Before the chair, the websiteWhat a new client can find out before booking

A1. The research question

When someone wants a new hair salon or barber and looks one up online, usually on a phone, can they find out what a cut or colour costs, whether they can book a chosen stylist online, whose work they would be getting, what happens if they cancel, whether they can walk in, when the salon is open, which products it uses, whether they can get in with a wheelchair, and whether other clients vouch for it?

Population. Independently owned US hair salons and barbershops with one to three locations and their own website, in four groups: hair salons, barbershops, colour and specialty salons (colour and balayage specialists, curly, extensions and textured hair), and hair salons with spa services. These are the salons a small or mid-size web agency can realistically win as clients.

A2. Who was studied

The sample was built from local search listings, city by city, then screened so that every site in it is one an independent agency could realistically win.

Source	What it contributes	Sites
Local search, hair salons	Independent hair salons found in local search results, city by city	143
Local search, barbershops	Independent barbershops found in local search results, city by city	50
Local search, colour and specialty	Colour and balayage specialists, curly hair, extensions, natural and textured hair salons found in local search results, city by city	193
Local search, salons with spa services	Hair salons that also offer spa services (facials, massage, nails, waxing) found in local search results, city by city	40

From list to sample	Sites
Candidates listed	221
Removed at screening: the site served automated visitors a bot challenge (HTTP 202) instead of the page (6)	−6
Removed at screening: no response (8)	−8
Removed at screening: access refused or gone (HTTP 403 or 410) (3)	−3
Removed at screening: parked or placeholder domain (2)	−2
Removed at editorial review: hijacked home page carrying gambling or adult spam (3)	−3
Cohort	199

Region (US Census)	Hair salons	Barbershops	Colour and specialty salons	Salons with spa services	All
Northeast	12	10	12	8	42
Midwest	15	16	9	9	49
South	10	13	10	12	45
West	16	12	16	13	57
All regions	53	51	47	42	193

A3. How the sites were read

Pages. The home page, then for each of twelve topics (services, prices, booking, team, gallery and portfolio, products, policies and FAQ, about, reviews, spa services, contact, accessibility) the best-matching link on the home page.

Speed and accessibility. Google PageSpeed Insights (Lighthouse) on a mid-range phone profile and on desktop, plus Chrome UX Report data from real visitors over the previous 28 days where Google publishes it for the site.

Crawler conduct. One request at a time to each site, at least 400 ms apart, at most thirteen pages per site; robots.txt is read and obeyed for every page requested; a site that refuses is left out and never retried. The crawler identifies itself as Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ClikitiResearch/1.0; +https://clikiti.com).

A4. What was measured

9 questions clients ask before they book a new salon or barber, answered from what each site publishes, and 4 technical checks against published standards. A check passes only when the rule below is met; anything the crawler cannot confirm counts as not answered.

Question	Counts as answered when	Standard
What does a cut or colour cost?Service menu with prices	A dollar price is shown next to a named service (a cut, colour, balayage, blowout, beard trim, fade, extensions, a facial and so on); 'from $65' counts. Deposits, fees, gift cards, discounts, retail product prices and prices quoted inside a client's review do not count.	Clikiti client question 1 of 9
Can I book my stylist online?Online booking with a chosen stylist	A link, button or embedded scheduler books online on a salon booking system where the client picks the stylist or barber (Vagaro, Square Appointments, Boulevard, GlossGenius, Booksy, Fresha, Mindbody, Meevo, Mangomint, Phorest, Rosy, SalonBiz, Zenoti, Schedulicity, StyleSeat, Acuity, Squire, theCut, Wix Bookings and similar), or a 'book with' link for a named stylist. Gift-card, review and 'powered by' links on a booking system do not count, nor does a phone number, a contact form or an email request.	Clikiti client question 2 of 9
Whose work would I be getting?Photographs of the salon’s own work	Photographs of the salon's own work: a gallery, portfolio or lookbook page linked from the home page with six or more images, or an embedded Instagram feed. A link out to Instagram alone does not count.	Clikiti client question 3 of 9
What if I need to cancel?Cancellation or no-show policy stated	A cancellation, late or no-show policy is stated: a notice window (for example 24 hours), a no-show or late-cancellation fee, or a deposit or card required to hold the booking.	Clikiti client question 4 of 9
Can I just walk in?Walk-ins or appointment only stated	The salon says whether it takes walk-ins: walk-ins welcome, walk-ins only, by appointment only, or no walk-ins. 'By appointment only' attached to one day or to weekends and evenings in an hours list does not count.	Clikiti client question 5 of 9
When are you open?Opening hours stated, day by day	Opening hours are stated on the home, contact, about or booking page: a day and a time range.	Clikiti client question 6 of 9
What do you put on my hair?Product brands named	At least one professional hair product line the salon uses or sells is named (Aveda, Redken, Oribe, Davines, Kevin Murphy, Olaplex and so on), as text or as a logo's description. Smoothing-treatment service names (Brazilian Blowout, Keratin Complex) and nail or skin-care lines do not count.	Clikiti client question 7 of 9
Can I get in with a wheelchair?Physical accessibility stated	The salon says whether its premises are accessible: wheelchair or ADA accessible, step-free, a ground-floor entrance, an elevator or accessible parking. A statement about the website's accessibility, or a slogan such as 'accessible to all', does not count.	Clikiti client question 8 of 9
Do other clients vouch for you?Reviews marked up, in a widget or quoted	Client reviews are marked up for search engines (Review or AggregateRating structured data), shown through a review widget, or at least two client testimonials are quoted on the home or reviews page. Quotes in a stylist's own voice and a link to a review site alone do not count.	Clikiti client question 9 of 9
Technical checks
Loads in under 2.5 s on a phoneLoads in under 2.5 s on a phone	Real visitors on phones see the main content within 2.5 seconds (Chrome UX Report, 75th percentile). Where Google publishes no visitor data, the phone lab test is used.	Core Web Vitals · LCP
Text contrast passes 4.5:1Text contrast passes 4.5:1	No text on the home page fails the WCAG 1.4.3 minimum contrast of 4.5:1, in either the phone or desktop test.	WCAG 1.4.3
Images have text descriptionsImages have text descriptions	Every meaningful image on the home page has a text description (WCAG 1.1.1).	WCAG 1.1.1
HairSalon, BarberShop or BeautySalon structured dataHairSalon, BarberShop or BeautySalon structured data	The site describes the business to search engines with HairSalon, BeautySalon, BarberShop, DaySpa or HealthAndBeautyBusiness structured data.	Schema.org · HairSalon

