Yes and yes
Two questions arrive together from most salons: should we show prices, and can we change them without calling someone? The answers are yes, show them, and yes, in about thirty seconds, provided the site is built so that prices are data rather than text. Here is both halves.
Should we show prices
Salons worry that visible prices invite comparison and put off clients who would have booked. The behaviour we see is the opposite. Clients comparing salons on their phones look for prices; the salon that shows them gets the booking, and the one that says "prices on consultation" gets skipped as probably expensive. Price questions by DM and phone fall away when the number is on the page. And a client who books knowing the price arrives without a conversation at the desk.
The only salons with a case for hiding prices are those full with a waiting list. Everyone else loses bookings by hiding them.
How prices are shown
On every service page, beside the Book button, with the duration: "Balayage, 2h 30m, from £X". This is where the client decides.
On a Prices page, as a table grouped by category, linked from the main menu.
On stylist profiles, at that stylist's tier for the services they offer.
On gallery images, on tap: "Balayage by Sam, from £X", with a Book button.
In search results, through structured data on service pages.
How you update them yourself
Prices are fields on service records. In the website admin, the manager opens Services, sees the list by category, clicks Balayage, changes the price field, saves. Every place above updates. Adding a service is filling in the same form. Removing one is unpublishing. Reordering is a drag or a number.
The manager's login is an Editor role: they can change every word, number and photo and cannot touch layout, plugins or settings. A recorded thirty-second walkthrough shows the edit; that is the whole training.
Stylist tiers
Where a Senior charges more than a Stylist:
- The service has a price per tier, rendered as a small table on the service page and a range on the Prices page.
- Or the service shows "from" the lowest tier with a note, and the exact price appears when the client picks a stylist in the booking flow.
The manager edits tier prices in the same form.
"From" prices
A "from" flag on the service renders "from £X" and a price note explains what moves it: "longer or thicker hair, additional colour". Honest when X is a real price for the simplest case. Cuts usually have fixed prices; colour usually needs "from".
Keeping the website and the booking platform matched
The platform (Fresha, Booksy, Vagaro, Timely, Phorest, Square) is what charges, so its price is the truth. The manager changes both on the same day. A quarterly read of the Prices page against the platform catches drift. Where the platform exposes prices through an API, the site can read them directly and there is one copy to edit; ask, because it removes the quarterly check entirely.
Increases
Change the number, add an "effective from" line at the top of the Prices page, and let the confirmation SMS say that prices shown were correct at booking. The platform generally honours the price at the time of booking.
What happens if you do not have this
The site was built with prices typed into pages, or as a photo of a card, or a PDF. Changing a price means a developer, a photographer or a re-export, so it does not happen, and the site drifts from the platform. Moving prices into fields is a small project on a sound site and the moment to add the structure on one without it.
Where this sits
Prices as fields, editable by the manager, shown beside every Book button and on a generated Prices page, is standard on every salon website we build. The thirty-second walkthrough is part of handover. It is one of the most-used features of the site and one of the least glamorous, which is why so many salons do not have it.