a great relief for most people to know that, should the worst happen and the  computer be stolen or damaged, all the information can be brought back almost instantly – unlike a hefty, manually written appointment book.

We’ll make mistakes on a computerised system

I’ve seen manual systems before, where receipts are stapled to client cards to prove purchases, and numbers of courses are scribbled on in pencil or changed under layer after layer of tippex.

No matter how good your staff are at keeping records, it’s easy to be sidetracked from updating information correctly by a ringing phone or a client who needs attention, and this inevitably leads to mistakes which are then hard to find.

Most computerised systems verify information as you enter it (Can I book appointment a with staff member b in room c?  Is the equipment needed available at that time? Does the client have a course of this treatment?), and even in the instance of a mistake being made it’s much easier to spot within a dedicated software package.

Our manual system is quicker / easier to use

Computers are everywhere these days, from the usual desktop machines to laptops, netbooks, tablets (like the iPad) and even mobile phones, and because of this nearly everybody is at least comfortable using a mouse and a keyboard.

Now, when making a booking, you don’t have to worry about availability of staff, rooms or equipment. You don’t have to manually count up receipts at the end of the day to see what’s gone through the till, or pore over sheets and sheets of a book to try and add up how many hours your staff have worked.  Stock is automatically deducted, ordered and tracked in the system.

In short,  rather than trying to consolidate shreds of paper and ten different styles of handwriting,  you can get on with running your business.

Why struggle with tatty paper client cards and barely legible scrawled history notes?  Spa and Salon software is swiftly taking over as the best way of helping

While we’re obviously (and deservedly!) biased, here’s some tips on what to look for when selecting the software for your salon.

Cost is always a fundamental when selecting a system, especially in times like these where money needs to be stretched a long way.

Checklist:

• Is the software yours at purchase, or are you tied into a hire purchase or other scheme?
• Do you need to purchase any ‘bolt-on’ items to allow you to have the full power of the software?
• How established is the company you’re purchasing from?  Experience is usually worth the price.

What features does the software have?  Every system should be able to store client record cards and allow you to book appointments, but does your software contain the features you really need?

Checklist:

•  Are you able to easily produce text messages and emails to your clients?
• Can your clients book appointments over the internet?

The whole idea of purchasing software to run your salon or spa is to take away the stress of admin, and to let you get on with providing the best possible service to your clients.  Computers, and software, can occasionally go wrong, or you may just need some help, so you’ll want comprehensive help without having to spend too much time dealing with support.

Checklist:

• What’s the cost of support, and what does it include? As an example, our software support includes free updates to your system, so any new features or software patches are automatically made available to you.
• Is there any cost to contacting support (e.g. a premium rate number)?  Our support line is free to call from a landline, so there’s no extra hidden charges to get in touch.
• Can the support team connect into your system to aid in assisting you?
• What availability does the support team have?  If you’ve purchased a system that isn’t UK based, can you contact them during your working hours?

One of the reasons why twitter, facebook and all the other social media networks have taken off is because it’s a natural human response to want to share the interesting or funny things we come across everyday, and these websites let us update everybody almost instantaneously.

The question is, how can we share something that’s interesting enough for others to be interested in what we can provide?

In Sao Paolo, a vintage fashion store made themselves stand out by taking live photos of their collections using an iPhone and the Instagram app, displaying then in real time  to show off an instant, virtual catalogue (click for the full article).

It’s an interesting concept – normally these kind of high-fashion events are the realms of high-spec, SLR cameras, taking glossy images of models that can then be sent out on paper catalogues or printed flyers.  Which is fine – but this way creates something unusual, which can then be shared instantly, and distributed without any real cost.

Why not try grabbing your iPhone, download instragram and try it?  We’d love to see whatever images you make to help promote your business.

Here are a few that we found:

image by thatgirl71

image by my_p_p

image by my_p_p

In these times of increasing competition, it’s always worth testing new and interesting ways to provide an incentive for your client to return back to your spa or salon.  If you fancy taking advantage of peoples natural tendencies to turn things into games as part of your retention strategy, then geolocation services might just be the answer.

If you’ve ever seen Facebooks ‘places’, or used the foursquare app on your phone, then you’ve probably already used geolocation.  Essentially, when your client is at your spa or salon, they can ‘check-in’ to their location, which (at least in foursquare) gives them points.

So How Can that Help Me?

With foursquare, there’s a naturally competitive element built in (sometimes called ‘gamification‘).  Each time you check in, you score points, which you can then check against your friends.

Whenever somebody checks into your spa or salon, they’ll gain points against their friends – but, more importantly, it’ll usually appear on their Facebook wall or their twitter feed.  Why is this useful? In these instances, it means that your clients friends know about your business, and it also acts as a kind of automatic recommendation: my friend is at The Beauty Spa?  Well, if they go there, it must be good!

King of the Hill

With foursquare, there’s a couple of other interesting elements as well.

If the client checks in a number of times, they can become the foursquare Mayor of the business.  In realistic terms, it’s just another way to keep people playing the game – you want to keep hold of your position against your friends – but if you claim your foursquare venue page, you can set up special deals to reward people who consistently return.