A5. The website score

Each site's overall score (0 to 100) is Clikiti's website score, rubric 2.0.0. It measures the website, not the salon, and the client questions above do not feed it. It is a weighted mean of five pillars:

Pillar	Weight	Based on
Usability	30%	Checks of the home page for broken links and images, and an expert review of the page as rendered on a phone and on a desktop screen, against Jakob Nielsen's ten usability heuristics. Each issue must name the heuristic, a severity on the Nielsen Norman Group scale and the exact element or wording; issues without all three are discarded, and two independent passes must agree.
Speed	25%	Google Lighthouse on a mid-range phone (60%) and on desktop (20%), and real-visitor Core Web Vitals from the Chrome UX Report (20%) where available.
Accessibility	25%	Google Lighthouse accessibility audits (70%) and Clikiti's own WCAG checks of the served page (30%).
Search	10%	Google Lighthouse SEO audits (60%) and Clikiti's own search checks of the served page (40%).
Trust	10%	Google Lighthouse best-practice audits (40%) and security header checks (60%).

Within a pillar, each issue costs points by severity (critical, high, medium, low) and by how many times it occurs; issues based on judgement count at 70% of measured ones, and duplicates of the same root cause count once. On the four salon profiles, the number out of 100 is this overall score, and each dot is one check in its group: filled when the site passes it, hollow when it does not.

A6. Precision

With 193 sites, a share reported for the whole sample is precise to within ±7.1 percentage points at 95% confidence (worst case, a 50% share; 1.96 × √(0.25/n)). By type: hair salons ±13.5 (n = 53); barbershops ±13.7 (n = 51); colour and specialty salons ±14.3 (n = 47); salons with spa services ±15.1 (n = 42). Differences between types smaller than these margins should be read as similar. Percentages are rounded to whole numbers; medians are the middle value of the sites in a group.

A7. Quality control

• Every home page in the cohort was fetched and its title checked against the listed salon before scanning
• Every home page was checked for hijacked content (gambling, pharmacy, adult and crypto spam) before scanning
• Every home page was checked for a second website of the same salon (shared phone numbers and names)
• Detection rules were checked against the evidence they record: seven passing and six failing salons per question, read by hand over seven rounds (rules v1 to v7), and revised before the final run
• Every published figure is recomputed from the data at build time, and a statement in the text that the data does not support stops the build
• Results are published only after automated checks for missing data, anonymity, accessibility of the report itself and the margin of error statement pass

A8. Limitations

• A point-in-time snapshot: sites change, and a site may have improved or declined since it was read.
• Only public pages were read: the home page and pages it links to. Booking flows inside booking apps were not completed, so the study records that a site offers booking with a chosen stylist, not how well that flow works.
• Answers are read from the page as a server delivers it. Content that only appears after scripts run in the browser (some booking widgets, Instagram feeds and review widgets) is not seen, which the study counts as a gap a search engine or a slow phone would also meet.
• 17 candidates blocked automated visitors, served them a bot challenge or did not respond, and are not in the study; sites behind such protection may differ from those studied.
• The study reports what a website shows. It does not judge any salon's haircuts, colour work, products, hygiene or prices.
• Automated accessibility tests find only part of what WCAG covers; keyboard and screen-reader use need a manual audit.
• The sample is a structured list of real, independent salons and barbershops, not a random draw. Margins of error are given as a guide to precision, not as a guarantee that the results hold for every salon in the country.

A9. Data, licence and corrections

The aggregate results are published as CSV and JSON beside this report under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence: you may reuse, adapt and share them, including in client proposals, with a credit to Clikiti and a link. No per-site results are published. Corrections and removal requests are reviewed and answered personally; see the end of this report.