A new client books a full head of colour for Saturday. They arrive, and nobody has done a patch test. The appointment cannot go ahead, three hours of a stylist's day is gone, and a client who was excited about coming is now embarrassed and looking for somewhere else.
This is the most preventable lost appointment in a salon, and it is almost always a booking-page problem rather than a front-desk one.
The booking page has to know who is new
A patch test is needed before a first colour service, and typically 48 hours ahead. The salon knows that. The booking page usually does not, because it treats every client the same.
The fix is to make the first colour appointment a different thing to book than a repeat one. A client choosing "colour, first visit" can be shown what the booking includes and what has to happen before it. A client choosing "colour, returning" can go straight through.
It costs one extra entry on your service list and it removes the single most expensive misunderstanding in the diary.
Should the patch test be bookable on its own?
Most salons ask the client to "pop in". That sounds easy and quietly fails, because it has no time attached to it and nothing reminds anybody.
Give the patch test its own short appointment, ten minutes, free, and let it be booked online at the same time as the colour. The client leaves the page with two things in the diary and a confirmation for each. Nobody has to remember anything.
In Webkio each service carries its own length, so a ten-minute test and a three-hour colour sit in the same diary without one being forced into the other's slot.
Why is the 48 hours the hard part?
A patch test booked for Friday afternoon does not clear a Saturday morning colour. The gap matters and clients do not know that.
Say it on the booking page in plain words, in the confirmation, and in the reminder. "Your patch test must be at least 48 hours before your colour appointment" is a sentence worth repeating three times, because the alternative is repeating it once, at the door, to somebody who has taken the morning off work.
Consultations are a different appointment with the same problem
A colour correction, extensions, or a big change needs a conversation before it needs a chair. Salons know this and still let clients book the treatment directly, then spend the first half hour doing a consultation inside an appointment that was costed for something else.
Make the consultation its own bookable thing. Twenty minutes, stated price or free, and say whether it comes off the treatment. The client who books it is more committed than one who did not, and you get to quote accurately instead of optimistically.
What to put in the confirmation
The confirmation email is read far more carefully than the booking page, because it arrives when the client has decided. It is the right place for the practical things:
- What to arrive with. Dry hair, no product, previously coloured hair not washed that morning.
- How long it will take, in hours rather than a finish time, so somebody can plan around it.
- What happens if the patch test has not been done. Said once, without drama.
When a client refuses
It happens, usually from someone who has had the colour before elsewhere. The answer is not a negotiation at the door, which is where it currently tends to happen.
Have the position written down and visible before booking, so the client meets it on the website rather than from a stylist who is now running late for the next appointment.
FAQ
Can a patch test be done at the same visit as the colour?
No, and the whole value of putting it on the booking page is that the client learns this at a point where it costs nothing. The gap exists so a reaction has time to show.
Does a returning client need another one?
Salons differ and the manufacturer's guidance is what governs it, commonly every six months or when the product changes. Whatever you settle on, record it against the client rather than relying on somebody's memory of when they last came.
Should the patch test appointment be free?
Almost always. It is ten minutes, it protects a three-hour booking, and charging for it introduces friction at the exact point you are trying to remove it.
What if the client cannot come in twice?
Some salons post a test kit for clients who live further out. If you do, it needs the same 48 hours and a way to confirm it was done, which is usually a reply rather than an honour system.