Six tests, ten minutes
A grooming salon website has six jobs. Each has a test you can run on your own phone between dogs. Do them on mobile data in a private window, as a stranger would. The first three are the route from an owner's question to a slot in your diary.
1. Price the owner's dog
Test: find the price of a full groom for a medium dog with a curly coat. Time yourself.
Pass: a matrix by size and coat, with breed examples, found in under thirty seconds, matching what you actually charge.
Fail: "from £35", "prices on request", one number for every dog, or a price list that is two years old.
Fix: the matrix as editable records, sizes with weight bands down the side, coat types across the top, breed examples in the cells. Add-ons priced separately underneath: de-matting by the quarter hour, hand stripping, nails alone, teeth, flea treatment. One honest line about what changes the price on the day, so the till is never a surprise.
2. Book in one tap, with the dog captured
Test: without scrolling, tap Book. Is the service already chosen? Does the flow ask for breed, coat and vaccinations?
Pass: one tap into MoeGo, Gingr, Savvy Pet Spa, Fresha or whichever platform you run, service pre-selected, pet profile and vaccination upload in the flow, consent signed there.
Fail: Book hidden in a menu, a generic contact form, or a platform page where the owner has to search for your salon again.
Fix: a header Book button on every page, deep-linked per service, tested inside the Instagram in-app browser as well as Safari. Configure the platform's intake so the dog's details and consent arrive with the booking.
3. Appear in under two seconds
Test: load the home page and one service page. Count.
Pass: under two seconds, Core Web Vitals Good on mobile.
Fail: a blank screen followed by a slider of before-and-after photos.
Fix: images sized and compressed, hero prioritised, gallery lazy-loaded, slider removed, hosting above the cheapest tier.
4. Show the salon and the groomers
Test: find a photo of the room your dogs are actually dried in, and of the person who will handle them.
Pass: a salon page with the bath, the table, the dryers, the holding area and the team with their own dogs, plus real before-and-after sets used with permission.
Fail: stock retrievers, or one photo of the shopfront.
Fix: a photographer for a morning, or a good phone by the window in daylight. Photos on the service pages too, not only in a gallery.
5. Tell owners what happens at the first groom
Test: find what vaccinations you require, how long a dog stays, whether they are crated, and what happens to a badly matted coat.
Pass: a first-groom page that answers all of it in plain language, plus a puppy note and a line on nervous or elderly dogs, and a consultation slot for the dogs that need one.
Fail: nothing until a phone call after the booking, or a clipboard on arrival.
Fix: a first-groom page covering what to bring, vaccination requirements, the shave-down and muzzle policies, your training, insurance and first aid, and any local licence you hold.
6. Bring the dog back, and know that it did
Test: think of a dog you groomed eight weeks ago and has not been back. What did the website or the platform do about it?
Pass: rebooking reminders at your interval, four, six or eight weeks, one tap to take a slot, and booking clicks, call taps and enquiries recorded by page so you know which service page fills the diary.
Fail: nothing goes out, and nobody can say how many bookings the site produced last month.
Fix: turn on the platform's rebooking prompts and set the interval per service, and add events for booking clicks, call taps and form submissions by page. Ten minutes looking at it once a month.
Scoring
Six out of six and the site is doing its job. Keep the photos and prices current and add a service page when you add a service.
Four or five: fix the failures individually, no rebuild needed.
Three or fewer, with tests one, two or three among the failures: the site is losing regular dogs every week, and each one lost is years of six-weekly appointments that went to a salon down the road.
Where this sits
This is the launch checklist for every dog grooming salon website we build, and the first ten minutes of a diagnosis on one you already have. The same six jobs, in different forms, sit behind the wider pet business websites we make. For a grooming salon, test one is the one that changes the phone calls fastest.