If you have a number of sites, you might want to go a step further and create a foursquare business page, which allows you to control a number of venues - check out Mashables guide here.

Thanks to Guy Christian for the original idea for this blog post.

According to Professional Beauty, online health and beauty sales have ‘experienced a year-on-year increase of 53%’ over the last year, which just shows how important the online world is.

For the second day of Christmas, we’ve given you a few tips on how to improve the online profile of your spa or salon.

Get Involved

Social media is almost impossible to ignore these days, and sometimes – especially when you’re trying to run your business – it can seem like yet another thing that’s trying to get your attention.

To try and save your sanity, we posted this quick guide to getting your business up and running (and seeing results) on the most popular social networks within a week.

Get Online

These days, people are working longer and longer hours, and suffering more and more distractions as part of their hectic lifestyles.

The good news is that these people need your relaxing, pampering services more than ever.  The bad news? If they’re working all day, when do they have time to call up and make an appointment?

Premier Softwares web booking service means that your reception can effectively be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Your clients can quickly login, book an appointment and even pay for their treatment, all without having to call.

Why not try it out for yourself? Just log in with:

Username: demo@pswb.co.uk

Password : demo

Get More Bookings

Yapps.com is a free online booking service, which lets people discover your business, book an appointment and rate their experience, all from a single site.

Registering for the site is easy – click here, fill in the fields, and you’ve created another way for clients to find you.

Years ago, in the days of our youth (stop laughing at the back), there was an advert where Bob Hoskins infamously used to say “it’s good to talk”. It’s still good to talk, but now nearly everybody has a mobile phone, sometimes it’s just as good to text.

It’s hard to ignore the familiar buzz / beep of an incoming message, so here are our quick tips for getting the most out of SMS within your Premier Software.

Set up Automated Text Messages

If you’re using our Premier Spa or Premier Style software, you can set up your system to automatically send appointment reminders to your clients by text.

This simple step will dramatically reduce the number of ‘no shows’, so that clients won’t miss their appointments, and you won’t miss the opportunity to provide your services.

Communication in an Instant

Want to quickly and effectively promote a new stock range, or a particular treatment? Using the marketing button in the Manager part of your software, you can easily send out messages to targeted groups of clients.

This means you can specifically select people who you know would be interested in your offer, providing a good service to your clients while keeping your marketing costs down at the same time.

Keep it Personal

Your software not only lets you do batch messages easily and simply – it also lets you send single, personalised messages to a client to quickly let them know anything you wish.  Want to send a quick thank you, or a reminder that they’ve left something?  You can, direct from the client card.

Don’t have an SMS account set up with us yet? Get in touch, and you can be adding value to your business within 24 hours.

It’s coming up to Christmas, and it’s fairly likely a few lucky people will be on the receiving end of a shiny new iPhone or iPad.  Want to know what apps you should get?  We asked some of the Premier team what their ‘must have’ apps were (and also got a sneaky view of the new iPad / iPhone booking web app).

Robert Miles, Managing Director

Robert has been a long time fanatic of Apples gadgets, and is often seen around the office clutching his iPad.

“Flipboard, a ‘social magazine’, automatically aggregates lots of information, so I can see what’s going on all in one place. The new voice activated organiser, Siri, makes life so much simpler. New ideas and innovation are always important, so it’s great to catch up on TED lectures via the TED app, and Twitter is a brilliant way of keeping up with whats happening as it happens.

And of course, Angry Birds, for those few snatched moments of peace!”

Simon Park, Senior Trainer and Installer

Simon is one of our ever-busy training and installation team, and lots of travel means his iPhone can be a lifeline

“Documents 2 is a great way of editing spreadsheets on the move – very useful for tracking company car use! We get a lot of installations around the London area, so TubeMap is a must for helping navigate around the city. As a bit of a petrolhead, I love F1, so the official F1.com app helps me keep up with live timings during the F1 season, and Eurosport to keep up with sports news. Finally, Facebook and Twitter help me keep in touch with everyone back at the office”.

Conner Evans, Support Analyst

Conner is one of our newer members of the team, and can be found flying pretend aircraft on his iPad during his lunchbreak

“MyPad is an important social tool for me, as it integrates Facebook and twitter into one flowing stream, and it’s better presented than the official Facebook app. I have an addiction to second-hand shopping, so eBay is a must.

I love to read, and iBooks is a really good way of carrying around an extensive library all on a single device.

Stephen Wileman, Head of Development

Stephen has been involved in the development of Premier products for well over a decade, and in his spare time is an avid retro gamer.

“iRepton and Angry Birds are current favourites for gaming.  As far as apps, I tend to stick to the inbuilt default ones – not many people seem to remember that the iPhone is actually a phone, and can send text messages and emails!”

Ashley Cresswell, Head of Support

Ashley heads up our busy Support department, and likes to have a mixture of fun and business apps on his iPhone.

“Autodance is brilliant for creating hilarious (and often embarrasing) videos of friends and family dancing away.  Worms, a classic turn-based game with lots of explosions is always good to relieve some stress.

“Media5 VOIP is a good, free voice over IP app which means I can move around the office but still be contactable on my desk extension, so I’m never out of touch with my team.  I’m often running late when I should be leaving the office, so the Sky+ app means I can always record the TV shows I might have missed, and Shazam – a music discovery app, that ‘listens’ to a track and then tells me who sang it is great for finding new music.”

Did you know you can also use your iPad to control your Premier software, via our web booking system?  Just imagine, sitting at home, full of Christmas Turkey – and happily checking out all the New Year bookings your business is making without even moving.

You can check out some of the screenshots below or, if you really want to test out your new techie skills,  try scanning the QR code with your iPad (you’ll need an app!) for a live demo – just enter the password as ‘test’ without the quotes, and leave the username blank.

If you want more info on web booking or our web-app, then please get in touch with us.

Click for fullsize

click for fullsize

As one year comes to a close, there’s no better time to plan how you are going to make your business bigger and better for the next.  With the assistance of our PR & Marketing agency, The Spa PR Company, we’ve put together our Top 10 Marketing Tips for a successful 2012.

1.    Start now

Don’t leave it to January to start planning your 2012 marketing activity.   Planning now will ensure you give your business the best possible start for the year.

2.    Plan ahead

Start a month by month schedule of activity.  Having a focus each month for the different revenue streams of your business with consistent messaging will move everything forward and means you can be proactive rather than reactive to opportunities.

2.   Engage Your Team

Remind your team what your aims and objectives are for the coming year.  There’s a saying that if you put something in mind, it happens.  With all of your team having the same positive thoughts, just imagine what heights you could achieve!

4.    Build your database

Make 2012 the year you go all out to obtain every customer email and mobile telephone number you can.  Building your own email database may take time but it’s going to prove your most valuable business asset in the long term.  Start with your own clients and then use your website, blog, facebook, twitter, LinkedIn accounts to bring more in.

5.    Don’t be afraid to ask favours

When someone has had a good experience of your service, encourage them to tell their friends (sometimes we need a little reminder!)   Do this through your email marketing.  If they have found your email helpful or useful, ask them to forward to a friend.  Incentivise them with ‘bring a friend’ or ‘spa party’ offers and suggestions.  Basically, if they help you, you’ll help them.

6.    Review your website

In this world of online research on the move, your website is your window to the world.  Make sure it’s professionally designed and search engine optimised.  Keep up-to-date and you could receive lots of high quality enquiries from prospective clients.

7.    Blog 

Did you know that the word ‘Blog’ is one of the most popular words on the internet today?  Everyone loves an expert and a blog enables you to give frank and personal comments on your services which will be valued by others and draws you a following.

Unlike many other marketing tools, it has credibility and a much longer shelf life than something like an email newsletter.  It’s also easy to syndicate a blog and update.  Encourage your team to add in their views and thoughts.  Talk about what’s new, seasonal treatments, gifts etc.  Make it interesting and informative and your blog following will soon grow.

8.    Post a review

Take advantage of the free online directories which includes our own yapps.com.  Sign up details of your spa or salon and treat it as an extension of your own website.  Keep it up to date with your latest treatments and services and encourage your clients to post their reviews.

9.    Find a partner

Form a joint venture with a business that has a similar customer database but is non conflicting.   Agree to some contra-marketing activities, whether it’s inserting a flyer into their next direct mail shot or putting together an exclusive offer on your services to email their database and you will do the same for them.

10.      Go for an award

An award winning business proves much more attractive to our customers than one that isn’t and can be a vital marketing tool.  With so many award opportunities around, it’s worth entering those which could benefit your business.

There is a wide choice of hair, health & beauty industry awards to choose from and our insider tells us that not as many people as you think enter them so your chances of being a winner could be considerably higher than you think!  Look too at the regional awards available to you and if you consider your business to be one of the best in the country then go all out for the various national magazine awards.   If appropriate use your database to engage support for your award win and then once, you’ve won (we’re eternally optimistic!) make sure you tell everyone you’re an award winning business.

Members of the Premier Software team are risking ridicule in support of the Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research.

Since its humble beginnings in Australia, Movember has become a worldwide event, with over 1.1 million Mo Bros and Mo Sistas (as participants and supporters are called) getting involved, including such diverse people as Alice Cooper, Stephen Fry and Jamie Theakston.

On November the 1^st, Mo Bros removed all facial hair, creating a blank canvas for the month.  From this point, the Premier Software team, under the name “The Unspecified Number of Amigos, began to grow various styles of facial hair, including trucker style handlebars and what can only be described as a rather spiffy 1940s number.

Dan-mo

Chris-Mo

John-mo

So far, over £100 had been raised by the team, with promises of more to follow.  If you would like to make a donation to this cause (as well as seeing whatever photos the team have uploaded), then  go to http://mobro.co/dabnorfish and click on ‘Donate to my Team’.

For more information about Movember, go to http://uk.movember.com/.

For information on the Prostate Cancer Charity, go to http://uk.movember.com/about/beneficiary1
For information on the Institute of Cancer Research, go to http://uk.movember.com/about/beneficiary2